Strange Family Folklore
Strange Family Folklore
Prolific Strange Artist
My Cousin Percy Martin had been a practicing artist for 72 years and had been interviewed so many times that for the first time ever, this interview started without me asking an initial question.
Prolific Strange Artist
My great grandfather, Jesse Strange, was born a slave and freed in his 20s. His 12 children were born free, and referred to as "The First Freeborn Generation." In this podcast series, I interview Jesse Strange's descendants in order to document our stories. This is Strange Family Folklore.
My Cousin Percy Martin had been a practicing artist for 72 years and had been interviewed so many times that for the first time ever, this interview started without me asking an initial question.
Percy Martin
I came here when I was about four. I say "here." This is so close to Washington. Sometimes, I think it is Washington, but it's not.Well, I went to Philadelphia and then I came to Washington when I was about four or five. I always think of myself as someone from Danville, who's a Washingtonian. They were getting ready to tear old Southwest down. It's not the southwest they have there now. It's only two buildings that I can recognize from when I was a kid growing up there. So, they've totally renovated that area. Washington DC. It's there by the waterfront. Down by the Potomac. I lived on Seventh Street and the Potomac is on six and a half street. If you run that way, you jump into Potomac. I was close to the Potomac, and that would go from Southwest all the way to Silver Spring, I guess. When they started tearing, old Southwest down there, we all had to move. Mommy moved to Georgia Avenue and I was there a while before everybody else came, but they moved somewhere else. But I was with Mom and Willie. But in old Southwest, they were tearing the schools down. The school that I took that picture in front of, I don't ever remember being in the school.
Percy makes reference to an early black and white elementary picture displayed on his computer monitor in his studio.
I remember going there a couple of times, to see them, use it for the fire department to learn how to burn down a building and know what to do. We got to do that. I would walk by if I went to another school to do music lessons or something. I don't remember ever being in there, but I must have been in there because I took a class picture. It wasn't that many people. It's about six people. So, I'm sure they moved the people who in that school over to the school that I do remember.
Teresa Roberson
Which school was that?
Percy Martin
Another elementary school. It was within walking distance. Old Southwest was one of the few integrated neighborhoods. So, I don't know where the white kids went. I know the Boys Club was right up the street from us. Our Boys Club was three or four blocks the other way, which was their old Boys Club. I know they had to take a bus to go to school because I never saw a white school around there. I never saw them doing school time, or on the weekends I saw them.
Teresa Roberson
How young were you when you started doing art?
Percy Martin
Well, I started when I was eight years old. I love this story. We had a big roll of that brown paper thatthe grocery stores have. Someone had given us a big roll and we had rolled it out. We were drawing on it and I was drawing a train, which I used to go from Philadelphia, down to Danville, Washington down to Danville on the train. So, I was very familiar with different trains. I've even been on the steam train that went from Philly down there. At eight, I made a conscious decision to myself, that that's what I wanted to be. There was no opening for... you couldn't sit around, say, "I want to be president." You couldn't even say you wanted to be a policeman, really, when I was a kid, eight years old. This was early 50s, I guess. Things hadn't changed. Integration hadn't happened. None of the things that Clarence Thomas and I enjoyed later in life like affirmative action had come into being. We were pretty much pigeon holed.
Teresa Roberson
Do you know Clarence Thomas?
Percy Martin
No, I do not. But I know what he did.I remember seeing him on television for confirmation hearing and going, "The man's lying, but we don't have a Black supreme court justice. And after that, I never said that about anything again like that, because I knew he was lying. I wasn't in the room. I think like so many people, you wanted him to have this so bad that you were willing to overlook something that we shouldn't have overlooked. And now as time gone on we now know. So, I don't get into that posture that "Well, we deserve it because something happened to us so many years ago." I don't get into that. You either right or you're wrong. But the main thing was that all of my kids around me, all of my teachers did not one of them ever said, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." They didn't think it was stupid. I'm sure they wondered what in the hell I was talking about. But I went through my whole life, that's all I ever wanted to be.
Teresa Roberson
So, you had that brown butcher paper, and was it a pencil or crayon?
Percy Martin
We had crayons and pencils. I just did that and no one laughed at me. I mean, if I'd had said I want to be a basketball star, I'm sure they would have burst out laughing. They gave me a ride on that and I never quite understood it, but I appreciate it. It wasn't that we had art in the house. We didn't. We used to walk from old Southwest up to the museums, which is above Southwest. Matter of fact, it may be in Southeast. It's a top of Southwest probably. And we would go out for picnics and then we would have what museum you went to go see? Of course, it was always a vote. I would want to go to the museum to see art and they'd want to go see the dinosaurs and things. Which makes sense to me, too. I didn't argue that point. Because we never went to an art gallery.
Teresa Roberson
These were your brothers and sisters?
Percy Martin
And cousins and things. When the dust settle, by the time we got to Northwest, it was nine. My mother had four. My aunt, that's another long story, but let's just call...she was my aunt for all intents and purposes, had five. There's always one of their cousins coming down. So, it was a whole lot of kids. They made an agreement. The women made an agreement amongst themselves, I'm sure. I know the men didn't get into this.They would divide the work up and everybody who was there had to contribute something to the household. The only male that really stayed there for a long time was Willie. All other guys couldn't handle that.
Teresa Roberson
And who was Willie?
Percy Martin
He was my mother's husband. All the other men were gone. They couldn't handle. My mother worked. Willie worked. My grandmother worked. Estelle, her daughter, took care of all nine kids in the house. Every paycheck, everyone chipped in what they were supposed to chip in. My mother's name was Betty.
Teresa Roberson
And her mother?
Percy Martin
Now, I only saw her once. She was on a slab in the cabin down from granddaddy’s house because they worked for granddaddy it is a lot of them. It's a lot of Martins. I don't know that backstory at all.
Teresa Roberson
I just always try to figure out how I'm related to people who I'm interviewing.
Percy Martin
OK. All right. Well, Percy was my father. That's how you related it to me.
Teresa Roberson
And who was Percy's father?
Percy Martin
Jessie Strange.
Teresa Roberson
I think I call him "Jessie Strange, The Younger" because he was the second oldest child of Jesse Strange, The Older.
Percy Martin
Well, Jesse Strange The Older has to be the one that...
Teresa Roberson
...is your grandfather.
Percy Martin
Yeah.
Teresa Roberson
And my great grandfather.
I didn’t figure it out prior to or during this interview, but Jesse Strange the Older is both Cousin Percy’s and my great grandfather. His grandfather, Jessie Strange the Younger, and my grandfather, Floyd B. Strange, were brothers.
Percy Martin
Yes. And he lived a long time.
Teresa Roberson
Yes, and he had 12 children. I know this only because relatives, such as yourself, agreed to sit down...
Percy Martin
Well, he really had 13. One died. The first boy died and my father became the first boy out of ...because he had a lot of girls and then he had my father. My father is the first boy, but he's not really the first boy. The first boy died.
Teresa Roberson
Oh, you're talking about Jessie The Younger, though.
Percy Martin
I don't know.
Teresa Roberson
Trust me, we have multiple names.
Percy Martin
I know. I worked on the first calendar.
The first Strange family calendar laid the ground work bydocumenting Jessie Strange the Elder’s flourishing family tree along with his descendants’ birthdays as well as biographies of the 12 First Freeborn Strange generation. The second calendar, which I worked on, expanded on the first calendar with more pictures, birthdays, home remedies, inspirational sayings, family contact information and interviews with the living 12 Second Freeborn Strange generation.
Matter of fact, I have pictures and tapes and all kinds of things of almost everybody. My granddaddy was the one that's down on the farm that's where you go down the road. It used to be an orchard in front of it. That was my grandfather. That's where every summer my mother threw me on a train. At first, I just couldn't understand why would she send me away like this every summer? But after I had kids, I understand. You need a break. Especially the women, especially the women. You need a break from those folks. And the older they get, the worse they get. Then one day, they up and leave. I didn't know the other Jesse. I only knew Granddaddy.
Teresa Roberson
Well, your great grandfather was also Jesse.
Percy Martin
I'm sure he was. That wasn't included in the calendar, so I don't know, the ones before.
Teresa Roberson
You mean the recent calendar?
Percy Martin
The first calendar that was made. I did that.
Teresa Roberson
The book that we did, Reflections of a Strange, Proud Family,that's where we talked about your grandfather, Jesse.
Actually, it was our Great Grandfather Jesse and his descendants, which includes Cousin Percy’s Grandfather Jessie.
Percy Martin
When they did the DNA thing, they found an aunt up in the Gold Coast of Washington. She was like 90-some years old.
Teresa Roberson
The Gold Coast?
Percy Martin
Yeah, Washington is divided into the very, very poor, and then the people who's poorer than them, and then it goes all the way up to The Silver Coast. The Gold Coast.
Teresa Roberson
I never heard it called "The Gold Coast."
Percy Martin
The mayor that's there is from, I'm almost sure, The Silver Coast, which is Silver Springs...Maryland's here, and this is the Gold Coast.
Cousin Percy animatedly gestures in the air at an imaginary map, but I get the gist.
This is the Silver Coast. Andthen there's everybody else.
Teresa Roberson
In terms of economics?
Percy Martin
Yeah, they had jobs. They were college graduates or they married well. When I came from Southwest to Northwest, I went to a school where Charles Drew's son was one of my classmates. If you had a famous parent, very few famous parents' kids go, "My father's famous." No, you don't get that. I was at junior high with him.
Teresa Roberson
Now, Charles Drew was the doctor...
Percy Martin
...the guy who discovered how the... blood, who also died because they wouldn't give him a blood transfusion.
Dr. Charles R. Drew is known as the Father of Modern Blood Banking.
English teacher said, "I want everyone to write a paper on this person, Dr. Charles Drew." All of us sit around there. We knew a Charles Drew then, but it never crossed our mind that it was his son until she said, "Charles, you don't have to write this." We all went home and wrote the thing, still trying to figure out why he didn't have to do it. Like kids always do. After we did it, and we were reading and then realize, oh, that's his father. That's why he didn't have to write it. But we didn't know because they didn't do anything about that. Of course, now in Florida, they won't do it anymore. So, those kids will never know. They'll be as stupid as I was, just standing there with my mouth open. I knew this guy. I used to play on the playground with him, but I didn't know that. Halfway through the year, he left. Everyone goes, "What happened to Charles?" They said, "Oh, Charles has gone to a private school." I go, "What in the hell is a private school?" Had no clue, but I said, "Huh," and we just let it go. Because people come and go. He was gone and it was years. My last job for 29 years was teaching at a private school. I was sitting on a faculty meeting and I just went, oh my god, I understand. I hadn't really gotten what the difference was. I mean, I know what the classes was. I was teaching the class. I saw the class, but in the faculty room, what they went through with every kid and how they made the program, just so that kid could flourish and do the best he could.
Teresa Roberson
Now, where were you teaching for 29 years?
Percy Martin
Sidwell Friends. It's a Quaker school down on Wisconsin Avenue. If the Democrats came in, their kids went there.
Democrats’ kids such as the Clintons, Gores, and Obamas just to name a few.
And if Republicans came in their kids went to St. Albans, or that school that Trump's kid went to. You got to see a lot of famous people.
Teresa Roberson
Over the course of 29 years, which courses did you teach?
Percy Martin
I taught one thing. I can only do one thing. I used to could fly, but I can't anymore. I only do art. That's what I done. I was an art teacher. I used to tell some people, I think of it as brain surgery. Just another way to see things.
Teresa Roberson
But what was your favorite thing to teach? Art is a very general, well, expansive category.
Percy Martin
I know and I did a general, expansive thing. I...only time I ever taught printmaking, which is what I do. I'm a printmaker. I had to teach in elementary school. Neighborhood schools. I didn't do Junior High. Junior High's, those kids are too...I had a grant where I went around to all of the different schools. I taught, and I realized that if I was going to teach anywhere I wanted to teach in high school.
Teresa Roberson
What was it about the junior high kid?
Percy Martin
Well, the elementary school kids, you have to sit in little tiny chairs, and they always tapping on you. Used break my watch all the time. They're the most talented ones because nobody has gotten through to explain to them that yellow and red makes orange. They'll get the orange, but they can make all kinds of colors anddo all kinds of things. As you train, you're taught never to do that. But they can do it and it works. Junior High is because all the little things are rolling around in their head and through their body, and I don't want to hear that. I just want to do the class and go home and do my work. I don't want to even get involved in that. High school, at least you can have a conversation. They can have a conversation andthat was nice. College is probably the best, but the problem with college is that if you don't have X amount of people in your class, you don't have a job, because most people are not professors who have a guaranteed job. I've worked in about three or four colleges and I also taught art, high school art. We had a prison system around here. They got rid of it. If you get arrested in DC, they send you all over this country. They used to have a prison system. So, they say, "It's the high school and you can pick a team of people and take with you to the high school and teach art." I said, "Sounds good to me." I got there. Yeah, they were 18 to 34. I go, "This, this is not a high school. These are adults. Then you find out that prisons is not like in the movies. You know, where had the guards walk around with rifles? There's no guards with rifles. They're outside. You step outside a certain line, they'll shoot you. You go in and they go CLANK. And the doors. You in there with them. So, the first time I went with the team I had went in with I said, "Oh, we forgot the scissors to cut the material." You can't bring scissors and knives in there anyway. I said, "We can't do this exercise because you can't cut the material." About five to six of them went in their shoes and pulled out razors. They cut the material up and we went on. After that, I just didn't question anything. The only thing I questioned was they kept saying, "Well, you have to keep all your art supplies in this hallway closet. It is locked away from the inmates." I went, "Ah-huh," because one of them, he say, "You see that big lot over there? That was our gym. He says, "So and so over there, got mad and burned it to the ground." I'm going, "They're gonna burn this stuff up." I was working for the Corcoran at the time. That's where I went to school. I got a scholarship because of affirmative action because the Corcoran himself was a staunch segregationist. I'd have been the last person to get in there if he was alive, but he was gone with the Civil War. But I got a scholarship there. Then I got a job cleaning the school, because scholarships don't last forever. Then, I got a job working as a guard at the museum.
Teresa Roberson
Which museum?
Percy Martin
The Corcoran, which now belongs to GW. So, I'm their alumni at GW too. Roundabout way because they took over The Corcoran then. I work in this Saturday school with the kids. Then I got a job at The New Thing Art and Architects Center, which was a community school. There was two...a couple of schools like Pride. Marion Berry ran Pride. Topper Carew ran The New Thing. You may know him from his movies he made, but that's another story.
Although Topper Carew made movies such as D.C. Cab and Talkin’ Dirty After Dark, I know him more for his hit TV show, Martin.
He went off to Hollywood. He's an architect. They came here for the Million Man March.Not that. No, no, no, no, the one where it rained. And it was moved. The city they built down on thing. That was way before the Million Man March. I was at Sidwell when that happened. I was working in all these places. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. Besides for doing art. I got a printing press, which most people never get because it's expensive. You could probably can buy a car. I get a printing press and I just started doing my prints.
Teresa Roberson
Well, I want to ask you some questions because the reason why we came originally was to see your art installation at the University of Maryland.
Percy Martin
I'm gonna give you all a book.
Teresa Roberson
Maryland state or ...?
Percy Martin
No, it's the Maryland Global campus. There's about five Marylands because I even taught at Maryland University, Baltimore campus. I used to take the bus from Washington, DC toTrailway to the train station in Baltimore, and get off, catch a taxi cab from there and go out to Maryland and teach my class.
Teresa Roberson
But we got the wrong information. They're not open on Sundays.
Percy Martin
Well, I didn't understand that either.
Percy Martin
I can tell you what I work with and what I work about. I only work with one thing, one subject.
Teresa Roberson
What's that?
Percy Martin
It's a myth. It's a myth of a time-traveler. Me. The reason I was telling the story about the women. It's about a civilization that's that way. Now, we can't travel this. We could travel that way. But we can't travel that way. And my quest is to go back and talk to my mother because like most kids, they never asked their parents a damn thing. And after they're gone and you think I have a million things to ask them. AndI'd like to talk to granddaddy. I’d liked to talk to Percy. See, I didn't grow up with Percy. I saw him from time to time. He had another familysince my mother and my sister. I don't know if you remember Cookie. That's Bridget.She passed away about it a couple of years ago now. That's her son out there. He's helping me.
Teresa Roberson
Your nephew?
Percy Martin
Yeah, my nephew, yeah. But that's her son. I want to go back and talk to them. Then, I want to go back and talk to the group. When I talked to my mother I can find out about her family. I can't think of talking to them because I have nowhere to go with that. I want to talk to granddaddy's people. The ones who want to came on the boat with the Portuguese. The ones who marched down to Danville. The ones who got all that land from being freed.Even to tell them all of the wonderful things that the young people are doing that I personally was thinking, "When these old people who, when I was in..." because I used to go to all the family reunions. And I remember one time it was so many people out there look like a football stadium for all the people. They were taking pictures of. The last time I went, it was getting smaller and smaller. I said, “When these guys die, I can't imagine the young people doing what they're doing now. I go, "Wow." The last time I went down, I went, "Wow." I remember them. They were like that. I remember when I was like that when they were old. They really did. So, there is a continuance, but my myth is about trying to travel back and talk to those people. But in doing that I traveled the only way you can travel is that way.
Teresa Roberson
So, you went into the future...
Percy Martin
...into the future.
Teresa Roberson
...rather than the past?
Percy Martin
You can't go into past yet, but these people do. The first thing they sit me down and said, "Welcome, but what you're asking for, you can't do.”
Teresa Roberson
These were the future... so, the descendants, not the ancestors.
Percy Martin
No, they're not any kin to me at all. They're not kin to you. They a whole different race. They've been coming here for years. They came here when we were in the caves. Next time they came back, we'd started spreading up Africa.
Teresa Roberson
So, your mythology is that when you travel, it's to talk to those beings. That's what your art reflects?
Percy Martin
My art is about them and things that happened to them mostly. Incidentally, coming here and doing things and seeing things. Not changing anything for anything. They don't do that. Matter of fact, they can't even talk to me because I can't understand them. My brain can't handle it because most of the time, they don't talk to each other. They just and they know.
Teresa Roberson
They can communicate, but not in a manner that human beings communicate.
Percy Martin
Finally, I kept going and they kept going. We telling him all of this. I'm trying to piece things together. They remembered and they're traveling up and down Africa that each of the little countries, they would come back there'd be at another country and another group of people. Eventually, they were all speaking different languages from the bottom all the way to the top. But there was one language that they all spoke. That they could understand up and down Africa, which is Swahili. So, they started talking to me in Swahili. There again, I was going, "OK, I don't even know how to break this to them.
Teresa Roberson
Unajua Kiswahili?
Percy Martin
Do they speak Swahili?
Teresa Roberson
I just asked you do you understand Swahili?
Percy Martin
No, that's the part I was getting to.
Teresa Roberson
OK. I learned it when I was a Peace Corps volunteer.
Percy Martin
Oh, you would be a lot of help to me because my eyesight has been failing. I've been trying to get a big enough dictionary, so I could translate the words. I know how to translate, but I don't know how to read it. Anyway, they started talking to me in Swahili. In the last two years, I started signing the titles on my prints in Swahili.
Teresa Roberson
So, your brand of Afrofuturism...
Percy Martin
I wouldn't call it that.
Teresa Roberson
OK. What would you call it?
Percy Martin
Well, I'll tell you this is a sad story. When I went to Senegal, and I was talking to the Minister of Education there... I'm always glad to show my work.He said, "Ah, we can't show this here because we don't do figures.
Teresa Roberson
They're Muslim?
Percy Martin
Yeah, kind of. I understood that. We went over to his office, and it was a Christian holiday and the whole country shut down for that Christian holiday. It's like New York where the whole city shuts down for Jewish holiday. We don't do that here, but they do that there. It's not that they have more Christians than they have Muslims. It's just that that was written into their new constitution when France left. I always think of that as a marvelous place to go visit, but that really hurt my feelings, but I let it go. I would have let him showed his work. He took us to a motel, an old French motel, that had converted to an artists' colony. There was people there doing all kinds of things, but most of it was abstract. I understand that's what you have to do to be there. I mean, I'd be in a world of trouble because I don't do abstractions.
Teresa Roberson
So, it wasn't a religious reason why they didn't want you to do figures?
Percy Martin
Oh, but that is. That's exactly the underlying. I understood the underlying thing. Not that I'm a historian, but I'm keenly interested in history. To me, it makes what happened yesterday, makes today happen. I've talked to a sculptor there who did the lost wax technique, which the Europeans keep saying they invented and we couldn't learn it because we didn't quite understand it. They'd been doing that in Africa for years, but let it go. That's the thing about being in this country, you have to let a lot of things go or else you'll be arguing all day long with people. So, I don't. This guy's father did all of these realistic sculptures in the lost wax thing, but now he doesn't have much work because he can't sell those things. When they came here, years later, we have a festival on the mall, where they bring different countries here and they do things. His family came in. I remember one of the guys and I went over to talk to him. They had some of his stuff there andthey had the modern stuff, too, that they do. But they can still do that. They know how to do that.But I don't know the language. Two things is the way they talk to each other and everything revolves around math. I was lucky to get basic math. They play games that revolvesaround math because they're always trying to solve problems. Some of the things that I've done, I've carried there was one I carried some music there because I had my little Walkman. I don't know if you remember Walkmen. Used to have a little Walkman. So, I brought Billie Holiday, Jared Butler, Charlie Pride and maybe one other person there. When I got there, the batteries ran out, of course. They always do. Mathematically, they looked at it and said, "Oh, this is what it is," and made me one. They do everything that’sin math. They have a rich history, on some level, parallels what has gone on here about wars and things. The reason the women run the country now is because at first they had a king. He decided, on his own, that they could fight one of the neighbors because they're not the only person on that planet. That's the only planet people I ran into. There's other countries or whatever. Entities that's on that planet. Some are under the water. Some on land. At one point, both of the two people pushed the button at the same time. When I got there, one of the first things I saw was some of the caves that they'd gotten blown back to. So, I call them "Bushmen." Being semi-stupid.Had an opportunity to call them anything, I call them "Bushmen." They're not Bushmen. They are just people who someone made a mistake. They were lucky that they had enough of their technology to bring them back. Back to where they used to be. Some of the things that they brought back from Africa, they didn't pick people. They brought back elephants because when they were blown back into the cave, they started hunting them little animals. They killed off all of the elephants, almost. So, they brought some of our little elephants to them. They're giants, too. I must point that out. Their elephants look like this to us. I mean, no, their elephants are giant. Our elephants look like this to them. So, with a few genes they had with elephants they had they mixed the two. So, they have an elephant that can do two things. It can be this small and they were all given to the High Priestess for protection. They can be this small, but if she goes somewhere and someone is disagreeable, out of sorts, these things can grow big as they need to be.
Teresa Roberson
How long have you been working on this?
Percy Martin
I've been working on this since '69-'68. I'd had fragments of it, but around the 70s, I really got it just into doing just that because I was doing myths and things. The one thing I found out about myths is that they're all over the world.
Teresa Roberson
Now, were these daydreams, dreaming,inspiration?
Percy Martin
It goes back to when we were little around about this time, you had to come in the house and have dinner and get ready to go to bed. You could hear the other kids playing around outside. You had to go to bed. So, you can't fall asleep right away. So, I used to do a lot of dreaming. That's what I equate tofrom doing that.
Teresa Roberson
So, it was nighttime dreaming before you actually fell asleep? Then would it continue?
Percy Martin
Once you're asleep, how do you know? The first time I realized how strong dreams were, is the last time I got sick and had to go to the hospital. I had these weird dreams, and I thought they were real. To this day, if I'd hadn't had done this myth, they would have been real. I mean, the rooms, the people, three-dimensional, clothes, all kinds of things. That's what happens when you're deprived of oxygen. You dream. Your brain goes into this. I thought I'd had gone crazy, but I hadn't.
Teresa Roberson
Now is printmaking the best representation that you think for this mythology? Or is that what you gravitate toward regardless of the subject matter?
Percy Martin
When I went to school, I was way behind all those other White kids. Way behind.They used to have their art classes in the suburbs. Way better than what we had. They were limited as to what they can teach. The first class you put in was drawing. Two of us went there. One guy took drawing for three days a week. I took it for five days. It was hard. When you look around the room and everybody else is doing these wonderful drawings and you go, "Wow." But I did something that most people wouldn't do. They would just take it for that one year. I took it for two years because I was that far behind. I just kept doing it. I had a teacher, Mr. Archer. You would do a whole body. We drew from nude models, which you definitely would never get in public school. He'd come around. You can only use charcoal on charcoal paper. He would have a shammy that could wipe it out. He said, "The hand is beautiful. That's perfect, but the rest of this is wrong." All you had was the hand. Then, you had to draw that and then eventually as the time went on he'd go, "The hand and the arm are right." Eventually, you got to the point where you could do something that he didn't wipe out. Butit took a long time because I was so far behind. I just hadn't done that type of drawing. To me, that part of it was very hard, but if that's your dream, that's just part of the dream. The hard part of it. You got to do it. You have to keep doing it. The guy who ran the school store. He could see that I was struggling because he was a painter himself. He said, "Percy, they're opening up a new department down the hall. It's called 'printmaking.' Why don't you go look into that? I went down, and they didn't even have a room. They were borrowing people's room. When they weren't there, they'd use that. All the equipment they had to lug around. You had to take the press apart and put it together. I said, "That's what I want to do." So, I learned everything. Since I had a scholarship, they made me the monitor of the class. Eventually I learned how to make the acid. I learned how to take the press apart, put it back together. I even eventually ordered all the supplies for the department. We would all sit around at lunchtime going, "Well, when we get out, we're going to have our own workshop. We're going to build a workshop. The first person that did it was John Sarica. I don't know if you know who Sarica is, but he was the judge for Watergate. This was his nephew. I liked John. John's a nice guy. The only thing John was not a people person. From all of the art teachers I've ever had, they were all people people. And you got to be a people person to want to teach it. You can do it all day long, and be as mean and nasty as you want to be. But when you're dealing with people, you can't do that. Somehow, he got the money. He had the money. He got the money to buy presses. And he got a workshop across from the Ford's theater. It's a warehouse over there. On this side is a little building where Lincoln died. Of course, it's where he got shot.Right over there is the warehouse. So, he had this warehouse, put in these huge presses. He would get in fights with the artists, who were doing printing, be telling them how to do their art and stuff. So within about a year, I remember him saying, "Percy, you want a press." You could have landed an airplane on some of those presses, they was so big. I said, "No, I'm going to either be in an apartment or a house and the doorways... I've taken presses apart enough to know what not to take and what to do." I know they have one, that comes enough apart like the ones I have here. They can go through these doors and put them back together. They weight a little under a ton. They're not all a ton and one thing. They just different parts. One part is 500 pounds. That can be handled. You get rigging companies to do that. Or you can ask friends to do that. To help you do that. Once. They'll never come back again. We all wanted to have workshops. I was the only one, when the dust settled, that had a workshop. I had a workshop thatI had it in my basement. When we went to buy a house, I noticed they had cut the stairs from the basement to the first floor out and made that an apartment. And most people wouldn't touch that house because of that. I looked at it. All I can say was, "See my workshop there." So,I had a workshop for about 25-30 years. I have another book I'll give you that too. They had a show atAmerican University, which is the University in Washington, of my workshop and all the people who were in it. People come from all over the world would stop in. I remember I had a Jamaican lady who would come up and she would work for about a month and a half, just constantly. The workshop was open 24 hours. So, since it didn't affect my house, I gave everybody a key. You come and go. I just said, "Please don't steal the press." They couldn't anyway, but no one did.They all worked and they all left me something. That was the only stipulation: if you do an addition or you print here, leave me something. And most of the people got in AU's permanent collection because they kept their collection.
Teresa Roberson
For someone who has never seen a printing press before, can you explain to them how you use that equipment to translate into your artistry?
Percy Martin
OK, you can make multiples. That's what I liked about it. You can make multiples. And you can do things. It's a chemistry.I don't understand. I do understand, but it goes back to the 13th century. And where I am now is in a 21st century with it. Andit hasn't been too many different things over the years. I can think of maybe four or five things from the 13th century to now. The sixth thing is what I'm working on now, which is instead of using nitric, or Dutch water acid, which corrodes and eats away anything it touches, it uses water. It's a water process. The other thing that I talked to everybody, who listened to me, is that at some point, the presses will have to get lighter and they are.They can get lighter. I can show you work that was printed on something similar to this.
Teresa Roberson
And looks like a laser printer.
Percy Martin
It is a laser printer. That's an InkJet. That's a laser printer over there. The one over there is an InkJet thatI can do my drawings and things like this. Which way is it? Wait a minute. Come on. Come on. You got to go somewhere. All right, here we go.
Teresa Roberson
OK, but you're using a very nice computer. Before there was computers. What did you draw on?
Percy Martin
I drew on paper. I did it the way they did it in the 13th century. That's what drew me to it. It was a 13th century technique.Let me explain how. I'll get right to how it's done and you'll see it real quick. The knights in the 13th century used to wear armor. And on the armor was engravings. What the engraver would do was show the knight pictures that he had drawn. Knight would OK it. He would engrave it, which is by hand, which is even before etching. He'd putsmut into and do a rubbing and hold it up. He said, "That's what I want." And then, they would put that design on. Then, they'd bang it into the shape of the armor. The knight, it wasn't that many knights. He's got all this equipment.Why not just put the pictures because people will come in with like the pictures. He said, "We can make an addition of those and put them up and he sold those. That's what kept him going from knight to knight because there weren't that many knights.That's where it started. All right now where it ends. Someone figured out that engraving is difficult at best. One of my people who worked in my workshop, the $100 bill if you hold it, if you ever get to see one, he engraved a whole thing. Usually you only get to engrave a little bit of it. No one person...he got to do the whole $100 bill. I remember when Will first came in, talking about what he was doing little prints and things. He said he worked at a bureau over there. I said, "I almost worked at it." They wanted me to. I realized at that time that first you started with ugly stamps at the post office and all the pretty stamps are done by artists. And they buy that from them, but the ugly ones, the bureau engravers do that. Coming out of the 40s and 50s I'm going, "They will never let me catch $1 bill."
Teresa Roberson
Let me back up here. You knew the person who designed the $100?
Percy Martin
No, who engraved the $100. The new one. Never forget. Everyone was calling me up. "Percy, you see the $100 bill?" I said, "I've never seen a $100." I have seen $100, but I've never...
Teresa Roberson
Wait, what year was this?
Percy Martin
It's the last one.
Teresa Roberson
The newest?
Percy Martin
The newest one. That won't change for a while. I know him. I know him. Know him well. He got to do that, but I knew that I wouldn't get to do it. Just wasn't gonna happen.
Teresa Roberson
Why not?
Percy Martin
They barely had a Black person sweeping the floor at the Bureau of Engraving. No, it just wouldn't happen. Just take my word. Then again, a lot of that comes from going through the 40s and the 50s and parts of the 60s. You don't think outside the box like that.I just couldn't imagine them telling me to do that.Plus, I've never liked engraving. It's all right. I like to think of myself as doing intaglio, which could involve some engraving. Which involves anything that's printed below or above the surface. I came at a time where there was a lot of opportunities popping up. Most people didn't do it or didn't want to do it. All of the things that I've done, I've wanted to do. And it all revolves around art. I've had other jobs now because you got to get jobs to pay for that. Everything else, I guess from '70, '69-70. I involved around art, and involved around teaching. I still, on a quiet day, I thank Miss Rock for going down to the Corcoran and getting me a scholarship. I'd never been to that part of Washington. I'd been on Seventh Street, but I never went this way. Because the school was right in the back of the White House. I used to watch Kennedy and all of them come and go.
Teresa Roberson
Who's Miss Rock?
Percy Martin
My art teacher in high school.
Teresa Roberson
She's the one who got you the scholarship after high school?
Percy Martin
After high school. She went down to the Corcoran. I was on the stage crew. My stage crew guy got me a scholarship to Howard at the theater. Building sets, which I never liked. But I worked on the stage crew for the recreation department. And they would always be going, "Want to do some sets for us?" I go, "Nah." I just didn't like that for some reason. And I only did one. I did one for the Wizard of Oz when I was at Sidwell.After that they never heard a peep from me. Whatever they said, I'd just sit there. I did not help him, but I never wanted to do that whole thing again. It's more complicated than most people think. It's not just art. It's the mechanics of it. She got that for me.I went to Howard University because I knew where Howard was, and it was right down the road from me. The guy wasn't there. The art, people were there, asking me to bring my portfolioI said, "Yeah, but I didn't want no scholarship there. I know my parents can't even begin to pay. Matter of fact, they had no clue what I was doing.I didn't get that, so I went home. Connor said, well, maybe I can go back for another day. And I got the end they were all going,“You just missed him. You just missed him.”, I said, "Who?" They said, "Some guy that door didn't open this way. It opened that way." I said, "Wow. What type of car is that?" A very expensive car. He was there to tell me that I'd gotten the scholarship. So, I got up the next morning, caught the bus down Georgia Avenue. Got off on in Seventh Street on,I guess, F it is, and walked straight over. I walked past the White House. Never been over that area at all. Farther I'd ever gone was 13th Street. And I made a left that I went down. Two lions were on the front of the building, went around to the side where it said "school" and went in. There it was. I said, "Wow." I spent six years because I majored in two things advertising because all the Black people would tell me, "What kind of art are you going to do?" I couldn't say, "I want to be an artist," anymore. I was grown.I had to say, "Advertising," because the only Black artist I ever knew was an advertiser.
Teresa Roberson
Did you ever work in advertising?
Percy Martin
Yes, I did. When it came to offer a job at The New Thing, they did posters and things. The two people who did that who were famous: Lloyd McNeil and Lou Strovall. Lou Strovall was going to start his own workshop and Lloyd McNeil was going to New York. They needed an artist. They figure, it's cheaper to have one than two. They came down and they asked in the front office fora graphic artist, that's what they asked for the graphic artist, which is a name that some people call "advertising people." And some people call "printmakers," "graphic artists." We didn't. So, they sent them down to me because I was the only one there at that point. I just finished Saturday school, and I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave. They came down. I showed him my portfolio, which was, I would say 80% prints and 20% of the other thing that I had a degree in. I noticed they kept looking at the advertising stuff. AndI kept throwing the prints on down. I had the job before I realized what they were talking about. The only thing that saved it, because I was about to turn around and walk out. I didn't I like advertising in especially to kind of taught at the Corcoran was for you to be one of the big guys. I did understand it. And I understood how to do it. What they were looking for with that. Every time I put the prints up, they would just move on. They liked the advertising stuff. They did say one thing, because I was about to leave, they said, "But the other thing, you may not want to do this, but we have a school where we teach little kids." I said, "Well, I can do that." I really took the job for that reason.
Teresa Roberson
So, part of your job was teaching kids and advertising? You don't find that being paired together too often these days.
Percy Martin
No, but it was a community school. At leastI didn't have the drum or dance. I could do that. I didn't mind.
Teresa Roberson
How long did you have that job?
I had that job until the grants ran out. AndI had the last key when I walked out and turn the door like that I could've thrown the key away because it was over. Papa used to say if you live by the grant, you die by the grant. We lived longer than any of the other community schools in the city. Even longer than Pride, which was about six years. And they'd been going on for years before I got there. I was the last one to leave. And at one point we owned 1-2-3-4 buildings. We didn't own them. We rented them. When you get grants, you can't own things really. That's part of the grant funding. Once a week, we put on jazz concerts and things like that. The biggest thing we did, we put on a blues festival. That was one of the things that kind of sunk us. Topper decided that he wouldn't hold it at Maryland University, which could hold 1000s of people. And he wouldn't hold it at AU or George Washington. He was going to hold it at Crampton Auditorium at Howard, which was a smaller building.You name a blues singer, at that time, we had him at that festival.
Teresa Roberson
Can you tell us a few?
Percy Martin
Howlin’ Wolf crawled across Crampton Auditorium stays howling before he got up did his number. He's really tall, really tall.BB King was there. You name it. We did two things: We sent jets to bring them in and take them back. We put them in first class hotels. And we paid them like they were rock stars. A lot of them said, "The only thing we ever get is a bottle of booze and a hooker." A limousine meets us at the airport, you know fly us in first class.
Teresa Roberson
Did y'all make any money?
Percy Martin
No. It was fun. No, we did not. The venue was not big enough. And it was still three-fourths full of White people because at that time, White people were really into the blues. They really were, but it was a hoot.They lost the film. They had a Canadian couple film the whole thing. I was so exhausted because we'd just gotthe programs back that day from the printer and if you went like that, it'd be gone. It'd be smeared all over the place. I was exhausted.
Teresa Roberson
Was that film ever released?
Percy Martin
No, they lost the film. These Canadian filmmakers, it was a man and his girlfriend, they made one of the first clay animation that was on television. I remember them because everybody was top notch, except for us. The ink was literally wet on the program. At the end I think it was BB King that had Lucille, the guitar. He was standing in the door. We were at the little room that you get prepared before you go on the stage. I'm sitting there. I'm sorry, I can't even see straight. And he walks in his he's holding Lucille in his hand. He said, "Well, it's all over. It's a great show. Um, where we gonna go eat?" One, hardly anything in Washington was open at that time. There's only one place that had chicken wings or some barbecue chicken wings. I’m going, “That's the last thing you would eat that late in the morning.” Oh, it's so late that we just looked at him and say “We’re not going there. We're lucky if we could get home." We were exhausted. It was the most exhausting thing I've ever done. But it was so much fun. A lot of them stayed around Washington. We got them gigs in really big places around here. Big places where they would normally wouldn't have gotten a gig in. It was fun. We had some fun moments. We had some awful moments, but we had some fun moments.The one thing that I learned as an advertiser is that the art director sits here. Then, it's all of the other advertising people.There's a guy always below the art director who's really the art director. His main job is never say, "He's the art director." And never, if something goes wrong, don't put it on the lower people. It's your job to go get your behind kicked, and it will get kicked by everybody and everything if it goes wrong. If it goes right, you turn and said, "There's the art director."
Teresa Roberson
Were you that guy?
Percy Martin
That was my job. I got to learn the printing and that type of printing too. The other part in school is academic, but real printing is two different things. Clients are two different things. We did a poster forthe Assistant Mayor of Washington. He wanted something showing Washington DC. Of course, being a community school the first thing we wanted to do… beautiful staff could do illustration all kinds of things. I didn't really have to do anything, but go to the printer and get my behind kicked if something went wrong. We did the scene of Washington, but we all were looking. I said, “That doesn't look like Washington. Doesn't have any trash in the street. So, we put the trash in the street. Beautiful. Full color. The guy loved it and then he looked down and saw the trash. And you see tears literally up in his eyes. And I’m going, “Oh, god here comes the worst kicking I'm gonna ever get. I can see it coming. And sure enoughhe had a hissy fit. After me being kicked up and down the room a bit, and knowing that I had to go back to the printer get kick some more to tell him we have to print this again, and we ain't got no money. My illustrator said, "Well, what about if it looks like this." And he showed him one that we did before we put the trash in. And the guy started smiling. The tears went away. He was so happy. That was it. We had two copies of this. One that we got to keep, and one that he kept.That's why I don't like to do advertising.
Teresa Roberson
Right. Thank you so much for indulging me in interviewing.
Percy Martin
Thank you.