We were lucky to catch up with June Edmonds recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi June , thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I think that my mom would have been an artist if she were born later. She loved art but her career choices were limited as an African American woman born in 1929. She enrolled us in art classes and took us to museums when she could. I remember being taken to the Huntington Museum, a place I am sure she loved, with all the art and the beautiful rose and other gardens. We lived closer to LACMA and we visited there many times. I remember it had a smell that I related to the bronze sculptures. When the Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition came to LACMA, it was just me and my mom that visited. It was a very special time that I had with her and an exhibition that I will never forget. I never had been in a museum where the subjects looked like people I knew and loved before.

June , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a painter who paints in abstraction. When I first started painting, I painted the people around me. I loved doing this and was inspired by the LACMA show that I mentioned above. Noone was painting my friends at the time and I loved filling that gap in my mind. I had always been fascinated by the power of color to communicate. I became more and more interested in making the painting solely about color and repetition and striped away the figures eventually. I have been painting in abstraction for about 20 years now.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

When I was 30, I went out for my first public art job. I had never done anything like it but there was a station less than two blocks away that needed an artist to do the art. In my mind I claimed it but again, I really did not know how to proceed. I went to the library and checked out a video called “How to Get a Grant”. I played that thing over and over and would play it when I was sleeping. What I remembered most is that if you are going for a project and you have no reputation, get some people around you that do. Somehow, I got the great mosaicist, Monica Scharff, who did outstanding works around the world to work with me and she taught me so much. I was able to get the commission because of getting her and a couple other experts on my team.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have worked full time as an art instructor most of my adult life while juggling a studio practice. I decided that I wanted to take a month off of work to just work in the studio. My friend Ben Morales advised me to find a project because our administrators wouldn’t just give me time like this. I decided to apply for a residency somewhere cold in February to raise my chances of getting accepted. I got into A.I.R. Paducah and it was amazing. Plus, as Ben predicted, our organization was in support of my going!

Contact Info:

• Website: juneedmonds.com
• Instagram: @juneeecee

Image Credits
images c/o Luis De Jesus Los Angeles