0.10 Charles criner, b. 1945  (Page 4/4)

I always liked to do cartoons, so I took some cartoons to the Houston Post, and they told me, “All we have are syndicated cartoons. We get them syndicated. But we do have an opening for an artist.” So that’s when I switched from NASA to the Houston Post. I was there for two months, then Uncle Sam told me to show up. I quit the Post, and I went to the Army for two years, then I came back to the Post. I was promoted to art director and I worked there during the 80s. And then I quit for a while, came back, quit and went into business for myself. Then I came back and worked there until they closed in 1995.

When the Post closed in ’95 I went to the Houston Chronicle, and I worked there until ’98. And then there again, Dr. Biggers called me and says there’s a museum opening at the Printing Museum. They had these two presses, and nobody knew anything about them at the time. So a fellow by the name of Don Piercy was the director at this museum at the time, and he loved Dr. Biggers’ work. So Dr. Biggers called me and says, “There’s two presses, and they’re going to give them to this museum. And I want you to come over and we’re going to get them working. And they promised me that we could come here, and we could print in the evening after you get off work.”

We got those presses going, and Don called me one day and said, “Criner, how would you like to come here and work permanently?” And I said, “Well, what am I going to do at a museum?” So he said, “We’ll pay you what you’re making at the Houston Chronicle, and we just want you to come here and do your work. It’s called an artist-in-residence.” So I came here and started off as an artist-in-residence.

An artist’s subject matter

When we were at TSU we were always pushed into creating things that we were familiar with. So I used printmaking as a means to just do the domestic stuff: you know, picking cotton and just where we came from as a black race. And I love fishing. Not just catching the big marlins and taking the picture with those big beautiful fish, but actually taking your kids down and fishing from the banks and creeks and things like that. And then with the domestic things, I think that picking cotton and peas and working that of our history is colorful, so I’d like to do that.

I love people that create prints by using different media…just art for art itself, but I use it just as a medium to express a story that I want to tell. There’s a story. And I usually put a little paragraph with it because this is what I choose. Most people say that art should be interwoven in the viewer, but I try to go a little past that. I just want you to see and know what it is, and then you read that and you know why it is. I’m just a storyteller.

With black art I think that—this is just me saying it—I think that the black race is a race that wants to get art wise—wants to get away from where we came from. That’s just me. More white people buy my art than black people, you know. You know everybody else that sells work, they paint jazz. They paint happy people all the time. Nobody wants to have a person picking cotton in their living room. So I think that you do kind of risk your life. I’m kind of blessed in that I can afford to paint and draw what I feel. A lot of people can’t do that. If painting and drawing was my only income I would have to paint some of the things that people want me to paint rather than painting the things and drawing the things I want to paint. I would just say looking back that the art is just me. And you know Houston, as far as art is concerned, is just vibrant.

Charles Criner was interviewed on September 14, 2006. You can listen to the interview here .