I started working with artist Amy Sherald when filming for Season 11 of the Art in the Twenty-First Century series. In that initial segment, we focused on the iconic works that Amy is most known for, like the portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor. When revisiting the interview and footage we captured with Amy for this Extended Play film, I was struck by how Amy talked about what she was depicting—whether it was a boy on a slide, bikers in Baltimore, or a farmer whose farm she worked on—as these singular moments that were small and quiet, but nevertheless profound. We have footage of these pieces in process, and of the exhibition in London where they were first shown, so it felt like the right opportunity to highlight these works that we didn’t get to cover in the initial segment.
Amy is very well-known and is a celebrity in a way, but in working with her over the course of a year, I quickly learned that she’s a very thoughtful, easygoing person. That really shone through in the way she interacted with her team at the studio, and how we brainstormed and improvised together what to do during the filming process. It has always been a big priority of ours to convey the personality of the artists through the films, and a particularly incredible moment in this film was visiting the Columbus Museum in Georgia with Amy. The museum is Amy’s hometown museum and has one of her works in their collections. We had the opportunity to capture her walking through the galleries, passing by artworks she’s inspired by, and looking at an earlier work of hers that she hadn’t seen in a while. It was just a nice, casual, authentic moment with Amy.
Art21’s founder, Susan Sollins, often asked artists about the role of beauty in their work. Inspired by her, I sometimes also include this question when I interview artists because the answers are always so revealing and unique. I love how Amy is unabashedly embracing beauty. Similar to her, I believe beauty is the hook that can grab someone’s attention and hold them for a moment, allowing us to complicate the narrative and reveal further ideas over time.
Ian Forster
Director, “Amy Sherald: Singular Moments”
