Mark Bradford talks about the Mark Bradford Project

Mark Bradford is much more than his solo exhibition opening at the MCA Saturday 28. Through the Mark Bradford Project, he’s been collaborating for a year with 16 students from Lindblom Math and Science Academy and Digital Youth Network’s YOUmedia Chicago program to create “(Re)Connect”—an exhibition showcasing student paintings, installations, photography and mixed media all inspired by Bradford’s work and teaching. The artist talked with us about the Mark Bradford Project, what swag really means, and why high school is exactly when creative kids need the most support.

How did your project get its start?
Well, with my residency at the MCA, I didn’t want the physical body of work to happen and then just leave with the show. I wanted to partner something new with the show. And I heard that the MCA had worked with a high school that taught contemporary art, and thought, that’s where the gaps are. That’s where creative kids fall through—during high school.

What did the students teach you?
I learned some great words. I thought swag was like a swag bag, but actually, it’s good, it’s cool. I was struck by the intense focus of the project for these kids, how clearly they articulated ideas. I don’t think I had that in high school—the clarity, the self-motivation. I learned as much from them as they did from me.

Why high-school kids?
Whether you like it or not, kids are the future. And I didn’t ask your opinion on that. [Laughs] I respond to creative young people, those with a temperament that gravitates toward the arts. I understand that road, I have a sensitivity to that.

Between living in California and prepping your own show, how did you find the time?
A lot of flying, a lot of Skyping, a lot of e-mailing with the students. We’ve been Skyping as they’re finishing up the project, and then we’ll see the gallery at the MCA and the Pop-Up Art Loop Gallery, too. It’s nice, working together, waiting to be critiqued together, sharing that experience. The first night, I’ll be installing the pop-up walls right with them—no helpers, just us. I sound more excited about it than my own show, don’t I. [Laughs]

Was it an adjustment at first to work with kids?
I talked to them as I would talk to my own assistant in my own studio. It’s natural to talk to them about art because I believe it, it’s what I lived through. I remember how I drifted in high school. On career day, there was never an artist or a writer—it was always a doctor or a lawyer. I felt stranger and stranger—but I wasn’t. I just hadn’t found my road. These kids need to know how they belong to a history of people like them, a history of people that sing, that dance, that draw. You want these kids to realize that they’re not alone. To know that is an awakening. At university, all of a sudden, you meet a roomful of people like you, and say, “wait a minute.” To have that in high school, to have what Lindblom and art teacher Nathan Diamond are doing, now, is hopeful and amazing.

What do you hope the project achieved?
If parents and friends, the community itself, come in and look at these high-school people with the same respect as they would to someone who’s majoring in physics or business, if they give the acknowledgment and support that they would give to other majors, that’s the goal. I want the students to feel the sense of accomplishment that they could do no more than what they had done, that they did the best artwork that they could do. That’s enough. That’s enough for me.

“(Re)Connect” runs through June 2.