RACE?

This story started when a friend of mine, I’ll call them C.B.,  shared the above image with a group of friends.  It is a painting by an artist friend of theirs, Scott Siedman, which C.B. thought had a valuable message about race,  and C.B. suggested it be shared.

The painting sparked a discussion among the group around whether this was an appropriate message to send out right now when the current discussion out in the world was about people being killed because of their race, (myth or not).  During that discussion, C.B. shared a few comments from Scott that included the following:

“I am a white male and, even with the privileges I acknowledge, I will passionately embrace my brothers and sisters of all colors and speak with the tools I have – beauty and truth” and “Let’s start the work of healing by agreeing on a set of scientific facts that bind us to our common familial identity. Who will speak truth to the lie of “race”?” 

At one point during the conversation, Scott also sent over the suggestion that he might change the last words on the piece to say “Race is a Lie.”

 As that discussion progressed, C.B., in trying to defend their friend, shared some other pieces of his artwork.  Among them were two pieces, “Straight, No Chaser” and “Sarah’s World.”

The “Sarah’s World” painting starts a side conversation between another friend on the thread and me about whether this piece, one that showed a street scene of mostly “happy Black folks” ostensibly in the 1950s, is appropriate for a white painter to put out there.  

While we are chatting, I open up my browser and go to the artist’s website,  https://www.neverwuzastore.com, and take a closer look at the paintings.   I note that these two paintings seem to be painted in a very different style than other paintings on the website.  When I look closer at the “Sarah’s World” painting, I notice it has the following caption: “Sarah Jenkins paints a scene from her small-town American memories.”

“?!?” (my first “WTF” of the day)

Okay, now I am confused. Given the different style of this painting compared with the other paintings on the site, coupled with the caption, it seems that this painting is the work of an entirely different artist.  I think about it and then decide that maybe the website has work from a few different artists and that my friend C.B. just mistakenly thought these two had been some of Scott’s.   To test this theory out, I so a Google search for “Sarah Jenkins art” and, sure enough, I find the same artwork on a number of different websites, especially sites featuring art by African American artists, all of the prints presented as being by the artist Sarah Jenkins.  

I email C.B. and tell them that they must have been mistaken about these two pieces as they seem to be by a different artist.  C.B. then has another email exchange with Scott and replies back to me with a short message from Scott that I find somewhat cryptic:

“All the art is mine. Sorry for the confusion…”

“?!?” (WTF #2)

Now wait a minute.   I go Googling again and look closer. I find the following websites (among many others), all with this work and others of the same style, each one listed as being by Sarah Jenkins and showing her signature in the lower right-hand corner.

https://www.blackartdepot.com/collections/artist-sarah-jenkins-art-gallery – “Art prints, posters and gifts featuring the work of ethnic artist Sarah Jenkins.”

http://www.labelleartgallery.com/jenkins-sarah-1/ – “Black Art Shop is your first choice for Black Art Prints and Posters by African American Artists”

https://www.itsablackthang.com/collections/sarah-jenkins-artwork – “African American Products and Gifts”

Then, I notice something that I find a little odd: On the print called “Sarah’s World” on the neverwuzastore site, the image has been cropped in a way that doesn’t show Sarah Jenkins signature in the lower right corner as it showed on the other sites.

“?!?” (WTF #3)

So, at this point my brain is working overtime trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  It is starting to seem as if this guy Scott is selling some of Sarah Jenkins’ art as his own.  Or…. well, I can’t quite exactly figure out what is going on.

So, I go back to Google…and start searching again….and now I find another strange thing.   While I can find Sarah Jenkins’ art ALL over the internet (on ebay, on Amazon and on tons of websites featuring African American Art), what I can’t find is an Artist’s Bio for her.    Anywhere.   The closest I can find are comments on the websites featuring her work:
“Art prints, posters and gifts featuring the work of ethnic artist Sarah Jenkins” and “Sarah Jenkins is a prolific African American artist and painter.” But no more.  No other info seems to be available.

Now,  as I am sitting scratching my head on my 4^th cup of WTF of the day, I see an incoming email from C.B. which contains the following comment from Scott:

“I have created several fake identities over the years as a protest against the cult of personality that pervades the art world and is a part of the commodification of everything in this market-driven materialist madhouse of a country.

I created Sergey Ivanov who painted large moody black and white interiors and Sarah Jenkins who studied with Thomas Hart Benton and painted bright, lively scenes from her life.

My point is that the author/ artist is irrelevant, the work is all that matters… the rest is marketing and side issues that over the span of history will be rightly forgotten.“

At this point, I literally said out loud “What the actual f—-?!?!” (#5 for those still keeping count)

He.   

Created. 

Sarah Jenkins.

Sarah Jenkins is him.

A white artist created a ‘persona’ of a black female artist who ”…paints lively scenes from her life” and then sells these paintings/prints/etc. on sites specializing in art by African American artists.

“You have GOT to be kidding me..!”

THIS guy, the one who said “Race is a Lie”….the one who lies about race to sell paintings?

More research follows.

I find that one of the Sarah Jenkins paintings had been sold as far back as 2006, with a trademark on it saying it was from “Postermania West”.  This would indicate that Scott has been selling art as “Sarah Jenkins” for at least 14 years.   

I also find that there is one painting that was sold both as being painted by Scott Siedman AND as being painted by “Sarah Jenkins”.  It is a piece he painted for a contest in 2008 run by the artist Shepard Fairey for pieces of art depicting Barack Obama.   When sold as a poster in 2008, it was called “The Man from Illinois” by Scott Siedman. 

https://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamartmania-theres-orgy-of-art-shows.html

A few years later, the same painting shows up as “Hope” by Sarah Jenkins

https://www.allposters.com/-sp/Sarah-Jenkins-Hope-Barack-Obama-Art-Poster-Print-Posters_i8757014_.htm

I send a message back to C.B. stating how screwed up this is. C.B. agrees and suggests I reach out to Scott directly because maybe I could better explain to him how screwed up this is.

So I do. 

I email Scott from a link on his website and he agrees to have a chat via facetime.   I call him a few days later.  The call is…..interesting.

We talk for about half an hour.  During the discussion, he indicates a few times that he wants “to take responsibility”.   He also mentions how all of his heroes when he was growing up were Black and one of his formative experiences as a young man was going to hear the Miles Davis Quintet.

He also acknowledges a few other things, such as the fact that he has “enjoyed taking on other personas”, and proceeds to tell me of three personas he has taken on (i.e., sold paintings as if they were created by these manufactured people):

1. Sergey Ivanov (NOTE: not the well-known 19th-century painter):
   “The most successful one was this guy I created called Ivanov. Sergey Ivanov. And I did these big black and white interiors. What I would do is take photographs out of magazines of these overdecorated houses, do them in black and white, and slowly remove…all the furniture. So that what was left was the shadows of furniture that wasn’t there… And I had this gallery person come to me and say, “these are really depressing”, and I said, “well, hey, what if I was a Russian emigre?” And she said, “Oh, my God, I could sell them all!”.”
2. Siedman as Gay Artist (unknown if he used another name):
   “I’ve taken others…a Gay artist, I’m not homosexual, I was a gay artist, I took part in a Leslie Lohman gay museum show in New York. I had three pieces in it. I’ve gone to the Tom of Finland erotic art shows.”
3. Sarah Jenkins:
   “I’ll give you the genesis of it. I was having a show at a gallery called Bert Green Fine Art in Los Angeles, and I didn’t have enough stuff. And I said, well, you know, I’ve been doing this other sort of African-American genre paintings, some of them have been published as posters, by this poster company. And I said, why don’t…we have a show as this alter ego? I had already done Sergey. I had already done the gay thing, right? Yeah. And this is at least 10 years ago anyway. Just a different time. And all my African American friends came. At one point, Bert said, you know, we can hire an actress and really play this out. Which, if I had been a smart cookie, I would have done…I wanted to see people, see I wanted to stand there and look at them with all the baggage and expectations and whatever has been generated by these paintings… and I stand in front of them at the end, and it’s this old Jewish guy. “You’re Sarah Jenkins?” So that’s the idea.”

He then goes on to note that at one time or another all of these images were posted online and he thinks people stole them and made posters and prints of them…the implication being he had no control over who was selling them now. 

I push him on this: “I would…think that if you’re not getting any money on it, you’d want to kind of hit these folks up and say, hey, stop selling my art!”.

He replies that he has and they said “Sue me”…and then notes that he doesn’t have a lawyer, he’s just a poor artist…implying that this is why he hasn’t gone after all those people selling his art as Sarah Jenkins.

(At this point I’m thinking that the West Coast supply of ‘WTFs” for the week was getting awfully low.).

Toward the end of the call, he says “What do you want me to do?  So, do you want me to pull all those things down and you want me to chase down all the people who have been ripping it off and using it? What do you want me to do?”

I tell him that I need to chew on it and that I’d email him in a day or so.

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 So I chew on it. 

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Among all of the things that I keep trying to unpack is that I can’t believe that anyone going to blackartdepot.com, would ever think that when they bought artwork by “Sarah Jenkins”, that they were actually supporting a White male artist.

Throughout much of this back and forth, I have been talking with my two daughters and my daughter in law who have been sequestered together with my wife and me in our house.  All three of them have been very involved in Social Justice causes and have far more recent reference points in regard to the current discussions out in the world about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Racism.   They are also as riled up as I was on this.  I have my daughter Sofia, who is far more eloquent than I am, help draft my message back to Scott.

The next Saturday, after a few days of discussion and editing and more discussion, I send him the following email:

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Saturday, June 13, 2020 8:50 PM

Hi Scott,

Thanks again for being open to having a discussion about the concerns with your ‘Sarah Jenkins’ artwork.

I’ve been chewing on this since we talked and have a lot of thoughts I want to share.  I know this is long, but please take the time to read and consider. 

In looking at the work and hearing your story behind how you came to using ‘personas’, I think there are a few areas you may not have considered in regards to the what the impact of presenting your art as coming from those different personas is.

Many folks have, over time, used pseudonyms or noms-de-plume when presenting their work.  Samuel Clemens writing as Mark Twain for example.  Your situation might most closely be compared to the Joe Scanlon/Donnelle Woolford (which you may have been referencing with your suggestion that you should have hired an actress to portray your persona as Scanlon did).

In cases where that happens, you have to examine aspects of the power and cultural differential between the true author of a work and the ‘persona’ and the degree to which the work is presented as representational of the fabricated persona.   In the case of your ‘Sergey Ivanov’, presumably a white male artist…while the Russian name/backstory certainly implies that this is where the style of dark black and white imagery comes from, there is not the same level of power/cultural differential between you and Sergey as there is either representing yourself as a gay artist or a Black female artist.

This is fundamental: even within the idea of the ‘persona’ it’s one thing to say “this is the work of a black female artist” (not that that is good in itself), but then, when the work itself is presented as not just as an abstract work, but work that is telling that person’s story….now you are well into ‘cultural appropriation’ –  When the caption for Sarah’s World/Sarah’s BBQ on your website says “Sarah Jenkins paints a scene from her small town American memories.” you are now telling the story of a person whose life you did not live/experience.  You are telling someone else’s story.  And the person, real or fictional, whose story you are telling is a member of a group that has been historically unable to tell their own story.   For a few hundred years Black people have had our story told FOR us by non-Black people (See Birth of a Nation or Gone with the Wind for examples).

That’s why this is a problem, and it’s not a minor one. 

Put another way, imagine that we’re talking about a real brick and mortar store with one shelf reserved for “Black Art”   Your putting Sarah Jenkins work on that shelf, means there is less room for a REAL black artist, who is telling a REAL story from their REAL experiences in that space…Or, to reference something from our conversation:  What if, when you went to hear Miles Davis, instead, there was a white quintet playing similar music with a white trumpeter in blackface.  Would that have been the same experience?  Would it have had the same cultural relevance?

When you gave your reasoning for Sarah Jenkins, you indicated it was “a protest against the cult of personality that pervades the art world and is a part of the commodification of everything in this market driven materialist madhouse of a country.”  But in our conversation, in describing your experiences with your personas’ art, you mentioned in both the case of Sergey and Sarah the fact that it ‘sold better’ than the art under your own name.  That seemed to imply that the key consideration was…sales…more than a philosophical statement.  If that’s not the case, it wasn’t very evident in the discussion. At one point you mention, that the first showing of “Sarah Jenkins’s art” was to flush out a show at a Gallery already exhibiting your work, and that you approached the curator with Sarah as someone you already had success selling commercially.

So, I think that despite any good intentions you may have had in creating the work, the art has had a very different outcome. This is, in large part because of how it has been marketed and sold both by others and on your own website.

Really, it boils down to this: by presenting and selling this art in this manner you have been profiting off the Black experience. By painting and selling art that attempts to reference the depth of Black experience, particularly art that is designed to reference scenes of joy for a people that are and have historically been oppressed, you have participated in and upheld those same systems that oppress Black people.

In our conversation, you referenced the art world, the critics and the rich folks who buy paintings. Even with your understanding of the commodification of art, in using the persona “Sarah Jenkins” you have actively participated in making and selling art for multiple populations (both Black folks trying to buy a poster that reflected their experience, and the rich art world that wanted to tokenize Black artists) that took away space from Black artists trying to capture their experience. While Sarah Jenkins is imaginary, Black artists are not. 

What to do?

When we started our conversation, you said up front “I want to take responsibility”, and as we finished you asked me what I thought you should do. 

In chewing on this, I had discussions with friends in both the social justice and art communities about the issues at hand (not giving specific names).   I included two friends who are professors who have taught art at Cal Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute.   In all cases I asked for their opinions and input on how one could best address the situation and I incorporated their feedback into my suggestions.

I believe we all have opportunities to learn and grow as we become more aware of the impact of our actions and gain more awareness about the world around us.  Based on this, I am going to suggest three fundamental actions that can help you to acknowledge this impact of your actions as opposed to focusing solely on what you meant to do with the work and help reduce the ability for this to cause harm in the future.

1. Acknowledge the charade of your ‘personas’.
   The very first step you need to take is to make a public acknowledgment and apology on your website, Facebook and Medium pages–really any and all platforms you use–of the identities you have adopted and the harm those identities have caused. You need to OWN this.  Any actions that you take that aim to keep the charade of these personas going avoids taking responsibility.
   
   
2. Stop the selling of the artwork under false pretenses.
   You must reach out to the wholesale and retail outlets that sell the Sarah Jenkins artwork and provide the acknowledgment noted above and make it clear they cannot sell this artwork as if it were by a Black Woman.  You should start with the Wholesalers like http://hotstuffdropship.com/ that seem to have the entire Sarah Jenkins catalog for sale to retailers.
   
3. Reparations
   This is likely the toughest one.  Another thing you mentioned many times was your appreciation for the Black community and Black artists –you stated many times your love for Black people ranging from Miles Davis to the folks in your neighborhood growing up.
   
   The best way to demonstrate that appreciation for Black artists by uplifting and sponsoring their work. Love and appreciation look like giving, not taking. As a white artist who has profited over the years from making art under identities as a Black woman and as a Gay person, the logical first step would be to donate directly to Black and Queer artists.   Here is a link to a list of Black arts collectives and organizations which could use your support. As a nonBlack person, there is no better way to show your love for the Black community than with support, and funds are an excellent way to start.

I should state that it is impossible to quantify the sum of the effect of your actions. That being said, taking the steps outlined above would be a positive step in your taking responsibility as you indicated you wanted to do.

Please consider the above carefully and let me know your thoughts.   I look forward to seeing what you decide to do to help rectify the situation.

Sincerely,
Patrice Mackey

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After not hearing back from him for two days, I send a followup email asking if he’d had time to read and consider my last email.

It is now over a week later and I have had no response.

[06/28/2020 NOTE: SEE UPDATE BELOW]

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So that’s my strange tale of Sarah Jenkins. A friend shared some artwork wanting to do some good in the world.  I became curious…and then curiouser and then…found myself going down one rabbit hole after another finding pieces of a strange puzzle and then trying to figure out why the pieces didn’t fit together. 

Until they did.

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What To Do?

In sharing this, my primary purpose is to help stop this art from being sold under the pretense that it is by a Black female artist.  I also wanted to bring up the issue of cultural appropriation so that people can consider and discuss its effects.   While not every example is as egregious as the “Sarah Jenkins” case, every incident of cultural appropriation does do damage. It has an impact on the people whose art, culture and efforts are being appropriated.

To that end, I am not interested in putting too much focus on the artist himself (although I am sure many people will put their attention in that direction), but to help the artists whose work had and continues to be displaced by art like this.  If this story moves you to action, then I ask that rather than spending any time or energy aiming any vitriol towards Siedman, you consider helping out in the same ways I suggested to him:

1. Help alert the many wholesalers and retailers (and Etsy Stores and eBay Merchants, etc.) that are selling these prints that they are NOT by a “Sarah Jenkins,” and they are NOT paintings by an African American and should not be sold as such.  You can find any number of these by looking in the references at the end of this article or by doing an internet search on “Sarah Jenkins Art”.
2. Contribute to either an organization that supports Black or Queer artists, or to an artist directly.  Here are some organizations and artists that could use your support:
   • ArtNet’s list of 26 Organizations that Support Emerging Black Artist, Thinkers and Change-Makers
   • Brenda Arts: A POC Youth Film Program
   • Southern Fried Queer Pride
   • Ori Gallery
     

[06/26/2020]: UPDATE

Today I heard through a mutual friend that despite my emails to Scott, including one that contained the link to this blog post (prior to my sharing it publically) he said he had not seen my emails or this blog post. It was reported to me that he felt I “blew off his explanation of the Sarah Jenkins art”, including the explanation he gave that it was stolen and being sold by others, mostly Black people, who were making the money off of it, and that he wasn’t making any money off of it. It was also passed on to me that he felt I was looking to find someone to be the ‘evil white guy” and he just ended up to be the one I found.

He indicated he will contact me next week to discuss.

I did note in the original piece above that he said the work had been copied and stolen, but he did not indicate that he had not said he had NEVER made any money off of it. In any event, this would not change my assessment of the work and the issue at hand. It also does not explain how the company that seems to be the main wholesaler of this artwork (hotstuffdropship.com) shows up as being connected to the same company that was selling it, with a “Sarah Jenkins” trademark as far back as 2006.

And, I need to state, I wasn’t looking for ANYthing. I did not start out LOOKING for anything. I was actually ASKED to look at the original painting and give my thoughts…and accidentally fell down the rabbit holes I describe above. Once I did. I felt it WAS important to document, and share and I have made it clear throughout that my focus was on not having this art sold under the false pretenses that it is, NOT to demonize Scott.

For added clarity, here is a link to an approximate transcript of my facetime conversation with Scott on 06/08/2020:

http://chefjuke.com/siedman/siedmancall.pdf

Readers can read and judge for themselves if my story above is a reasonable reflection of the information I found.

07/07/2020 UPDATE

I was able to reconnect with Scott last week and I forwarded all of my earlier emails to Scott and we discussed giving him the opportunity to respond on this blog page.

Below is his response.

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I Confess

I write this in response to a post on this website about me, Scott Siedman. I’m an artist. A painter in oils, a sculptor in clay and bronze, a set designer for theater, an illustrator for magazines and newspapers and none of these occupations has ever paid me enough to live above a level of graceful poverty.

I was born in East Los Angeles in 1948 and by the time I was in the 5th grade I was the only white boy in my class at Evergreen Ave. Elementary. My friends and enemies were Latinos and I learned how it feels to be a minority, judged by my skin color and harassed for it. Luckily I was also a fast runner.

I was raised in a liberal secular Jewish family and two words that were never spoken in my house were the F word and the N word. I marched with my big brother Jack in solidarity with MLK’s march in Selma in 1965 and learned what it feels like to march down the middle of Broadway downtown and chant “Jim Crow must go”! It felt good.

In high school when the rest of my homeroom class recited the pledge of allegiance I always finished loudly – “ with liberty and justice for SOME!” I played on the football team and one night, as the National Anthem was played, I refused to stand in protest. The principal let me off with a stern warning and my parents while supportive, talked me out of a repeat performance. I also informed them that I was beginning to hate white people.

That brings me to Sarah Jenkins, an African American character that I created for a show of paintings at Bert Green Fine Art, a gallery in Los Angeles. She was 87 years old and had studied with Thomas Hart Benton. She painted what art historians call genre paintings of her life and sometimes I actually felt possessed making them. Bert asked me if wanted to hire an actress to play her at the opening but I decided that I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity the let people know that they had been punked, that the race and gender of the artist were irrelevant.

I had pulled this stunt before, posing as a gay artist and taking part in several shows produced by the Tom Of Finland Foundation and even had a piece purchased by the Leslie Lohman Gay Art Museum. I always told anyone who asked that I wasn’t gay and other than some quizzical looks, never took any shit for it.

Part of my perpetration of these frauds is a protest against the cult of personality rampant in our culture and its greedy impulse to turn everything into a commodity.

I also do not believe in Intellectual Property and encourage anyone who wants to reproduce and sell my images to do so. I met a man at the 2019 Central Avenue Jazz Festival who had a booth selling posters and was selling several of Sarah’s images. I introduced myself as the artist who painted them and let him know that I had no objection to him selling them and keeping all the profits to support his family. He and most of the people who bought them are black and seeing the joy my art brought them is payment enough.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding about my motives and my lifelong opposition to racism.

I have changed the home page on my neverwuzastore.com website to read: All products on this site were created by Scott Siedman. As of this writing, I have not sold a single print or poster of the Sarah Jenkins series from the website and I will notify the one company legally selling them to change the credit to my name. Also… other than the original purchase of the images, that company has never made any payment of royalties to me from their sale.

To anyone who is offended by my actions I offer my humble apology and promise never to do it again.

Sincerely,
Scott Siedman

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So, that’s where things lie.

I’ll leave this up for the readers to judge the situation for themselves.

If you feel like helping notify the websites that are selling “Sarah Jenkins” art under false pretenses, I would fully support that effort. Some of them are linked above and in the references below, but you can find them easily by internet searching for “Sarah Jenkins Art”

Feel free to leave comments below.

-Patrice Mackey aka Chef Juke

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REFERENCE LINKS

List of artworks sold as by “Sarah Jenkins”:
Angel In The Rafters
Cool Jazz/Straight No Chaser
Devotion
Last Supper
Hope
My First Dance
My First Love
Roadhouse Sunrise
Sarah’s BBQ / Sarah’s World
Sunday Picnic
Swing Night
Uncle Joe’s Funeral

NEVERWUZ-A-STORE

This is Scott Siedman’s website for selling his artwork.
“NEVERWUZ Productions produces memorabilia for events that never happened. The act of re-imagining a better past is a step toward imagining a better future.”
https://www.neverwuzastore.com/

Neverwuz Productions Facebook page.

HOT STUFF DROP SHIP

This seems to be the primary source for “Sarah Jenkins” artwork being sold on other sites. This is a DropShipper that has “Sarah Jenkins” art catalog
www.Hotstuffdropship.com 

Postermania West

Postermania West is a company that preceded Hot Stuff Drop Ship and looks to be run by the same people. I discovered them from one print of a “Sarah Jenkins” painting “Uncle Joe’s Funeral” on allposters.com which had the following copyright notice printed on the bottom:
©2006 Postermania West™  Sarah Jenkins™
While there is no longer a Postermania West website there is still a PostermaniaWest eBay store that sells “Sarah Jenkins” artwork.

The main business contact for Postermania West was listed as Aziz Larbaoui – https://website.informer.com/postermania+west.html
Aziz Larbaoui is also listed as the President of Hot Stuff Enterprises which runs Hotstuffdropship (see above):
https://www.corporationwiki.com/California/Granada-Hills/aziz-larbaoui/42844958.aspx
http://data.danetsoft.com/hotstuffdropship.com
https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.hot_stuff_enterprise_llc.95820c4c2b037d8e455e295ae27ae82b.html

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If you have any questions about this post, feel free to email me.