All of them?
Yeah, all of them—not dated all of them, but saved all of them and gave them to me in a dress box one day when I was grown up. When I looked at them, I could remember everything that I was thinking when I was drawing them—it was like being given a diary, and it really was the best gift anyone could have ever given me. But when I was young, I would just draw all the time. Then, after my parents went to bed, I would get up and watch old movies on TV. But I didn’t think that they were old, or that they were from another time—I thought there really was someplace else that looked like that, where I didn’t live, but desperately wished I did. So, movies and cartoons were really my way of seeing what I thought was beautiful for the very first time.
In what ways do you think the art has world changed, or stayed the same, since you started working in it?
It’s not an easy answer, because your game plan is only yours, never anybody else’s. So, you have to figure out what you want to do—what you need out of it. I moved to New York in ‘75, and I was very, very lucky, because I started getting work right away. I was very dedicated—I was crazy focused on my work—and by the early ‘80s, AIDS started happening. It was so frightening—literally two-thirds of my friends died—so I focused on my work as something I could control, because I couldn’t control anything else that was happening around me. People were dropping like flies, and my work became my grasp on any sense of security. I guess this is true about anything, but particularly in art, it’s not just what you bring to it—it’s what else is going on in the time you bring it. I had never considered that in my early thirties, suddenly I was going to be saying goodbye to my boyfriend and my closest friends, and when that happened, I knew I had to find something within myself that gave me some sense of stability.
Early on, especially, people would go so fast—people would get sick and die within months. But I never did. I was really just like, ‘Huh?’ I actually couldn’t understand, like, ‘How come I’m still well?’ I mean, I’m still asking myself that question this many years later, though now I do know the official answer: it turns out I have an HIV-resistant gene, the CCR5-delta 32 Mutation. I had two boyfriends die of AIDS, and when I was tested, I was HIV negative. I was convinced my doctor was lying to me. In fact, I told him ‘You’re just lying to me because you think I can’t take it!’ It was the only time I’ve ever cried in a doctor’s office.
So, do you believe in fate? Or chance? Or both?
I believe that they are the same thing, I think. I mean, I don’t know. When this happened, I was just so relieved, and astonished—have you ever heard the term ‘gobsmacked?’ That’s exactly what I was—gobsmacked. I didn’t even understand how I could be that lucky. And that’s how I thought of it at the time—lucky. But also, when I moved to New York, I remember feeling just so at home -- like I belonged here. So, I feel like I’ve felt little bits of my fate in advance, so much so, that it gave me the drive to fulfill that. You know? I didn’t sit back waiting for things to come to me—I was very diligent in my work, and still am. So, I think it’s both of those things, and I don’t think we’ll ever know what is divine providence and what’s just luck, and I don’t really want to. I like good mystery, I really do, and I hate when people feel like they have to explain everything—I think that kind of diminishes it, because it’s just what they think it is. I’d rather say, ‘I don’t have a clue’—I’d rather accept that it will forever be a mystery and go with that. And when it’s something as profound as how I’m still alive right now, I wouldn’t want it explained.
I’d like to think that there’s something out there, some combination of things, akin to magic. None of my drawings ever would have been successful if I hadn’t done them in the first place, so you do have to own it a little bit yourself—you have to be willing to acknowledge your place, your role, in it, as well. I hate when people sit back and wait for things to happen to them. I’d rather work at something and see what happens because I worked at it. Especially in a career like art. The art world has always been difficult, and you have to decide what you want out of a career in this world. I never expected to be rich—it would be nice, of course—but I turned down some things that might have made me more money, because they were just not for me. It’s like what actors say, ‘If there’s anything else you can do, do it, because it’s a tough life’—if there’s anything else you can do other than an art career, do it, because it’s going to be easier, and you’ll pay your bills more regularly. But I was never good at anything else—drawing is the one thing I’ve always been good at.
But art is like romance—it’s scary. Sometimes, when I’m starting something and just looking at the white canvas in front of me, I think, ‘Is this where it all runs out?’ You have to understand yourself, and know what you are capable of. Deciding to be an artist really wasn’t a snap decision—it was who I was from the start, and I just hoped that I would be lucky enough for it to work.
Buy Mel Odom’s work here.