Colored Frames started as a conversation between Wilson and myself while sitting in a small café in Brooklyn working, or rather taking a break, on the set of a previous project. We talked and disagreed, as we often do, on the merits of several pieces of art hanging on the wall. With a thing as subjective as ‘good art,’ it is often difficult to come up with a standard on which to base judgment. However, in this conversation we discovered and agreed on one thing; there was too much ‘Afro centric’ art out there being passed off as the definitive face of ‘Black art.’ We were curious as to the true face of African American visual art - and to a lesser extent, the life of the artist - today, and in the recent past.

Now even the term ‘Black Art,’ as we were to discover, was nebulous at best so we resolved ourselves to looking for the story of the Black experience in America (which as James Baldwin noted is the American experience) through the eyes of visual artists. This would allow us some latitude; while making this film about art, we could talk about the thing we wanted to the most, the state of Blackness in America over the last fifty years.

The one thing we discovered on the outset was that people, artists and ordinary folk alike, were eager to hear this story. We are of course aware that permutations of it exist out there, but often we found a heavy emphasis on singular artists. We want to make a film about art and Blackness; the Black experience in and through visual art because we believe over the years both these things have immensely influenced each other.

We were delighted upon beginning to find that there is more than stereotypes out there, there are realist African American painters, there are abstract Black painters, there are consciously political artists out there, and there are also consciously apolitical artists out there, and it is a thrill to talk to each and every one of them. We have interviewed greats like Adger Cowans, famed photographer and member of the influential AfriCobra movement, and we have also interviewed a good number of young artists living, and yes working, in New York City, just making good art. We are still in the process of putting this all together, and as the larger picture of what Colored Frames is develops, we are finding that it just could be something greater than either of us imagined during that lengthy conversation in a café in Brooklyn.