François Clemmons: The Shoulders on Which We Stand

My next multi media portrait – with paint, sound and video - is titled “THE SHOULDERS ON WHICH WE STAND" and it is about Officer Clemmons, also known as Dr. Francois Honey Man Diva Clemmons. Partially funded by The Vermont Council on the Arts and The Vermont Community Foundation, discussions are underway for its Vermont premier, after which it will tour the country. 

As with “Passing Through: Portraits of Emerging Adults,” this portrait installation will be a springboard for discussion about ALL facets of identity, more relevant now than ever, with our freshly heightened awareness of bias in American culture so full of inherent hetero-patriarchal white supremacist social structures. 

Francois Clemmons is a tenor vocalist whom I accompany on piano. He was catapulted into the public eye as Officer Clemmons in the sixties, when black individuals did not appear regularly on children’s TV, and certainly not as policemen.

Clemmons is gay, and while Fred Rogers knew this and loved him just the way he was, that aspect of his identity was not allowed to be known as Fred Rogers felt the country was not yet ready.  

As a tenor, Clemmons has devoted his life to singing, teaching, and preserving the legacy of the American Negro Spiritual.

Following his B.A in Music from Oberlin and an MFA at Carnegie Mellon, Clemmons won a position in the Metropolitan Opera Studio where he was the first African-American singer to integrate several opera companies in the Midwest.

He won a Grammy for his vocal recording of “Sportin’ Life,” from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”

In 1980, Clemmons founded the “Harlem Spiritual Ensemble,” which performed around the world, carrying on his vision for preserving, sustaining and commissioning new and traditional arrangements of American Negro Spirituals.

In honor of this work Clemmons received a Lifetime Achievement award from Carnegie Mellon.

Clemmons has had to overcome many obstacles in the artistic world and in his personal life. Consequently, he has dedicated his life to civil rights for ALL people.  When he sings We Shall Overcome, he doesn’t sing, “We Shall Overcome SOME day” as it is written, he sings “We Shall Overcome, TODAY!”

In the portrait we are creating together, Clemmons will be framed in a canvas six feet tall by eight feet wide, in a king’s robes from Africa, over life-size. King. Queen. He will be himself.

When we work together, either making music, teaching children, or in the studio, painting, we spend time together talking about identity, artistic practice, and how we, as human beings, forge authentic connection. My life has been easier than his by virtue of my race, economic status, sexual orientation and identity. But that doesn’t mean we can’t truly connect. We have found over time, that communion is about time spent together, working together, being together: time listening deeply to each other. Ultimately it’s about unconditional love. 

HOW do we know what we know about each other? 

That is the big question that starts the cascade of questions that inform much of my work and life.