Meeting Camille: Using Drawing & GenAI to Capture a Memory
Camille Billops was an African-American sculptor, filmmaker, archivist, printmaker, and educator. I worked for Camille when I was a college sophomore at Pratt Institute. My mentor Judyie Al-Bilali gave me her phone number because I had a class assignment to interview a visual artist. When I called the number Camille said, “Who the f*** gave you my number!” I quickly apologized and went to hang up but then she said, “Who is this again?” Relieved, I told her who I was and why I was calling. Her tone changed and she invited me to her SoHo loft where I met her husband James Hatch. They ended up hiring me that summer.
Camille and Jim hosted artists from different disciplines and backgrounds in their home and I was happy to be welcomed into their world. Camille was known by some to be prickly until she got to know you, as I first experienced but once you were in that was it. My job was to help Camille and Jim take inventory of the Billops-Hatch collection of materials related to African American life and culture. At the time of its donation, the archive contained thousands of rare and out-of-print books, periodicals, posters, and pamphlets; interviews with writers, artists, poets and other cultural figures; and scripts of African American-authored plays. Back then my job involved going through, categorizing and recording items in the archive. I still have copies of their journals today.
In 1981 the duo began publishing Artist and Influence, a journal dedicated to preserving the oral histories of artists, art historians, filmmakers, and writers. Over the decades, Billops and Hatch coordinated more than 1,500 interviews, with a little more than 400 appearing in print. — Emory University
The Visit
Camille and I set a date for my interview of her. I remember feeling excited but cautious. I mean, she did curse me out when I called her the first time. I took the subway from Brooklyn to SoHo and found the building where the loft was located at 491 Broadway Avenue. Camille buzzed me in and, when I entered the 2nd floor walk-up from the vestibule I saw her art work, which consisted of large sculptural figures and a few paintings. Camille’s work critiqued mainstream narratives and she often sought to amplify Black stories left out of dominant culture. Her works are deliberately centered in African American experiences. For example, “The KKK Boutique Ain’t Just Rednecks” (1994) is a satirical mixed-media installation critiquing the commodification of Black suffering and the hypocrisy of liberal racism.
Camille passed away in 2019 and Jim passed the following year, in 2020. Their collection, accumulated over four decades, now resides at Emory University in Georgia and the City College of New York. They donated some of their film materials to the BFC/A in 1992. Years later, after the inventorying work was complete, I saw Camille at an event in New York City. She knew who I was right away and her face lit up. It was a brief reunion but it let me know that once you were in you were always in. I was a PhD student in Atlanta when I discovered the archive at Emory and I was immediately transported to the time when I knew them. I once sorted through the materials and uncovered an art world not taught about in school. I got to know one of the most unique individuals in that world.
The Portraits
I created two portraits of Camille Billops. The first was based on a pencil sketch that I created and enhanced using ChatGPT and Adobe Photoshop. One of Camille’s stand out facial features was her black-rimmed eyes that were similar to the way women rimmed their eyes in ancient Egypt. She had a hairy upper lip and wore Afro-Asian necklaces. She also wore a lot of colorful turtleneck shirts. Her braided hair was parted down the center at her crown, then gathered into plaits with beads and tassels at the ends of each plait. The back section of her hair was brushed up into a top knot. You can see these details in the grayscale ‘sketch’ below.
For the second portrait, I used a color reference photo with one of Camille’s paintings (“The KKK Boutique”) as the background. Via the prompt, ChatGPT applied the color palette and style of Camille’s reference painting. The tool gave me an adequate result but it needed some modification (in real life she had two braids, not four). Next, I used “Generative Expand” in Photoshop to extend the image beyond its original left and right borders. After Photoshopping (fixing) the second portrait I was satisfied. The image captures the essence of her 2D works that are characterized by strong figuration and stylized forms. I think both portraits capture what I remembered about Camille, especially during those visits to the SoHo loft back in the 1990s.
Camille Billops was one of the ‘angels’ that guided me on my path in those early years. I feel blessed to have known her (and Jim).