Amy Sherald talks to Dr. Leslie King-Hammond about ambition, bending the rules and how that Michelle Obama portrait got made

Long before Dr. Leslie King-Hammond became a leading scholar and mentor in the art world, she was a young girl watching a glass blower make her a replacement eye.

Born in the South Bronx in 1944, she had developed a tumor that required one eye to be removed. In a new documentary about her career, A Life in Art: Through the Eye of Dr. Leslie King Hammond , she recalls watching an ocularist transform a “lump of glass” into a new eye using thin tubes of colored glass and a blowtorch.

“I was absolutely freaking mesmerized,” Dr. Hammond said. “I never saw anything like that in my life…From that point on, I think I became, basically, a pain in the ass to my mother because I kept asking questions about what the nature of creativity was and who turns out to be an artist.”

That curiosity, at the heart of the now-82-year-old’s work, is the subject of the film, which was co-directed by her son, Rassann Hammond, and Ben Baker-Lee and recently premiered at BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia. Archival and contemporary footage illustrates Dr. Hammond’s journey from a young girl captivated by glassblowing to an influential art historian, curator, lecturer, and advocate. She earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D in art history from Johns Hopkins University and served as dean of graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she had an enormous impact.

Audiences see the self-proclaimed “shadow warrior” at work as she visits the art studios of her former students and current mentees, including Loring Cornish, Ernest Shaw, Jeffrey Kent, and Amy Sherald. Among her other roles, Dr. Hammond has been an advocate for artists of color, including Sherald, her graduate student at MICA, whom she mentored as Sherald painted her historic portrait of Michelle Obama.

What follows is a conversation between Amy Sherald and Dr. Hammond about their long-lasting friendship, and the importance of mentorship in an ever-evolving creative landscape.

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Amy Sherald: I don’t know when we first really connected. You were not in my life, and then you were. But when I met you, you were what I needed. I needed someone older and wiser than me, who also looked like me, who gave me permission to be myself in an environment I felt uncomfortable in.

When I say uncomfortable, I think my first two weeks [at Maryland Institute College of Art], I was saying to myself, “I don’t know if I’m smart enough to be here. Everybody in this graduate program knows so much more than I know.” You helped me get my wits about me, and really became a grounding force.

Dr. Leslie King Hammond: First, let me explain my presence in the art world and academia at that time. I was an anomaly. I mean, how many Black people were in charge? I think of Murry DePillars, who was at Virginia Commonwealth University. Grace Hampton was at Penn State. And that was it for the entire United States.

You came to me because your professor, Arturo Lindsay, a colleague of mine from Spelman, called me up and said, “I have a student that I want you to take into MICA,” because he knew that I had a history of protecting, encouraging, and empowering the vision of Black artists who were looking for their degree. So here you come, and you were just adorable.

Sherald: I was very green. But you understood that talent needed more than instruction; it needed protection. I think I was the only Black student in my cohort.

Hammond: Yes, you were.

Irving Henry Webster Phillips II

Sherald: You understood that being a Black artist was not something your work needed to explain or defend. It was a position that you could work from with freedom and authority. That was really important for me at that time.

When I think about my first days in grad school, I describe it as feeling like I was a little Black girl from the South. I came from a very insular, sheltered background, having lived in Georgia my whole life and then moving to a city I didn’t know. Arturo had explained to me what graduate school was, but I was 20-something, so I was like, “Yeah, grad school, whatever.”

And then I get there, and I’m like, “Oh crap, this is serious business.” I think I would have had a very different experience had you not been a part of my journey there for those two years.

Hammond: The graduate programs that I administered at MICA were really about mentoring. I didn’t want to tell the artists what to do. I wanted them to, hopefully, find their voice, vision, and personal essence. And you were there trying to paddle through it.

Sherald: It’s not like I was making good work, right? It wasn’t good.

Hammond: Look, that’s not the point. The point was that you were there and allowed to figure it out, to fail, to experiment, to try different things, to watch other people fall on their faces and get up. As long as you produced two or three paintings that showed you were finding a way into your future, we signed you off and launched you into the world. All that work led you to the work that you were ultimately going to do.

Justin T. Gellerson/The New York Times/Redux

Sherald: I remember when I got the Michelle Obama commission. Somehow you ended up contacting me, saying, “I have a studio space at the Motor House in Baltimore [where Dr. Hammond served as gallery director and studio manager], and you should take it.” And at that time I needed it. So you ended up helping me find a studio where I was able to work for two years. It was the nicest space I ever had up until that point.

Hammond: Nicest and healthiest. We didn’t have any leaks.

Sherald: No leaks. And I’m a rule follower, right? So I got this commission, and they’re telling me, “You can’t take any pictures of the work. You have to be very careful that it doesn’t get leaked. You can’t tell anybody.”

So I’m just making this portrait in private, and then, of course, I tell you that I got the commission, and you’re like, “You need to have pictures taken. Amy, nobody’s going to care 10 years from now. You need to take some pictures.”

In my little Virgo mind, I’m like, “Can’t take any pictures. Nope, not going to do it. Not going to break a rule.” I feel so grateful for that because when it was all over, they’re like, “Do you have any pictures of you painting the portrait?” And I wouldn’t have had any.

Hammond: As an art historian, one of the things that we have had to deal with is that much of what African American artists have done in this nation has fallen between the cracks. So when you told me that you had the Michelle Obama commission, my first initiative was to make sure that I put up an invisible protective screen.

I told everybody in the building, “She’s got some serious work to do, so leave her be.” And when I saw what you were doing, I went, “Oh my God, she has rewritten the whole history of portraiture in the United States.”

So I really didn’t care that they said you couldn’t have any pictures. I told my son, “Please come in here. I want you to do some B-roll and document it.” And you see that in the film. I knew this was historic and iconic. And by that point, you had matured to such a level of elegance and grace. You were fluid and smooth in talking about the intention behind what you were doing. So, to say that I’m proud of you? Oh, please. The best of the best.

Alyssa Greenberg/WWD/Getty Images

Sherald: My ability to speak publicly is something that I really had to grow into. When I gave my thesis talk at MICA at 30 years old, I could not speak in front of people without crying. But once I saw that my life was becoming what it was and that my trajectory was going to be what it was, I was like, “I have to figure this out because I can’t be 34 years old crying while I’m talking to students at Spelman or wherever.”

It was definitely a learning curve for me. The deeper I got into my practice and the more I understood myself, the greater the language I had to describe what I was trying to make. Also, I was just captivated by your documentary. I loved the earlier footage. I don’t think I knew your whole story.

Hammond: I thought I had fooled myself into thinking I was a shadow warrior who would champion and support other artists, which I have. So the last thing I wanted was that kind of attention.

However, the universe plays tricks on you. Long before I met you, my son Rassaan had been recording my stuff, and he said, “I’ve been following you forever, Mom. I have all of this archival material. What are we going to do with it?” So his buddy Ben said, “Wait a minute, we need to do a story on your mom.” So I had nothing to do with the film except be in it. This was their interpretation of what they saw I was doing in the world of art.

Sherald: I always said that I had the kind of mother that I needed. My mom was the one person in my life that I needed to prove wrong, who didn’t really understand what my dreams and my goals were. And it’s not like I did either. I never thought I would make it as far as I have. In 2014, success for me was making $200,000 a year selling my paintings, and they would sell for $15,000 or $20,000, and I thought that was it.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

But I have art parents. Between you and Arturo, I got the kind of nurturing that I needed. Despite the motivation that it gave me to prove my mother wrong, you still need people in your life who can offer you support when you need it. It’s not easy, and you’re pursuing something that’s not empirical, and sometimes you wanna give up, but there are people around you who won’t let you give up.

Sometimes your friends are gonna be like, “Yeah, girl, you’re 35 and still a waitress. You’re living this dream that’s probably never gonna happen.” But at that time, I was working on things you could look at, and you understood the value in what I was making and made sure that I didn’t forget that in those hard moments.

Hammond: I just believed in you. I believed in what you were doing. That’s what, I think, has been a sustaining thing. It’s this mutual respect that we have for each other in the roles that we play in each other’s lives.

I try to keep a distance. I don’t want to mess with you too much. But you’re not even really mid-career yet. That’s what’s so exciting. I wanted you to be strong. I didn’t want you to lose your vision. So I’m the shadow warrior. But now with this film out here, my cover is blown.

Sherald: You know that saying that when somebody dies, a library is burned? You are a library. You’re so much to so many people, and you hold so much wisdom. You’ve opened so many doors for people and taught us how to keep those doors open for artists who are coming after us. You’re just a gem of a human being.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

在莱斯利·金-哈蒙德博士成为艺术界的杰出学者和导师之前很久，她还是个小女孩，亲眼目睹玻璃工匠为她制作义眼。

她1944年出生于南布朗克斯，因患肿瘤不得不摘除一只眼睛。在一部关于她职业生涯的新纪录片《艺术人生：透过莱斯利·金·哈蒙德博士的眼睛》中，她回忆起亲眼目睹一位义眼师用细长的彩色玻璃管和喷灯将一块“玻璃块”改造成一只新的眼睛。

“我当时完全被迷住了，”哈蒙德博士说。“我这辈子都没见过这样的景象……从那时起，我基本上就成了我妈的眼中钉，因为我总是问她创造力的本质是什么，以及谁会成为艺术家。”

这位现年82岁的老人毕生致力于艺术创作，而她对艺术的好奇心正是这部影片的主题。影片由她的儿子拉桑·哈蒙德和本·贝克-李联合执导，近期在费城黑星电影节首映。影片通过档案影像和当代影像，展现了哈蒙德博士从一个痴迷于玻璃吹制的少女成长为一位颇具影响力的艺术史学家、策展人、讲师和倡导者的历程。她拥有约翰·霍普金斯大学艺术史硕士和博士学位，并曾担任马里兰艺术学院（MICA）研究生院院长，在该学院产生了深远的影响。

观众们将看到这位自诩为“影子战士”的艺术家在拜访她以前的学生和现在的学员的艺术工作室时的工作状态，其中包括洛林·康尼什、欧内斯特·肖、杰弗里·肯特和艾米·谢拉尔德。哈蒙德博士还一直致力于支持有色人种艺术家，其中包括她在马里兰艺术学院的研究生谢拉尔德。在谢拉尔德创作了具有历史意义的米歇尔·奥巴马肖像画的过程中，哈蒙德博士给予了她指导。

接下来是艾米·谢拉尔德和哈蒙德博士关于她们长久友谊的对话，以及在不断发展的创意环境中导师的重要性。

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艾米·谢拉尔德：我不知道我们是什么时候真正建立起联系的。你之前不在我的生活中，后来你出现了。但当我遇见你时，你就是我所需要的。我需要一个比我年长、更有智慧的人，一个长相和我相似的人，一个允许我在一个让我感到不自在的环境中做自己的人。

我说的不适应，是指我在马里兰艺术学院的头两周，我一直在想：“我不知道自己够不够聪明，能不能待在这里。这个研究生项目里的每个人都比我懂得多得多。” 你帮我理清了思路，真正成为了我坚实的后盾。

莱斯利·金·哈蒙德博士：首先，让我解释一下我当时在艺术界和学术界的处境。我当时是个异类。我的意思是，当时有多少黑人担任要职？我想到了弗吉尼亚联邦大学的默里·德皮拉尔斯，还有宾夕法尼亚州立大学的格蕾丝·汉普顿。而整个美国也就只有他们了。

你来找我是因为你的教授，阿图罗·林赛，也是我在斯佩尔曼学院的同事，给我打电话说：“我有个学生想让你带他来马里兰艺术学院（MICA）”，因为他知道我一直以来都在保护、鼓励和支持那些正在攻读学位的黑人艺术家的艺术梦想。所以你就来了，你真是太可爱了。

谢拉尔德：我当时非常稚嫩。但你明白，有天赋需要的不仅仅是指导，还需要保护。我想我是同届学生中唯一的黑人学生。

哈蒙德：是的，你就是。

欧文·亨利·韦伯斯特·菲利普斯二世

谢拉尔德：你明白作为一名黑人艺术家，你的作品无需解释或辩护。这是一种你可以自由且有权威地进行创作的身份。这在当时对我来说非常重要。

回想起读研的头几天，我感觉自己就像个来自南方的黑人小女孩。我来自一个非常封闭、与世隔绝的家庭，一辈子都住在佐治亚州，然后搬到了一个完全陌生的城市。阿图罗跟我解释过研究生院是什么，但我当时才二十出头，所以就想：“嗯，研究生院，随便吧。”

然后我到了那里，心想：“糟了，这可不是闹着玩的。”如果没有你陪伴我走过那两年，我想我的经历会截然不同。

哈蒙德：我在马里兰艺术学院（MICA）负责的研究生项目实际上是以指导为主。我不想告诉艺术家们该怎么做。我希望他们能够找到自己的声音、愿景和个人特质。而你当时就在那里，努力摸索前进。

谢拉尔德：我当时的作品并不好，对吧？确实不好。

哈蒙德：听着，重点不是这个。重点是你身处其中，被允许去摸索、去失败、去尝试、去探索不同的事物，去观察其他人跌倒后又重新站起来。只要你创作出两三幅画作，展现出你正在找到通往未来的道路，我们就认可你，把你推向世界。所有这些努力最终都引领你走向了你注定要从事的职业。

贾斯汀·T·盖勒森/《纽约时报》/Redux

谢拉尔德：我记得我接到米歇尔·奥巴马的委托时，不知怎么的，你联系了我，说：“我在巴尔的摩的汽车屋（哈蒙德博士曾担任那里的画廊总监和工作室经理）有个工作室，你应该去用。” 当时我正需要工作室。所以你最终帮我找到了一个工作室，我在那里工作了两年。那是我当时用过的最好的工作室。

哈蒙德：最好最健康。我们没有漏水。

谢拉尔德：绝对不能泄露。而且我一向守规矩，对吧？所以我接到了这个委托，他们告诉我：“你不能拍任何作品的照片。你必须非常小心，不能让作品泄露出去。你不能告诉任何人。”

所以我当时正在私下里画这幅肖像，然后，当然，我告诉你我接到了委托，你就说：“你需要拍些照片。艾米，10年后没人会在意这些。你需要拍些照片。”

我那处女座的小脑袋瓜里想的是：“不能拍照。不行，绝对不行。不能违反规定。” 我为此感到非常庆幸，因为结束后，他们问我：“你有画肖像时的照片吗？” 我一张也没有。

哈蒙德：作为一名艺术史学家，我们不得不面对的一个问题是，非裔美国艺术家在这个国家所做的很多事情都被忽视了。所以，当你告诉我你受委托为米歇尔·奥巴马创作作品时，我的第一反应就是确保自己能起到保护作用。

我告诉楼里的所有人：“她还有很多重要的工作要做，所以别打扰她。”当我看到你在做什么时，我惊呼：“我的天哪，她改写了美国肖像画的整个历史。”

所以，他们说不能拍照，我根本不在乎。我跟儿子说：“进来吧，我想让你拍些素材，记录一下。” 你在影片里也看到了。我知道这是历史性的、标志性的时刻。那时，你的举止优雅得体，谈吐流畅自然，娓娓道来你做这件事背后的用意。所以，要说我为你感到骄傲？哦，当然了。你是最棒的。

Alyssa Greenberg/WWD/Getty Images

谢拉尔德：我的公开演讲能力是后天慢慢培养起来的。30岁那年我在马里兰艺术学院做毕业论文答辩时，我一开口就忍不住哭。但当我意识到自己的人生轨迹已经定型，即将步入正轨时，我就想：“我必须解决这个问题，因为我不能34岁了还在斯佩尔曼学院或其他什么地方跟学生们演讲时哭。”

这对我来说绝对是一个学习的过程。随着我实践的深入，我对自己的了解也越来越透彻，我用来描述自己创作意图的语言也越来越丰富。另外，你的纪录片深深吸引了我。我很喜欢早期的那些片段。我觉得我之前并不了解你的全部故事。

哈蒙德：我以为自己骗过了头，觉得自己像个幕后英雄，会支持和拥护其他艺术家，而我也确实做到了。所以我最不想要的就是那种关注。

然而，命运总是捉弄人。在我认识你之前很久，我的儿子拉桑就一直在记录我的作品，他说：“妈妈，我一直都在关注你。我收集了这么多资料，我们该怎么处理呢？”于是他的朋友本说：“等等，我们需要拍一部关于你妈妈的纪录片。”所以，除了参演之外，我跟这部纪录片没有任何关系。这是他们对我在艺术领域所做工作的解读。

谢拉尔德：我一直说我拥有我需要的那种母亲。我妈妈是我生命中唯一一个我需要证明自己是错的人，她并不真正理解我的梦想和目标。其实我自己也不理解。我从没想过自己能走到今天这一步。2014年，对我来说，成功就是靠卖画赚20万美元，每幅画能卖1.5万到2万美元，我当时觉得这就是我的全部了。

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

但我父母都是艺术家。多亏了你和阿图罗，我才得到了我需要的滋养。尽管这让我更有动力去证明我母亲是错的，但你仍然需要身边有人在你需要的时候给予支持。这并不容易，你追求的并非经验性的事物，有时你会想要放弃，但你身边的人不会让你放弃。

有时候你的朋友会说：“是啊，姑娘，你都35岁了还在当服务员。你这是在做一场可能永远无法实现的梦。” 但那时候，我做着一些你能看得见的东西，你理解我作品的价值，也确保我在那些艰难的时刻不会忘记这一点。

哈蒙德：我一直都相信你。我相信你所做的一切。我认为，正是这种信念支撑着我们。我们彼此尊重，尊重我们在彼此生活中扮演的角色。

我尽量和你保持距离，不想过多干涉你。但你甚至还没真正进入事业中期呢，这才是最令人兴奋的地方。我希望你坚强，不希望你迷失方向。所以我一直扮演着幕后英雄的角色。但现在这部电影上映了，我的伪装也暴露了。

谢拉尔德：你听过“人死如图书馆，图书馆被焚毁”这句话吗？你就是一座图书馆。你对很多人来说意义非凡，你拥有如此丰富的智慧。你为人们打开了无数扇门，并教会我们如何为后来的艺术家们敞开这些大门。你真是个难得的人才。

为了行文清晰，本次采访内容经过编辑和精简。