Sheldon Scott, Sheldon Scott Studios

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Sheldon Scott. Sheldon, thanks so much for joining us today.

Sheldon Scott: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

SSR: Well, let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born and where did you grow up?

SS: I was born in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, which is a part of the Gullah Geechee region, series of barrier islands, where my ancestors were brought over from Western Africa and enslaved, and worked those plantations for hundreds of years. And spent my life there until about 17, 18 when I went to college.

SSR: So growing up was there ever an interest in design, or art, or hospitality? Any kind of early memories of any of that?

SS: Well, it’s funny. It wasn’t until I started working at Eaton, I guess a little over three years ago, where I realized that hospitality has always been a part of my upbringing. We were maybe 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach in the Grand Strand. That’s a huge tourist destination, and a lot of my family, including myself actually, worked in the hotels. I didn’t think of it as hospitality, I just thought of it as a job for a teenager. I’ve also been working in the restaurants for years as well too, up and down in that region.

In terms of art, not really, not formally. The idea or concept of being an artist, living as an artist, wasn’t one that I was exposed to as a child. And I would say that I was an adult before I ever went to an art museum. I was an adult living in Washington DC, actually for a couple of years before I actually got exposed to art in that context. But a lot of those things certainly take different forms. Our storytelling culture is really big, but we just didn’t really think of it in the context of art, like how I practice it now.

 SSR: And what did your parents do? Did they have any influence on you?

SS: Not in those respects. My father was a very talented singer. His claim to fame is he won several nights at the Showtime at the Apollo, the amateur night back in the sixties when he and my mom lived in New York for a while.

SSR: That’s pretty cool.

SS: Yeah, but my mom was just always kind of pragmatic in her approach. My mom was actually a school bus driver and a custodian at the schools that I went to. But she doesn’t have an outward creative expression, but she’s one of the most talented comedians that I have ever come to know in my life. She’s a brilliant comic.

SSR: I love that, so lots of humor in your house growing up then, and singing I’m sure.

SS: Oh yes.

SSR: Did you grow up in a big family, or were you an only child?

SS: My immediate family was my three brothers and sisters. One of them passed away, but by the time I kind of came to Sapients. It was my older brother and my older sister. I was the youngest, but we had a very large extended family. We grew up in the same village where my ancestors were enslaved, so there were generations and generations of connections, and cousins as siblings that really made for a very big, and welcoming, and loving family environment.

SSR: How did living in the same place where your family, your ancestors were enslaved, how did that affect you growing up, or did it? Is it now something that’s more apparent?

SS: It’s definitely something that was endowed later on in life. Like as I became an adult and started researching and really diving into my storytelling in my fine art practices, that I realized the tremendous significance and the kind of unique parameters of that upbringing. I think that there was something probably unconscious, there was just like subtleties of being connected to the land, and running around barefoot on the same roads where generations and generations before have trod.

There was something there that probably couldn’t be easily measured, and probably was more difficult to articulate. It’s like this incredible hankering, which I feel is probably true of anyone’s home, but there was something that felt even more rooted and stable in that space. And I think that was probably the environmental connection to that history.

SSR: Did you leave that area for college, or did you stay there? You majored in psychology, correct?

SS: Yeah, I went and I studied college, not very far, I think 80 miles north and west of where I grew up. It wasn’t very far. But I left in 1994 after I graduated high school, and went to college in Florence, South Carolina at Francis Marion University, and did my four and a half years there, I was on that extended program. And then came back to the region and lived and worked in Myrtle Beach for a year and a half, and then moved to Washington DC in 2000.

SSR: What was it like? I grew up going down to Myrtle Beach, we used to drive the family tractor from New Jersey down there for holidays, or summer vacations. So what was it like working in Myrtle Beach, because it is such an area driven by, especially back then, tourism and the summer months, so were there any kind of lessons learned, or takeaways, or was it just like you said, a job in high school and after college?

SS: Yeah, it certainly was terrible in a lot of ways, but it was a lot of fun being a teenager and working at Myrtle Beach, and going up and down the boulevard. It’s just like you were aimless, you were directionless, you were free of any obligations and pressures to do anything other than hang out. And it was relatively safe, too. I mean that’s something I definitely have to recognize, that there was an element of safety there to a certain degree. Being in the South and just growing up and having cousins who are older than you are all congregating in the same space, so it was certainly fun. I enjoyed it.

I went back there after college to open up the Boys & Girls Club [of America] there, so my perspective is a little bit different the second time around, trying to be a professional in the context of that job, that space. And yeah, it was about a year before I realized that my aspirations might be a little more than what Myrtle Beach could provide, and decided that I had to seek broader, brighter opportunities outside of that, the South.

SSR: Tell us about opening up the Boys and Girls Club. How did that come about?

SS: It was my first job out of college. I think I graduated in that December and I didn’t have a lot of direction. My degree was in psychology and I had a business minor. I wasn’t really bent on anything other than going to grad school. I wanted to be an industrial and organizational psychologist, purely based on the fact that they were the most highly paid psychologists and psychotherapists and people who worked in that industry. And I was just young and was like, “Oh, I’m going to make $1 million, I’m going to be rich.” I had no real meaningful desire around my career at all at that point.

Yeah, the Boys & Girls Club was actually just opening that January, so I slid into that job very easily. And it was amazing because those types of services really did not exist in the South to that extent. We didn’t have the Y’s and Boys & Girls Clubs or other kind of programs that really supported kids. It’s like you came home by yourself. We weren’t latchkey kids because back then no one locked the doors anyway, so you didn’t need a key. And you kind of self-supervised, or you were supervised by the village you lived in until your parents came home from work, and you just knew what was expected of you. It was a very adult thing to impose on children, so there wasn’t a lot of need for that. And it was really good to be a part of that conversation and to help my communities that were largely underserved to find ways to engage their kids and expose them to opportunities, and ideas, and concepts that they weren’t getting in school, and certainly that I wasn’t getting when I was a child. So that was real exciting to be a part of something new, and I think it kind of set a tone for the rest of my career, because every job that I worked since then has always been stepping into something new, and helping it to grow. So yeah, it was a real good benefit and experience to come out of that first job.

SSR: And what made you move to DC?

SS: In addition to working at the Boys & Girls Club, I was actually starting my first kind of therapeutic practices. I was an applied behavioral analysis therapist, and ABA therapist, working with children on the autism spectrum. So I did a lot of that in the day time, helping these kids who are on the spectrum focus mainly mainstreaming them into the mainstream classroom environment. And I was thinking that I was going to grow with the Boys & Girls Club, and I was real excited to be moving to Atlanta.

And I went down to Atlanta, got an interview at a Boys & Girls Club. It felt very promising, was going to go back for a second interview, but I had decided before I moved from Myrtle Beach that I was going to go visit some friends of mine who I’d worked with, and colleagues that I had went to school with, who had moved to Washington, DC. So I’m going to visit you before I move all the way to Atlanta.

And I tell you, my first time in Washington, DC was just transformative. It’s like I never felt so home in a place that was not my home than DC. And I think that first weekend I came here was like President’s Day weekend, and by June 15th I had a new job and a new apartment in DC. I dropped all things Atlanta and hauled everything up to the District of Columbia. It felt like such a gateway, and it was very affirming to see people who looked like me in places of positions of power, and who were actually doing these things that I felt were very aspirational. And by this time I was really coming to terms with my sexual identity and my sexuality. And I just saw Washington, DC being such a warm and receptive place for that part of my being.

SSR: That’s awesome. And what was your first job there? What did you do?

SS: So I came here as a psychotherapist. So some of the work that I had been doing with autism spectrum children and some of the work, social work, that I had been doing at the Boys & Girls Club came together perfectly to work in this dual diagnosis program, working with kids who had diagnoses from two axes. And started working home based therapy work with mental health and substance abuse, and then picked up working with sex offenders as well too.

SSR: What was it that you liked about this role, and how long did you stay in it?

SS: There was something incredibly powerful, and I think cathartic, with working in a psychotherapeutic environment, watching people and aiding people to come to terms with these traumas that had been a part of their lives, and maybe in their parents’ lives, and their siblings’ lives. I mean it was real restorative to see that process happen, and it was incredibly rewarding to see yourself a part of that process, to help people to help themselves. That’s always a part about my therapeutic process is if I can just create an opportunity for people to access their own well-being through mental health, then that is my job. It’s not to make people better, it’s not to fix broken people, then that’s when I really learned the practice of empathy.

It’s also a place where I think one of the few moments in life in general, and I think sometimes it’s very racist structure that can be the United States, is one of the few times my identity as a black man actually worked in my favor, because unfortunately in the space in mental health, the vast majority of those who are in need in certain systems are black men, are people who look like me. And it really made for me and my practice to expand and work because really at the beginning of understanding of how identity has a direct correlation to the facilitation of therapeutic practices.

I think that up and to that point no one cared, nobody thought about it, and it was at that point that we saw when people saw themselves reflected in their own therapeutic practice, it gave them I think a greater motivation to continue to work. It gave them more faith in the work because they felt like there was a familiarity to it, and that there was an understanding that this person sitting across from me who is claiming to want to help me might actually understand where I am just from a very basic human perspective.

SSR: No, that’s so true. I mean a lot of it is feeling comfortable and being able to see yourself in someone else, so that’s so powerful. So did you continue that for a while? Is it something, trying to get to where you switched over, because you also started doing performance art as well, correct?

SS: Yeah, and the two are really not that separated. I did that for four years. It became a motivation in timing, and formed the next evolution in my professional and personal life, because I really enjoyed doing that work. And even though I saw the tremendous value in the one to one equation, like where you spend time working with the individual to help them get to that point, I started to feel a greater tug towards a broader practice of healing, and thought of the practice of collective healing, and just was figuring out a thinking about ways that I could contribute to that.

And that’s where my storytelling practice, which evolved to my performance practice, and evolved to my fine art practice, this concept that by pulling that continued idea and that through line, that met the narrative of the process of healing, and the practice of healing, and going from an individualized modality to a collective modality, because I realized that was working with the populations that I was working with at the practice, that we all are in desperate need of healing. We all are in desperate need of fearless self-evaluation. We all are in need of the structure to be able to empathize and understand the human condition as it relates to all of us, and also what it means to bring about a personal infrastructure of accountability. And that’s the foundation in which all of my creative practices are built on.

SSR: And why did you, what drew you to performance art versus other mediums?

SS: My first entry into a creative expression, in the context of how we think about creative artists operate, and I’m not talking about the years and years of storytelling and practices that were cultural, but when I stepped on the stage for the first time I think in 2005 as a storyteller and directly engaging the audience, it was very natural. And as I was thinking about what the evolution was, these experiences, they live within a certain construct of there’s an agreement. You buy a ticket, you come into a theater, you get your seat, and there’s an expectation, there’s a contract between whoever the subject is on stage and the audience, and I wanted to break away from that. I didn’t want to be committed to having to entertain people. I wanted to push myself and my practice and my audience into deeper planes and explorations of human consciousness in itself, and performance art was something that I found that really worked for me.

The poetry, the abstraction, the choreography, the use of spoken word, or non-use of spoken word, it was kind of one of those things where there are no rules. There’s no wrong, but there certainly is a right. And it was, I can’t say that it was methodical or it was planned, in fact sometimes you just have to let go of the wheel and see which way it drifts, and that’s what happened. My drift took me smack dab into this space of performance space work.

SSR: Very cool. And where did you perform? And if you had to explain it to someone who’s never seen it, how would you describe your art, your practice, and what you put on?

SS: I’ve had to do that quite often because people don’t understand. To distinguish, there’s the normative, or the expectations around performance art, is it’s done within the context of fine art, and art institutions as opposed to traditional theater. But how I try to explain it to people is it’s an art practice where the primary material of my work is my own body and my own consciousness. And I use those two materials, along with the material of time, to communicate or create an environment that audiences can step into and share some of that experience through their own context and point of view.

You don’t need to see or feel my experience in it, what you do have to do is surrender to your own feeling, and your own experience in this so it becomes less of a spectacle and more of a participatory work. Because I feel like that’s, at least from my practice of performance, is my biggest measure of success is the ability of the audience to access that, and come into their own work at the same time. I want to see the audience working as hard as I am, not harder than I am, and not any less hard than I’m working, but just as hard because there’s a communion in that that I think is incredibly powerful and helps to take this ephemeral practice and give it longevity, and give it endurance because that experience will stay with you in perpetuity. You always remember how you felt in that moment, and how that piece, or that work, made you feel and react. So it’s tapping into a different type of memory, which isn’t always conscious or always something that you can articulate.

But to answer your question as to where I was performing, my first performance art piece was done at the Emerge Art Fair, which is an art fair that was put on in DC. I think it started in 2011 or 2012, and it was exclusively focused on emerging artists. It wasn’t like a lot of art fairs that use the gallery model. It was really an art fair that were just like these are people who are making new conversations in the fine art world, and you should pay attention to them, and that was the first performance art piece I did.

And I’ll tell you, it what was really interesting because I’m not only was I learning, but my audience had to learn, it was so disruptive to the people who had become accustomed to me doing traditional storytelling, like first person, spoken word with a clear narrative arc that’s accessible. To go to a very abstract space where you kind of get slammed, and you are left with the feeling, there’s no closure, there’s just like you just came in and you dumped a whole bunch of shit on us and then left us to deal with it, which I was totally okay with and it’s still a part of my practice, but people were disrupted by that.

SSR: That’s interesting. Where did you find inspiration for all this, or who are your greatest inspirations? And I know you said you pulled from a lot of the work you’re doing, and your background. Was there anything else that continued to fuel you?

SS: There’s always been this need for me to engage in this restorative history practice. This idea that I always thought that there was a lot of untruths, lies, deceptions, all these things that weren’t a part of the history as we were taught it. And I feel like a part of that is also a part of my own particular connection with history because I realized at a very young age that I had a way of knowing things without knowing how I knew them, but I was very certain that I knew that this was the truth of the situation.

And sometimes you’ll think they’re very individual, they were very much connected to some personalities in my life, and then sometimes they were much broader. So I feel like that was kind of the biggest aspiration, to seek restorative historical truth, be that in an individual one on one psychotherapeutic practice, where I’m helping people to go back in these moments and collect the truth as they understand it. They then begin to deal with it.

And then with me growing up, being a little sissy boy, growing up in the rural South, I had to do that, and that became a restorative practice for me. It was I think how I took my childish wounds and transformed them into adult strength. And using that kind of led those histories, those particular impacts in turning that scarring, and that scarring tissue into a muscle that I can then use for fueling a future narrative, and not just being burdened by this thing that I would just not be able to heal.

And again, I’m still learning how to articulate this, and how to incorporate this into my practice and share this with others. But whenever whatever amount of that was palatable for me psychological back then was enough to keep me motivated to always be looking for this restorative history.

So it wasn’t like a group of artists, or art practice, or a movement, because I don’t have any formalized education in art, but definitely my understanding of my work and my practice, I see now that parallels with other movements and other artistic practices that have preceded me.

SSR: And so how did you get involved with Eaton? Is it something that came to you, or did you meet Katherine Lo? How did you decide to get involved?

SS: Actually it came to me. It was really interesting. I had just wrapped up this endurance performance piece. It was called Sheldon from DC, and it was definitely the most local focused work that I had ever done in my practice. It was all about what was happening in our city, green washing, displacement, and all these other things where artists and art found itself at the center of this massive social displacement practice and all this real estate development, and something that I believe was holistically contrary to the idea and the practices of art, like art and artists want to create more space. You want to create community, not diminish community.

And then we found ourself kind of stuck out there and it really motivated this piece that lasted for I think three months. And I just wrapped this up, and a friend of mine reached out and asked me if I’d be interested in working for this hotel brand. I was like, “Hell no.” I was like why, when some of the biggest offenders are hotel developers and things like that. But the person who brought it to me was always, she was someone that I trusted quite a bit and would confide in. And she had a criticality to her approach where I was like, ‘Well, if you think this is something I should be interested in, I’ll at least pay attention, I’ll tune in.’ And I did, and it wasn’t a lot about Eaton at the time. This was in June, I think it was mid-June, late-June of 2017. And as I got formally introduced to the partners and the people, eventually Katherine Lo got involved in that process.

This is when I just first witnessed to Kat’s intuition and her genius. During my process, I was supposed to be interviewed by the then general manager and a vice-president, and Kat said, ‘No, I want to interview him first.’ And so she and I, so she was my first exposure to what Eaton was, and we did a Face Time meeting and I tell you, it was love at date. I absolutely fell in love with her, the concept, her dogs barking in the back, and I felt like it was mutual. We had a lot of respect… I didn’t know very much of her going into it, the little bit that I tried to research about the brand. There was nothing, but the conversations that we had, the tone, the language, the aspirations that she put on this brand, I was like there’s no way I would not want to work with something like this.

And I wasn’t looking for a job. At that point, it’s been two and a half years since I was living as an artist full-time after not being at my previous job anymore, and I was financially settled. I at that point had had my first three shows in Smithsonian, and there was just a lot. I had just scored my first residency here in DC, and there was no reason for my whatsoever. And it was tough, it was a tough decision to make, but at the same time I always felt like this job was an extension of my practice as an artist, because there was so much that was going to go into this that required that kind of work. And yeah, started working in I think July 2017, and the rest is history.

SSR: That’s amazing. Wait, your work was also in the Smithsonian? Can you talk about what that meant as an artist, to have your work featured there?

SS: It’s so surreal. At this point, it is so surreal to think that I had the opportunity to share my work. And I mean it was surreal for many different reasons. First of all, performance art in the institution, that relationship has always been tenuous, if at all existent. It’s a really hard thing for the institutions to think about putting their hands around a very ephemeral practice known as performance. How does it fit within the gallery and the institution, not just physically, but intellectually. What is its place in this story?

And the National Portrait Gallery was the first time that it was brought in through a curatorial perspective, I did have the pleasure of working with the Smithsonian Museum of African American Art, but it was brought in through education. But when I had the opportunity to be curated into this new series called Identify, which focused on the National Portrait Gallery’s collection being largely devoid of histories that weren’t just white men; women’s history, indigenous history, African American history through the lens of portraiture. Those populations did not have the, or weren’t afforded the luxury of portraiture. And the museum made a very ingenious commitment to trying to restore that in the best way that they knew how, and performance was the perfect way to bring that in.

So it was just surreal for the fact that my practice, definitely I have to acknowledge the fact that as an artist who did not get formally trained at an art education situation, and an artist whose practice was still relatively young. I think I had done my first, I created my first fine art piece back in 2012, and in 2016 I’m having my first museum experience.

So it was very powerful, and it was exact kind of like jet fuel that I needed to maintain my practice and commit to it. But like I was saying, it wasn’t, Eaton didn’t come at a time… If Eaton came a little bit earlier, like when things were struggling after not working a full-time job anymore, there wouldn’t have been a question. I would have been happy to jump into it. But I felt like the timing was perfect, because when I came to it, my expectations for it, and it were for me, were totally informed by the practice in the work itself. It wasn’t about a paycheck.

SSR: So what was your role at Eaton? What were you brought in to do?

SS: So I was brought in as the director of culture here at Eaton DC. And Eaton DC was, it’s the first of our development, but our Hong Kong property came in right after us. But yeah, I was brought in to help build the community for this space. I enjoy a very loving and affirming relationship with DC, and my job was to kind of be a custodian of sorts to building a place, not just physically, but socially where the artist, and the activist, and all the people who love and believe in DC could find themselves a place here. And I did that though curatorial practice through the arts, through programming and partnership. I tell people when they ask what does a director of culture do, I feel like my primary job was to make sure that Katherine’s vision for Eaton is executed to the fullest on the property.

SSR: And so how did you go about this? How did you begin, and what have maybe been the highlights of what you’ve done?

SS: Yeah, kind of going back to that building that Boys & Girls Club back then. Like I said, I had already enjoyed a relationship with the city, and earned their respect of its residents, new, old, young. I guess the first functional thing is just explaining to people what this concept was, because it was definitely novel. It was not easy to understand, it wasn’t easy to articulate as well too.

It’s funny, when we got our first bit of press, a lot of people who we wanted to be in line with actually shit on us. It’s like ‘What in the hell is that.’ But I think as Eaton allowed itself to be a space for the community to come in and find the usefulness of it, and the purpose of it, it grew in strength and grew in community.

So one of the things about coming into a space like this, taking the art program per se, which art programs traditionally in hotel work a lot differently. The hotel, the property pays the art consultant to bring in a whole bunch of art, and I think the primary goal of that are to stay. But we’re a social justice brand, and that’s a part of our vision, then our artwork program has to honor that, and it also has to honor that and have that conversation simultaneously, globally and locally. And so turning to DC based artists to help build the fabric of this place, and to think of this place as a canvas and come and use it. I think that was the first thing, using those opportunities to build community through the curatorial practice. It’s like no, this is a place where you can come in.

And then being very upfront about our conversation. I never brought in this conversation, which artists oftentimes hear, that ‘We’re going to give you exposure. So in exchange for this exposure, we’re going to devalue your work, and your practice.’ So framing that as a very honest conversation, meeting people, and meeting people in their practice where they are, where they’re marketed, and to know we’re invested in you and your work because we want your work, we want your conversation, we want your voice in this space and we don’t put conditions on that.

No one knew how to use a social justice hospitality brand. We had to prop that up for everyone, and we had to let people know how they could be used, and the sharing of space here, which is very important and very real, really helped to build this community physically and psychologically.

SSR: What do you think this brand means, or do you think it means more now than ever with everything that’s happening? Do you think the brand means more, or could mean more? Or is this what was needed?

SS: Oh yeah. Kat often talks about how we came up to be, our first two hotels were open in Hong Kong and DC. And you know how those places then later became a global epicenter of conversations of uprising, and the need for change, and the push forward for social justice. You couldn’t have opened it in two more important places globally right now. And yeah, I do think that the brand and its purpose is even more important now and it grows even more important every day. As we’re in the cusp of a very major shift. I think the turmoil that we’re feeling right now is very indicative of a major change coming through.

And I think that that understanding, I think that the Black Lives Matter movement, and the preservation of Black lives, and the protection of black lives right now is such a global conversation that I could not have imagined or predicted four or five years ago. Not for this degree where it has become such common place, and it has become so compelling for everyone to come to an understanding with that. And yeah, of course when you make those kinds of moves, you ruffle feathers. When you’re digging up that kind of deep rooted and toxic challenge, those things rise to the top. But that is the first process and the global process of healing, is rucking up the dirt of it.

So a place like is just so incredibly pivotal to that. It’s been a challenge for us because part of the value to this place, and the attraction of it is the creation of a physical space where people could actually convene, where those collisions can actually happen with these people who come from disparate movements, environmentalism, race, gender, ability, sexuality, all these other movements. But then one thing to be thinking about is corralling those causes could provide for a deeper intersectional approach to everything, that we’re actually making some real change, because we realize that our problems are our problems, meaning the problem of race is very real in our environmental struggles. The problem of gender is very real, and our struggle around hyper capitalism and the need to create a space where everyone has a space to live, and everyone has food to eat, basic human necessities.

When we have all those conversations happening, it’s a natural mix that we feel can actually be a very potent response to what’s happening to the world, and we start to de silo ourselves and our movements. But now we’re in a space now where that physical, that collective actually can’t happen typically, so as a brand now we’re working hard to ensure that what we were able to create in the year, year and a half we were able to operate before COVID hit, that we can replicate that, or scale that to the digital sphere as we figure out what we need to do to maintain our safety before we can get back together. But what we realize is now is not a time to stop working, now is the time that we work more and we have to be innovative and nuanced in our approach to what our work looks like now, and that’s something that Eaton is really starting to get a handle of until we can all get back together and then continue to move this movement forward in other ways.

SSR: It must be so frustrating because there’s so much you want to do, but you can’t because you have to keep everyone safe. So have you all, and not to use the word of 2020, but have you pivoted to more online community, to connecting people that way, or are you just waiting until the hotel can reopen?

SS: No, yeah we’ve been pivoting, and then pivoting, and then pivoting.

SSR: I could pivot every day to be honest, wait, one more time.

SS: It’s like one more pivot, but I think that one thing that we’ve definitely committed to as a brand is we don’t ever use the terminology post-COVID. We think that we should prepare ourselves for COVID’s presence in our future for quite some time. And that has given us a clear path to what we are going to be, and how we’re going to shape, and what our pivot is going to look like.

We’ve also been able to use our building in a very limited way. We gave space to the senior high schoolers who were, excuse me, 3D printing PPE. Then we used our stage for a mutual aid program that was hyper locally focused. We worked hard to take care of our own, making sure that our employees who are furloughed didn’t feel the pangs of food insecurity, and trying to participate in the economic stability of the society in every way that we can.

SSR: And how are you handling reopening?

SS: This marks us two months in. It’s slow obviously, the District of Columbia in particular has been very vigorous about its travel restrictions and its quarantine restrictions. It’s proven to help to keep us relatively safe, but there are needs that have to be met. We had to come up with all new protocols on safety in our public space, safety in the guestrooms themselves.

It’s good to see, we had the pleasure of hosting a lot of people during the 57th March on Washington, and the commitment march put on by National Action Network and Martin Luther King III. It was just heartwarming to see how people were using the space, and that people felt comfortable enough to be with us, we contributed and helped to keep people safe while they were here. And I think people really felt that and they embraced that. It was just a little slice of what it used to be, and you were able to see a little bit of that transpire over the weekend, and it was beautiful because you saw that it was needed. And again, it’s like it’s that collective healing that I talk about in my practice, that we were all able to witness.

SSR: Yeah, that’s for sure. And where do you see Eaton headed? What do you hope to do, to achieve, to get done in the next, call it year, six months to a year?

SS: There’s some very immediate needs. There’s a lot of change that has to be facilitated in this country, and a lot of change that needs to be facilitated in this world. And the thing is that Eaton has always been smart enough to realize that it’s not our job to do that work, it’s our job to ensure that that work could be facilitated in a space that is safe, cooperative, inclusive, and impactfully supportive. And if we can be a part of those conversations in any way helpful, if we could contribute to the need to greater understand and embrace how essential it is to protect Black lives, to protect trans lives, to protect the environment, to protect the indigenous peoples and lands, to protect freedom, to protect democracy, I mean I think that that is the most important focus that we can have right now.

“We need to get back to business. We need to open up.” Those things aren’t focuses, those aren’t priorities because they quite frankly just aren’t real. Until we address these problems that we are faced with right now, then none of it, it’s all ephemeral. None of it will last. If we’re going to build an enduring change, and if we’re going to be a part of a society and a legacy that is going to leave behind to generations a functional world, there’s some critical things that we have to do first, right now. We just want to contribute, we want to be a part, we want to help to facilitate those conversations and then ultimately those actions.

SSR: How has this affected your own work, your own artistry? And are you still doing some of that on the side with Eaton? How has this affected your process and what you want to do there as well?

SS: With my practice, I just had the pleasure and honor of being a part of a very historic moment, being the first ever performance based artist to be included in the Outwin Boochever National Portraiture Guide at the Portrait Gallery. And it’s a three-year show, which includes a performance in a 12 hour and 21 minute film that I made. And it was babbling for three years, and unfortunately the exhibition at the portrait gallery was closed with the institutions shut down, but it’s opening up in Springfield, Massachusetts I think until early spring next year, then it’s going to be in St. Louis.

And honestly, before everything kind of went to shit with COVID, I have kind of committed my practice to being focused on that, so it wasn’t too disruptive to that. Knock on wood, I didn’t lose anything else besides a few talks, but what it did do for me is it allowed me the opportunity to kind of reflect and refocus on my work. I’m really looking at getting back into the studio and focusing on leisure, which is very interesting working in the context of a hospitality brand, exploring leisure in my practice, but it certainly was calling me.

I spent a lot of time down in South Carolina, five months down there just collecting some artifacts, a lot of heirloom tools, one beautiful water pump from the 19^th century that belonged to my great-great-great-great grandfather. And just been thinking about purpose, labor, leisure, in the context of my work, and just interested in what’s going to come out of this. So it’s something I just don’t know, but the discovery, the process of discovery has been very exciting for me.

SSR: I feel like I could talk to you for hours, and take your time. We will wrap this up, and we always end our podcast with the question that is posed in our title, what I’ve learned. So what has been your greatest lesson learned, or even your greatest piece of advice that has stuck with you?

SS: I would say that the thing that probably is the most valuable part of my understanding of self and practice, and allowing myself the ability to do the work that I do was the invaluable practice of self-investment. I just can’t overstate how important it was for me to come to understand myself and my fullness. And I know that sounds like such an ego driven concept.

SSR: I don’t think so.

SS: But I mean there’s a real threat to not believing in yourself or investing in yourself in any meaningful way, because the world is inherently unfriendly. And the less of that self-value, that self-worth, that self-investment you make, the more unfriendly the world becomes. As part of making myself and my environment a friendlier, happier place to be, I invest in myself where I feel when I come into these environments, I bring that perspective, basically it’s the kind of thing that holds your back up, holds your head up without drowning, because you do need some steel in your back to do this kind of work. And if you’re going to try to change the world in some way, you’re definitely going to need that.

SSR: Well, I think that’s a perfect place to end. Thank you so much for being here, and such a pleasure. Love catching up with you, and such an inspiration, so thank you for taking this time today.

SS: Yeah, thank you all. Thank you so much for all the support and yeah, look forward to continuing the conversation with you all. Loving what you’re doing.