Bob Clark Beyond: Impact

latest impact posts

December's Featured Artist: Amoako Boafo

Teju, 2019. Oil on Canvas. Gallerist: Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago. Ghanian artist Amoako Boafo resides between Vienna, Austria, where he has lived since 2014, and Accra, Ghana where he was born in 1984. He never imagined that his childhood love for painting would turn into a career as an artist. After losing his father when he was very young, he was raised solely by his mother, who worked as a cook. As a child, he taught himself to paint at home while his mother was away at work.

Racial Equality, Diversity and Mentorship in CRE

A couple of months ago, I was asked to join BisNow’s Webinar on Racial Equality, Diversity and Mentorship in CRE (commercial real estate). I was joined by four other industry leaders and pioneers in racial equality, including Damona Strautmanis who served as the moderator for the event. I wanted to share what we discussed during the webinar because there are few topics as important as diversity and inclusion in the workplace. DS: Thank you for joining us Bob, do you have a fun fact to share?

November's Featured Artist: Zanele Muholi

“I’m reclaiming photography as a black female being. I’m calling myself a visual activist, whether I am included in a show or not, whether I am published or not. That’s my stance as a person, before anything else, before my sexuality and gender, because photography doesn’t have a gender.” — Zanele Muholi

October's Featured Artist: Sanford Biggers

This month’s featured artist, Sanford Biggers, is a New York City-based multidisciplinary artist who defies categorization. There is hardly a medium that Biggers has neglected to experiment with, boasting an oeuvre that includes sculpture, painting, mixed media, performance art, conceptual art, and film. Mr. Biggers, however, has not limited himself to the visual arts. As the lead and keyboardist of the multimedia concept band Moon Medicin, he also operates as the creative director, putting together performances in collaboration with other musicians featuring backdrop images of “sci-fi, punk, sacred geometry, coded symbology, film noir, minstrels, world politics, and ceremonial dance.” Born and raised in Los Angeles, Biggers received his master’s from the Art Institute of Chicago with a specialization in painting, before landing in New York City in 1999 to complete an artist residency at Harlem’s Studio Museum. Place is an important notion in his work, as he draws from his experiences of growing up in Los Angeles, teaching English in Japan, and spending a large part of his adult life in New York City. Biggers’ work in general is an act of “material storytelling” that employs motifs related to his concerns with the Black experience, violence in America, Buddhism, and the narrativization of the cultural and political history of the United States.

Aimé Mpane

Aimé Mpane is a Congolese artist who splits his time between Brussels, where his studio is based, and Congo, where he grew up and continues to do research for his work. Originally trained in sculpture before moving onto painting, Mpane’s pieces are a mixture of sculpture, painting, and installation that speak to the legacy of colonialism—something that Mpane has experienced firsthand. Because of this, he felt convicted to address these issues through his work. Despite the atrocities of colonialism and globalization, Mpane infuses his work with hope and a sense of endurance, appealing to human solidarity and courage. He does, however, remind viewers that colonialism and racism are not simply things of the past, they are very much alive and present in the experiences of people in Congo and those who are living in the diaspora. It is not just scars from the past, there are still wounds being inflicted. When asked how he manages to remain so positive, despite his experiences of racism and colonialism, Mpane responds that it is important that people are able to understand one another, to see the experience of the other and put oneself in their shoes. If people don’t have dialogue, if they are unable to speak to one another openly, then there will be no advancement. Mpane has created works that are on display in public spaces and in museums, such as his sculpture in front of the Belgian Embassy in Kinshasa and the monumental sculpture he designed especially for the re-opening of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. He also creates exhibitions and aims to work with galleries that are not African-art themed. Mpane’s reasoning for this is that he wants his work to be viewed by American and European curators so that his reach and messaging can go beyond the classification of “African art.”

Diversity and Racial Equality

My real wake-up call to racial inequality and the lack of diversity in my industry occurred on the very first day I opened the Clayco office in St. Louis. It was in a disadvantaged part of town and an 11-year-old African-American boy approached me asking for a job. When I told him that he should be in school, he replied that he needed to be taking care of his family, which not only made me sharply aware of the reality of inequality, but also sparked my lifelong engagement with these issues through Clayco and my personal efforts.

Impact

The key choices we make in this life

Some of the key choices that we get to make in this life are the things we prioritize, both with our finances and with our energy and efforts.

Over the course of my life, my priorities have shifted immensely, and I now spend a large amount of my time focusing on the work that our foundation is doing, as well as being engaged in impactful community efforts. The majority of the work that we are a part of is aimed at issues directly affecting my family and the Clayco community.