Through the Fire: Cheryl Derricotte at 1500 Degrees

The Emerging Artist Program (EAP) at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) continues to foster exciting new ideas by supporting the artists who share them. Created during MoAD’s 10^th anniversary in 2015, the program boasts dozens of alumni who continue to impact the Bay Area and beyond. Their art and their journeys offer a testament to the importance of supporting early-career artists as vital contributors to the cultural ecosystem. This essay takes a look back through the EAP archives to highlight Cheryl Derricotte, a past EAP artist who continues to make a positive impact on the art world with her work.

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Derricotte is a glass artist. Which, as she tells people, means she has no fear of being cut or burned. The thick skin comes from passion – it is clear she has cultivated a trial-tested endurance capable of weathering the storm of life as a professional artist. Now mid-career, Derricotte looks back on her professional journey, which was accelerated by the EAP. In fact, she was in the first cohort of EAP artists. A lot has changed since she created her first solo exhibition titled Ghosts/Ships, which excavated colonial British archives to examine the history of enslavement through glasswork. Featuring twelve glassworks, twelve prints, and a video, the exhibition built upon her MFA practice. It was an MFA she only decided to pursue later in life. During a thoughtful conversation with her friend Nancy Williams, Williams said, "Cheryl, you can be fifty, or you can be fifty with an MFA.” ¹ The decision to pursue art professionally taught her lessons about life, glass, and the hidden, inner material it takes to make it professionally in the art world.

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Many of these lessons, Derricotte learned from the glass itself. As a medium, glass makes us take a closer look at ourselves. That’s why we use it for mirrors. “Part of what makes glass so seductive,” according to Derricotte, “is that it can help you think about your relationship to many things – from traveling through different apartments to the history of a formerly enslaved person. It all plays on the surface of glass. ² How do we confront the past, particularly some difficult aspects of the past, when our approach is something that’s beautiful and seductive? That’s the surface of glass.” It is seductive as it is complex. Glass also holds a versatile array of other properties. It can be transparent, translucent, reflective, refractive, and much more. Fundamentally, glass primes us to consider our relationship with people and to the past, and it offers a mode of changing our perception of that relationship through its wide array of material capacities.

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The lessons Derricotte learned from her art practice proved critical as she moved from Washington, D.C., and adjusted to another phase of life in the Bay Area in 2011. Even though Derricotte had always been an artist at heart, it was in the Bay that she decided to go for it professionally. Her journey was far from a straight line, however, and it included plenty of twists and turns. Her journey was captured in some works on glass included in an exhibition titled Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life. She first arrived in Oakland, only to be priced out five years later. A contrarian, she moved to San Francisco and continued to make art. Since then, she has moved her home address four times and her art studio two times as she fights to stay in the city. ³ Far from easy, making it as an artist in the Bay Area has challenged Derricotte’s resourcefulness and resolve. Derricotte’s piece, The Geography of an Artist (2023) captures a beautiful paradox: despite glass holding a reputation for fragility, embedded in the glass is a story of resilience. It speaks to the larger, seemingly contradictory reality of being an emerging artist and certainly of living in the Bay: the hottest fire can yield the most beautiful things.

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Nevertheless, one thing remained constant for Derricotte throughout it all. Laundry. “There is always laundry. I don’t care who you are; there will always be laundry,” she says, laughing. ⁴ The demands of life always need to be satisfied, and often, they can intervene in the joys of making art. For many artists, the need to make ends meet poses a substantial barrier to committing to art full-time. Like Derricotte, artists might take on various day jobs to pay bills and rent or even cover the necessary costs of their craft. It turns out that glass is the most expensive medium to work in. To cover the costs, Derricotte has to become like glass when heated. She stretches and expands to take on new shapes and makes new discoveries. While the adaptive process can be inventive, it also punctuates the importance of providing support for artists and their craft.

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What Derricotte remembers most from her experience in the EAP was the support she received in putting up the show. Collaborating with then-curator Emily Coleman and director of public programs Elizabeth Gessel, Ph.D., presented Derricotte with the opportunity to develop a solo show at a major museum just a short time after completing her MFA. At the time, Derricotte remembers, the EAP was on a shoestring budget. In its first year, the experimental program didn’t come with the ten-thousand-dollar grant money it does today. So Derricotte applied for supplementary funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. With the additional funding and the curatorial support from MoAD, Derricotte was able to expand upon her MFA work and create a full solo exhibition. With that exhibition in place, she mailed out one hundred and fifty postcards to major contemporary glass collectors and museums all over the world. With the museum backing her, she emerged from the fire as a professional contemporary glass artist.

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When Derricotte looks to the future, she sees one where emerging artists can be supported financially and professionally. “Certainly, the grant money is important,” she said, “But I think the public relations opportunities are equally important, and think of how the institution can partner with the artist…the museum helps to introduce the work to the gallery space and to help the artists that way. It’s an important lesson for anyone trying to create an emerging artist program.” Grant money provides immediate incentive and support for artists to make art now. The network’s power resides in its potential to create opportunities in the future. Both are critical to the success of an emerging artist. As the EAP approaches its ten year anniversary and MoAD approaches its 20^th, there is an opportunity to take stock of the museum’s impact on the arts ecosystem. Further, we can take lessons from Derricotte’s journey and one more lesson from glass. Like a mirror, the amount of support we give artists reflects our values back to us as a community.