Chance Brown, a current Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), came to the campus with a vision that is influenced by his upbringing in Ardmore, Oklahoma, as a member of the Chickasaw Nation. Since 2022, Brown and I have had several conversations about his artistic practice.
Our most recent conversation reveals the ever-changing nature of artists. When Brown first came to San Antonio, he was a collage painter. However, graduate school is a time for growth. For exploration. For the unknown. In my interview with Brown, we discuss his influences and how his time at UTSA has encouraged him to further realize the potential of the paintbrush.
Christopher Karr (CK): Chance, your older work, prior to coming to UTSA, touches on your mixed Black American, white, and Chickasaw background. Your work shows an embrace of your identity. How did you arrive here, and how did you begin making art?
Chance Brown (CB): Whenever I applied to grad school, I was looking for somewhere where I could get new experiences. San Antonio is predominantly Latino, and that is very different from Southeast Oklahoma.
I was raised there, in Southeast Oklahoma. I saw things in cartoons, which I liked to retain and draw. This was before platforms like YouTube or the modern Internet existed. My mother cleaned houses for prominent families in the Ardmore area. Seeing those artworks growing up stoked the proverbial flame of starting my creative journey. I got to figure out what art is for other people.
There wasn’t much art in school until around eighth grade.
CK: Has your perspective of your art changed since you arrived in San Antonio?
CB: Being here has reminded me that I’m one of many artists, and I’ve come to embrace that. I was unaware that there were so many galleries in San Antonio, whereas back home, there are scattered gallery spaces in the small towns.
I was craving perspective before arriving here. I knew this would be a three to four-year commitment. And during the COVID pandemic, the isolation helped me realize that if I didn’t enter an MFA program soon, then I never would have done it.
For as planned as I try to move, nothing could have prepared me for this particular journey. I didn’t know anyone in San Antonio, except Ovidio Giberga at UTSA, and Brenda Kingery, who is a Chickasaw artist. She’s lived in San Antonio for as long as I can remember, but she spent some time in Okinawa, Japan, and Africa with her late husband.
CK: What are the artworks that’d you like to show me that discuss some of the growth that you’ve experienced as an artist?
CB: Of course. The Keepers of Language is a collage piece. To the right in the composition, I depict Emma McLeod, who is a traditional speaker. She was an early indigenous language influence on me. She would host language lessons every Tuesday while I was in undergraduate school. In the middle, we see Ezra Johnson, who is one of my former students at the Chickasaw Arts Academy. And then on the left is Carlin Thompson. He is the youngest fluent Chickasaw student. These are all people I’ve met and gotten to know very well.
CK: Your newer art has taken on a new scale since you first started the MFA program at UTSA. What has this been like?
CB: It’s been great. I go out in nature, and I become this boogeyman in these niches of natural spaces that are scattered throughout the city. They are places of calm between different types of architecture. These spaces, rich with greenery, are where I bring my collaged art, held together by different pieces of tape.
I mostly stay stationary, with my work draped over me. I record myself during this process, where I slowly inch forward to the camera.
When I record myself, I do what I am compelled to do. This has ranged from sitting alarmingly still to shifting in a seated position and adjusting as necessary. Once, I experimented with distance and moved closer to the camera. One rare time, I brought out a ladder and hid it behind me and climbed up the ladder and jumped, all the while still in the form and hiding the ladder. This was when the UTSA campus closed due to an unexpected tragedy, and I felt compelled to intentionally get near and around campus and record.
CK: This is transformative, isn’t it? There’s this idea of you celebrating peace. Watching these videos, I wouldn’t even guess that you are in an urban city.
CB: Yes. I’ve gone out near the UTSA campus intentionally, in areas where there is a lot of greenery, and I get into a meditative state.
CK: In a way, you become this sort of Avatar. Is that what you mean to do?
CB: That is what I want to achieve in this line of experiment. I’m going to keep going out in nature with my large artwork and moving in it. I want to do it until it does not feel right.
CK: I’ve long believed that artists are “master evolvers.” Artists tend to know what works and doesn’t work for them. It sounds like you are comfortable with your art now taking place off of the canvas.
CB: That’s right. But there’s always a possibility of other variables interfering with the art process. I don’t bring my phone with me when I go out. But there was one time when I got a spidey sense type of feeling while being outside, so I packed my work up. When I walked to my car, I saw a City of San Antonio worker car pass by. I figured I probably looked strange to people.
CK: There’s this dual relationship of wanting to experiment with your art but also having to work with the constructs of society, where people have their perspectives of what you look like in public.
CB: Yes. And I try to balance my new work with my old work. Greenwood, Archer & Pine placed third at a People’s Choice Award for a market hosted by the Chickasaw Nation. This piece draws inspiration from Oklahoma’s history, particularly the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The artwork has many layered contexts: it’s about everything from smiling in opposition to references of my father, black cowboys, and funk music, which recalls the GAP Band. GAP represents the streets affected by the riot: Greenwood, Archer and Pine. There’s even innate Indigenous reference with that too, as Greenwood is a notable Chickasaw name. This artwork’s themes range from tragedy to lightheartedness, history and mortality. You can apply any emotion to it.
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