We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greg David a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Greg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Risk. This is a timely question—I’m currently taking one of the biggest risks of my life. I’m betting on myself and feeling more like me than ever.
This year I was awarded my first Artist Residency through The Nicholson Project in Washington, D.C.! I feel it thrusted me more into being myself, deeper sight into my art career and direction, and was a catalyst into beginning a new version of my life and a creative future that felt inspiring.
I was awarded 10 weeks in a dedicated apartment and studio space, a stipend, studio visits, and an artist talk to conclude the residency. This felt like a dream come true. I even had been considering a DIY residency by booking an Airbnb to commit time and space to my practice, knowing it was crucial for my creative future. I felt such dependency because, before this, all of my time went into working full-time at a luxury technology retail store.
For seven-plus years, my sporadic full-time schedule left me time only for commuting, working, and recuperating. Artists need time to dream. Without it my creative mind felt out of reach, and so did creative expansion. Despite this, I had my work commissioned by Dance Place in Washington, D.C., and Tariq O’Meally’s BlackLight Summit, and shown at The Kennedy Center. These opportunities allowed for bursts of creativity but didn’t leave much time for deeper development.
I knew I needed a change, which would involve taking a big risk. “Ready” is more of a decision than a feeling. I decided this was my moment. The real risk came when I had to choose between my job and the residency, between financial security and my creative future. Despite trying to find a way to hold my position, there were no options. However, I was lucky enough to receive some fabulous counsel from someone I love very much, and that support and confidence helped make my decision come very easy to me despite the risk.
Through the residency and my processes, I was able to validate myself as an artist because I was living what I always wanted my creative practice to look like. I was finally able to dream, to be lost, and to find myself again. I experimented with my materials and reconnected with my older selves. I was able to take home with me my newfound and developed artist practice of textile production and character development, even creating a new studio section in my apartment.
During my concluding artist talk, I presented two denim tapestries (which for an aspiring maker was a wow moment), shared my artistic vision with people who came to hear it, and received such thoughtful and poignant questions about my work, process, and future. The million-dollar questions I had with myself I was finally able to answer.
I now see further, evolving with each opportunity. I’m continuing to invest in my art, traveling, and exploring new possibilities. One opportunity leads to another and another, unfolding my career in front of me. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m building a life of alignment, purpose, and fulfillment.
If I hadn’t taken this opportunity, I’m certain I would be somewhere selling cell phones right now. Instead, I feel free.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hiiii I’m Miss Greg David, a Black, queer, and non-binary femme performance and textile artist based in the DC area!
My current work finds itself at the intersection of improvisational movement, character performance, spatial installation & design, and textile & tapestry work. My process began to manifest itself in a blue bubble blow-up suit, blue-skinned hands, face, and feet, and a black blunt bowl-cut bob wig while surrounded by walls and webs of blue denim fabric and blue environments. In their conception, Ebonibleu was designed to be a physical manifestation of inner conflict, fear/anxiety, euphoria, and delusion-based joy.
As I move forward I’m developing additional characters and costumes that intentionally remove all identifiers to research access into the euphoria of anonymity and metamorphosis. This also helps to access and call in different versions of self. I think a lot about caring for trauma, perception while on stage (hence removing identifiers), and world-making.
In all my life stages, every phase of art making that I’ve enjoyed creating has been directly rooted in and sourced from human emotions, inner dialogues/conflict, and human experiences. My creations seek to make physical, tangible, and visual representations through dance and movement to personify the phenomena that happen inside all of our minds.
I entered the art space as a musician playing Tuba for several years which gave me my love for epic sounds and visually visceral concepts. I later began training in Hip-Hop and Funk dance styles for about 9 years, with a natural movement language that was fusioned with modern dance styles.
These days my processes result in live stage performances, dance films, tapestries, and other denim makings.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I found a lot of freedom unlearning that I should know the direction I’m going and have the skills or techniques before getting to work on a project.
I spent a lot of time as a young person being an over-thinker and I’m still a big thinker today, and because of that I had a lot of great ideas but with no motion to actualize them. I think a lot of that nervousness came from not wanting to mess up, wanting to get it right the first time, on top of not feeling like I knew what I was doing. Recovering perfectionist, here! I felt a lot of guilt for not showing up for myself at a time when I deeply wanted to.
The learning is in the doing. The confidence is found in the doing. The direction is found in the doing. The “mistakes” are all just discoveries and they provide windows to see more. This lesson has helped me show up for myself and my practice even in the smallest ways which has still led to joy, fulfillment, and “progress.”
Consistency is key, showing up to your practice is everything, even if it’s five minutes a day. Discipline is actually joy and it is also freedom.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The process. It will always be the process. I’ve found that the art is not the artifact, but the process is, the mind map is, the boggling thought process and more are all the artifact. It’s where the beauty, meaning, and connection all lay. The process is what fulfills me as an artist and creative.
My processes allow me to understand myself better and make more sense of who I am. I’m better able to contextualize my needs and provide myself with a bit of nurturing. My process is the “why” behind my work.
I’m obsessed with the process of other artists- I’m always up close to the paintings and drawings to see the individual brushstrokes, always seeking more meaning and influence of live performances. It’s the truest part for me. I also just feel like, there’s more weight and value in the months or years-long process than the hour-long culminating performance or the piece viewers see for maybe 30 seconds before they move forward to the next artwork. The work is about process, the work is not usually about the work. The process is the artifact, not the art itself.
A book I read years ago, “You Are A Dream” by Guillaume Wolf, that emphasized “process is everything.” I’ve carried that thought through my creative journey and have understood it more as I’ve gone deeper into my creative practice.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://missgregdavid.com
- Instagram: @missgregdavid
Image Credits
Blue tarp photo by Michael Kamel