Camille Billops, Resident Artist Lecture 2003

Camille Billops gives a talk at Skowhegan showing slides of art works that have inspired her while simultaneously showing slides of her interdisciplinary practice spanning collaboration, ceramics, sculptures, drawings, and experimental films. Billops is interested in ideas of family history, studying African American identity through the lens of race, gender, sexuality, and class, and the importance of building an artistic community with one’s peers and colleagues. Billops also talks about her interest in documentary film. Working in documentary film has taught Billops the process of how to constantly look and how to gather the elements of her life to examine it. Billops ends her lecture reflecting on a project she has started with her partner James Hatch to document the history of African American artists and Black theater. This project has allowed Billops to expand her platform as an artist.