DCist Interview: William Christenberry

William Christenberry, the noted sculptor, photographer and painter, and his wife, Sandy, have lived in Washington since 1968. Christenberry, who has taught art at the Corcoran, is originally from Hale County, Alabama, a place that figures prominently into his work and that is the subject of Working from Memory, a new book about the stories behind his images. Christenberry will be at Politics and Prose tonight at 7 p.m. to read from his stories. DCist got a chance to sit down with him this weekend and talk about his work.

How did you get involved with several different media?

Well in Alabama in the late ‘50s I knew I wanted to study art and I wasn’t sure at that time whether I wanted to do painting or sculpture. I had a painting instructor and a sculpting instructor, and they both encouraged me to do both.

My work is so much mixed media. I sculpt, not with clay or welding but with wood. I don’t paint in a traditional sense; I haven’t painted on canvas in a number of years. Some people say what is Christenberry — a painter, a sculptor, a photographer? I use it all towards one means of expression.

How did you end up in D.C.?

From Alabama I moved to New York City and then to Memphis, where I taught for six years at Memphis State, which is now the University of Memphis. Memphis is a great city, a wonderful city, especially if you love music, blues and jazz. But I didn’t find the visual art that exciting and Sandy and I decided before we had children we’d scout out a little bit. We liked the feel of Washington, and it had a substantial reputation in terms of the Color School, though in my work the main vehicle of expression was not color.

D.C. was a more exciting environment. It was close enough to New York to go up there more often than from Alabama or Memphis, and had the scene with those Color School guys and ladies. One of my favorites was Anne Truitt, a wonderful lady and kind spirit and a wonderful painter, too.

In Working from Memory, do your photographs change when narratives are added to the equation?

I don’t know if they change. I hope the stories are somehow equal with the visual things. For some reason, maybe because I grew up in the South and was privy to a lot of people telling stories or distorting stories, I love a good story.

I hope someday to do another book of stories. I love Mr. Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor and many others who stayed in their homeland, so to speak. I keep mining the source of Alabama, I don’t think in a regionalistic way, but it’s where my heart is, what I care about, and feel strongly about. I feel very pleased that I have those feelings, but then there’s the dark side, too, with the KKK, that I’ve dealt with and continue to deal with in my work.

Who are some of your artistic inspirations?

Willem de Kooning, sculptures from Brancusi, many others. Also the photography of Walker Evans. Evans and James Agee collaborated on a book about Hale County sharecroppers during the Great Depression, called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It made a huge impression on me when I was young.

What’s next for you?

I’m trying to sort out things in my mind as to what will be next. One of the things that happens all the time is drawing, which is so immediate, so cathartic. I can pick up a pencil and just do a drawing or start one. Sculpture is more time consuming, and I haven’t painted on canvas in many years but sometimes on wooden panels that are properly primed.