By Sandra Abbott
On Thursday, April 8, 2021 I had the pleasure of interviewing Teri Hendeson, staff writer for BmoreArt and Connect + Collect Gallery Coordinat
or. In addition to her writing and gallery practice, Henderson, along with her art partner Malcolm Lomax is also half of the Baltimore curatorial collective, WDLY.
Due to COVID19 this interview was collected via Google Meet, during which I was treated to a view of her cat on a bed in the background of Henderson’s hotel room. As it turns out, she was recently displaced, cat and all, along with all the residents in her building due to a flood! But she generously made time for me in the midst of a chaotic week. Affable and relaxed, she answered my questions with candor, ease, and cheer despite her temporary domestic challenges. The dark furry lump that was the cat never moved from its post on one of the two full-size beds in the austere hotel room.
SA: So Teri, what’s your background? How did you end up in Baltimore, and what’s your story?
TH: I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and I got into Texas Christian University. I studied Psychology and Religion, and I always loved art. But I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer.
I actually moved to Baltimore first because I got into the University of Baltimore School of Law. They gave me a great scholarship. So I went there for two years. After my first year, I spent the summer interning at an art gallery in an organization in Seattle. And that’s how I started. That was my first experience being in a gallery space.
But as an undergrad, I wrote about art a lot. I designed an independent study about Black art and religion, which was really fun for me. I’ve just always loved art, and I’ve always written stuff about art. So I got to Baltimore and hated law school—hated it so much! It was not for me. But when I was there, I was volunteering with Maryland Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.
I was always going to galleries, and I like going to shows. That’s how I met a lot of my artist friends. So I left law school. I was freelancing, writing for BmoreArt, and curating small things. And then I started as part-time gallery coordinator for Connect + Collect. When COVID happened, the gallery closed. So I just started writing full-time.
Tell me more about your projects before COVID, like WDLY. How do you pronounce that, “widely”?
Yeah. I started WDLY in February, 2019, with Malcolm Lomax, who is my art partner. He’s also an artist based in Baltimore. WDLY is a collaborative nomadic platform that’s focused on creating art-centered events that
center and highlight the voices of non-traditional creatives. Those are the type of people I try to highlight in my writing practice… people who are like Black, Brown, Queer, and are not neurotypical…who aren’t just young art students, fresh out of MICA who are white. … Other people are still making work in Baltimore!
I’m familiar with Malcolm’s work in his sculpture and installations with Wickerham & Lomax, but I didn’t realize he partnered with you on WDLY, and that’s more like a performative, event-based, practice. Right?
Curation. But the curation is really… not party planning, but events that are focused on art and artists. For example, we did the [Baltimore Museum of Art’s] Art After Hours Takeover. That was a WDLY/Wickerham & Lomax event. Our last in-person event, it was last February of 2020, we did Black Prom. It was like a prom, where everybody was welcome. But it was centered around different black cinema romance movies. It was around Valentine’s day. We asked people to come in their vintage prom clothes. And we had a photographer. So we did that. We’ve done artists talks with Black artists, queer artists, stuff like that. It’s not really explicitly about stuff that’s like gay or LGBT, but one of the things about WDLY is this. As a person who’s Black and queer and who works in a gallery space, I want to create opportunities for people who are like me, because a lot of people have told me they don’t feel comfortable going into a gallery. They don’t feel comfortable emailing people or pitching [a project] because you know, the art people are….” I get that all the time. So when we do events, I want people who’ve never been to the BMA to be in there. And that happened, there were people in that space that night that had never set foot in that museum. So like that kind of thing where what I do is show at Current Space or a role, [I hope] people will be like, “I’m from Baltimore, and I’ve never been here!” Those are the things that I live for. So those kinds of things–activating spaces for everybody to come in. That’s what my goal is.
So cool.
Thank you!
Tell me more about when you did that takeover at the BMA. Did you partner with their educational outreach or community relations department?
Yeah, kind of. So it was the Education Department involved directly in community events. We worked with [the staff], but they basically just allowed us to take over their after hours event. I think that wasn’t their last one. It was the next to last one. They gave us a budget. We planned the party, and it was really cool. And then we let people perform. We had multiple people perform, which I don’t think they’ve done before. And we paid them, paid everybody who participated, which was what we wanted to do.
Okay, so let’s talk about financial justice. We all know artists are constantly asked to volunteer, to donate their work for auctions, or to do work for free. Over the last few years we’ve seen movements with artists and cultural workers organizing–mostly these have centered around New York. For example, the organization W.A.G.E. [Working Artists and the Greater Economy] was formed for setting pay standards for cultural workers and artists. It seems like there’s some momentum behind it along with other social movements right now.
It’s even crept into the Whitney Biennial, for example. Things like that are happening. As we know, a lot of artists do not get paid for their labor. What about writers, writing about art, as opposed to say, writers, writing about STEM areas or technology? Or how do you feel about curators? I mean, when was the last time you got paid as a curator?
These are important questions. I’ll start with the curating thing. One of the projects I did last year–I was approached to do the project. I said “yes.” My friends had worked with this organization before, and I know what they were offered to do it. The organization offered me a number that was way less than what they offered my friends.
Oh wow.
Had I not known that, I would have accepted it, not knowing any better. And it just made me think about the other times I’ve done stuff for free, or worked for organizations. And they paid me way too little, and I didn’t realize it until after. So I was like, “Hi, I need to negotiate this. I need this amount, and I need this amount for the artists as well.”
And they’re like, “Okay!” And that made me really mad because it was like, they knew they were low-balling me. And if I had said, “yes,” they would have let me work for a lot less than what my work is worth. This problem is affecting me and other people here. There are people I know [who] are just getting started that might not advocate for themselves. Cause some people were like, “Oh no, just take it, like, if it’s good exposure.” And I was willing to be like, “no, like I have a full-time job, I’ll just write.” Whatever amount they’re offering me is not worth me being this upset about. So that was that instance.
So I’m getting better at being like, “This is my price for curating. If you can’t do that. That’s okay. I can’t take the project.” And I’ve learned to not like I haven’t been really applying to projects, [in which] the amount is too low for the amount of work that I’m going to be doing. Because it takes a lot of work. So that’s the infuriating part. So I’m learning about negotiating rates and all that stuff, and then just saying “no,” when you know that you’re being undersold.
I did an artist residency online for emerging critics, and one of the sessions was about equity, wages, freelance pay–all that stuff. One of the women that was there was discussing how she also writes for science magazines–about like how much she got paid. I think it was a lot more for those kinds of publications than what she was getting for her art writing. She made a really great overall salary, but it was because she was doing 10 things a month. Like 10! And I don’t want to be doing that. I would love to get to a point where I have like one paycheck, right? Based on my bills, I have many different hustles right now. And that’s okay. I’m able to handle it right now, but I mean, like not now in my like [current residential] displacement, but that’s another story. I think… I just don’t know what the movement needs to be. Are you in Baltimore?
I am, yeah. I’m based in Baltimore.
I need to know what the movement needs to be. So that Baltimore artists, writers, and curators are paid more. I don’t know how to do that. I think that I don’t know anyone who is making as much as they should be making right in this field. And whether that is an educator, who is an artist, who works at Mica, at UMBC, or whether it’s a writer, an editor–nobody is making what they should be making for the amount of work that they do. We’re all at different points in our careers. I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t know if other cities support their artists more. I know that the creative economy in Baltimore is what makes me want to stay here and what makes me not want to move back. I don’t know if there’s this dynamic energy and like the amount of people I know making work and just grinding and doing writing, curating because they love doing it.
I don’t know if that’s anywhere else. I kind of felt it a little bit in Seattle, but Baltimore is this really special place, and how do we provide? Because somebody has some money somewhere for everybody? It’s like, how do we get that? Or how do you just let people know where to apply? Especially with the pandemic. So many of my friends are artists, but they work. So they’re bartenders, servers. They lost work. Yes. Some were making unemployment, but some weren’t, I know some people that did not get unemployment. So how do you sustain yourself? If you know that you literally work all day, everyday, like I’m working on the weekend. Like when I was in law school, I was going to law school working and then creating, writing, and doing my creative things at night.
So I don’t know, How do we fix it? So no. I don’t think that their wages are equitable and I want and really desire and want them to be. And I think it’s possible. I just don’t know what that mechanism or force is going to be to make the city be like, “Oh, wow. Look at this creative class and creative economy that we have here! How do we support them better?” I don’t know. I think better housing would be a start, like better [housing], like maybe artist housing that isn’t a joke, that was actually very fair and safe. Like, you didn’t have to worry about losing your home in a couple of years because of gentrification or like more vouchers or more giving Black and Brown and marginalized creatives the ability to get a space or funding from the city to start a gallery or like a project space. There needs to be more Black-owned, Brown-owned, contemporary art spaces in this city. I think I can think of two, and that’s not enough when the city is 66% Black.
What is your curatorial philosophy?
That’s a good question. Centering Black contemporary art is where I start from. Just highlighting the voices of less-explored subjects and themes that are focused [on] or related to Blackness for my curatorial practice. For my writing practice it’s more all-encompassing. It’s highlighting the voices of marginalized creators in general, whether that be just people who aren’t—I hate saying “regular”—but like people who aren’t typical. When you think of what an artist is, it’s somebody that’s like young and white, who has a lot of resources. I’m trying to change that and shift that–—or at least increase the exposure of that—so people will know that’s what artists look like.
That’s of interest to me too—your writing. How might your approach to writing change based on subject matter or context?
That’s a great question. So I was recently commissioned to write a chapter for a book about Baltimore. And the publication had really specific requirements, like “no first person” and “write as if you’re not from Baltimore.” So I had to really shift my writing for that, because I’m used to writing in a very familiar way about my experiences in the city. And just like a lot more formal. So for that assignment–it reminded me of when I was an undergrad, when I was writing about things. But like, just for BmoreArt, there are certain subjects that I like–like if I’m doing a book review, I tend to do a lot more research, like [reading] articles online. If I’m reading about somebody that I like, I’m just really a fan of their practice. But we’ve never really met or interacted. I spend a lot of time researching, looking for a thread in their work.
So where would you like to be in five years?
So in five years I would like to have published my book and still be able to write in BmoreArt. I used to think I wanted my own gallery. Not anymore. I know it would be too much trouble. So I think I just want to keep writing. And then just more exploring the voices of other marginalized, creative people, and just getting better at writing. Just writing, writing, writing. I hope that people will know that if they reach out to me about hearing their story, that I will listen. I might not necessarily be able to publish it, but I might. People knowing that they have a voice or like an ear at BmoreArt is important to me. I want to keep doing that.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity. Full disclosure–while I have never met Teri Henderson, I have voraciously consumed her every word on BmoreArt. As a confessed fan of her work, I have followed her career with interest since she came to Baltimore.