maxi

Eclectic


In a recent conversation with George Pitts, an artist I have been working with often this summer, topics of conversation have touched on my background.
Ethnicity, culture and accent and so on....

It's hard to nail me down as just one neat package.
I think that is the one thing people find curious about me. You can't really put your finger on it, it's bits and pieces of something familiar and all together foreign in everyday passing.

My Mother is Greek and Italian, She gave birth to 2 daughters, and happened to throw some color in the mix.

My older sister by 5 years is half black. I am half Chinese.
We were born and raised in Boston Massachusetts.
She married a man whom was not our father, He was a black man who was also a barber who moved to MA from North Carolina. The food we were brought up on made a huge impact on me. We ate mostly Italian food and Southern cooking that she perfected to show her love for this man, Seafood and a few other American dishes that were popular around the 70's and 80's.
Slow cooking means a lot to me, it means someone took the time and love and attention to labor over a meal, and it taste like appreciation.
Her and my stepfather seemed to also have a love for fashion and my mother was all about the current trends in interior design. On Sunday mornings I woke up to the sound of my mother playing her Gospel records in the living room. she would be righteous as rain on Sunday's and swear like a truck driver the rest of the week.
She listened to music like Sam Cook and Teddy Pendergrass and Rolls Royce, A Taste of Honey, and the Commodores.... When I was old enough to spin my own vinyl, I liked Disco, Olivia Newton John, and Debbie Harry/Blondie and Elvis.
and later anything Brit Pop or New Wave in the 80's.

She watched all blacksploitation movies, like Up Town Saturday Night, Lets Do it again, Shaft, Coffee. She also loved old Betty Davis and Joan Crawford movies as well and anything with Clint Eastwood.

We lived part of our childhood in Cambridge Mass, because it was really the only place that was integrated enough were 2 biracial children could not be scrutinized.
People would often whisper about her, trying to figure out her story. She appeared to be hippie like, but who would let a hippie adopt children, they would whisper like the word "cancer".
My mother later divorced and met another man. He was also black, but he was from Virginia, he was a postal worker and a part time DJ.
Much more a father figure to me. we became close, I was like his buddy. I would go record shopping every Saturday with him as he checked off his list according to the Billboard magazine. He liked to eat and shop too. I would say he is the one that installed most of my values in me. "MAKE SURE YOU MAKE PEOPLE RESPECT YOU FIRST"
and encouraged anything i wanted to do to provide personal growth within me, Like photography, skiing, rowing the arts and music. He is the one that really got me into movies. He would rent 2 VHS rentals a night. He loved anything SciFi, and Blade Runner was our first movie that we owned. His VHS video library was something to be in awe of. it was massive.
We went to the movies almost every weekend. To this day i could sit and watch at least 4 movies back to back and be perfectly content.

I also lived in the city of Boston and went to public schools. In middle school I was surrounded by a lot if Irish kids then later when the schools started to integrate and bus to other towns, I was around a huge population of Puerto Ricans and Chinese and Black communities. I went to Sweet 15 parties and tried to learn Chinese slang from my yellow friends. My friends were always a colorful bowl of ethnic backgrounds and class.

I later moved to Philadelphia when i was 20. Now when I moved I became a Born Again Christian Temporarily... As a child we were baptized Catholic, and my mother told us to go find what ever religion that we felt suited us personally. We were never pushed into church or religion. My sister would drag me around to every HOUSE OF GOD she could find. it didn't matter the religion, we thought it was fun. Once she went up for communion, and all i knew as a 6 year old was that people were getting round flat food placed in their mouths, and I whispered to her as she went up " Get Me some" I couldn't wait for the basket to come down the pew, I loved throwing my dimes in it. Later at 12 I sang in a Baptist Choir at the church across the street. I was the only little pale face there.
After i realized that the people in the Christian church I was attending in Philadelphia were mostly made up of people that used the religion out of desperation and convenience and not faith, I left and never looked back. All the talking in tongues and laying of hands was not my idea of what religion should be to me.

My mother liked to describe her immediate family as THE ADAMS FAMILY. I guess it was the closest visual she could think of as a way to convey our little melting pot.
I have never lived in the suburbs and It was definitely dysfunctional at times,
but I cherish not having a white picket fence upbringing most days, and realized I am well rounded because of it.