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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, Bronx-born and now Harlem-based artist Kim Dacres looks to the streets of New York for inspiration and materials. Dacres is a sculpture artist who seeks out rubber and discarded tire treads, and in her new show Measure Me in Rotations, she's crafted the materials into busts of black women, each with their own profile and distinct hairstyle from braids to Bantu knots. Dacres was a teacher in New York City, even became a principal of Harlem Prep Middle School at just 28, and has said some of her students served as inspiration.

Measure Me in Rotations opened this past weekend at the Charles Moffett Gallery at 431 Washington Street. It's up until June 24th. Kim Dacres joins me in studio. It's so nice to meet you.

Kim Dacres: Oh, thank you. It's nice to meet you too.

Alison Stewart: What do you like about working with this material, working with these rubbers and these tire treads?

Kim Dacres: I really enjoy a challenge and I think there's something very seductive about a material that you see all the time that has a function and a purpose but then when you're done with it, you discard it. How do you take that and transform that experience of the material into something that can gloss over the rough terrain it might have traversed but also teach a little bit something about yourself and where you've been?

Alison Stewart: What is something about working with that kind of material that you can't know until you do it?

Kim Dacres: It's very stubborn, very stubborn. [laughter] Tires, they're woven steel cables and woven fibers also. When you cut across the treads, you're like, Oh, wow. You just never know what you're going to encounter. That the variety from bicycles to motorcycles to cars greatly varies.

Alison Stewart: That's so interesting. What did you do the first time you realized, "Oh wait, whoa, this material, it's got an agenda of its own"?

Kim Dacres: I invested in gloves. I was like, let me you make sure I invest in my gloves and in my safety equipment to make sure I'm protecting myself. I learn something new with every new tire that I encounter.

Alison Stewart: When you're looking at material, what are you looking for? What do you see in it? What are the properties you're looking for before you bring it back and work on it in your studio in the Bronx?

Kim Dacres: I like collect-all approach, collect-all-and-sort-later approach. Then over time, you start to see trends. You start to see trends like, oh, this tire is most likely to be found up in Harlem or this tire notice I'm going to see more likely in Chinatown or this tire I might encounter somewhere else. I started to really hone in on the different tread, sizes. All the things that can help diversify an experience or unify an experience at the same time.

Alison Stewart: Do you just pick a day and you're like, "This is tire day"?

Kim Dacres: Tuesday is a tire day. [laughter]. Tuesday is a tire day. My favorite shop in Harlem, Bolt Bike Shop we have a routine where they know that I'm going to come in and be like, "Hey, what do you guys have? Can I get it? Thank you."

Alison Stewart: [laughs] What do the community members think about this? Do they know, "Oh, that's the tire artist"?

Kim Dacres: One of the things I love about living in Harlem is that people are not shy. They'll ask you like, "Where are you going and what are you doing with that?" [laughter] There are many moments where I'm dressed in-- covered or dirty coveralls walking down the street with a wagon or a big garbage bag of tires and people will stop me and be like, "Are you all right? Is everything okay? What are you doing?" The benefit of social media is being able to just take out my phone and be like, "I'm an artist and I make sculptures out of tires. Like, look."

Then it becomes less from like, "Oh, what were you doing with that?" to like, "Oh, what are you doing with that?"

Alison Stewart: My guest is artist Kim Dacres. Her new show is Measure Me in Rotations on view at the Charles Moffett Gallery through June 24th. Each bust and we'll see it on Friday clearly has its own story and has its own name. What comes first? Do you have a story and a name and then you work towards that or do you start working and then she becomes somebody or he or they becomes somebody?

Kim Dacres: There's a little bit of both and that's where the challenge jumps in with the material because I might have a specific vision of how I want to execute and the material's like, "Uh-uh-uh. You skipped a few steps, you need to come back and weave it in a different way." I like to start off with the style that strikes me and who it might remind me of. To answer your question, both. The name has to fit the style. I think over the course of time you're like, "Oh yes, this reminds me of this person or this person or this individual."

Alison Stewart: By the way, if you go to Kim's Instagram or go to our Instagram at All Of It WNYC, I put a couple of pictures up so you can see what we're talking about. What's an example of a name and then the style that they match?

Kim Dacres: I think Alex might be the best example of that. Alex is inspired by a character from Black Panther, Leticia Wright and there's a gender fluidity there and having a fade in the back and then curls that rise up at the top. Alex is also a gender-neutral name and an alter ego name that I used to employ when I was working in schools. Like, "Oh, when Alex comes in, you just never know what this personality's going to give you." I think that's a really clear example. The other one might be Rita which is, I don't know if you're a fan of the '90s Power Rangers series.

There was Rita Repulsa. She had these two incredible buns. For that work, I knew I wanted to incorporate a challenge of these two circular, perfectly symmetrical buns in place. What does that say about professionalism?

Alison Stewart: Interesting. What's a time when one of your students-- We'll get into your previous life. Who's a student or a piece that in this show that reflects your time as an educator or someone you met during your time as an educator?

Kim Dacres: This is an unfair question. [laughs] I think the piece that is inspired by Brit is the best one. There's some students whose honesty is so raw that it forces you to encounter what do you think about yourself what you did wrong. How you were misleading in either directions, in tone, in conveying the information to a student. That student was one of my favorites. You're not supposed to have favorites but she was. She has a great personality, a big personality, and very clear about her boundaries.

Her being clear about her boundaries made me think about how I wish I was a little bit more inflexible with my own in the same way that she was. I would say Brit.

Alison Stewart: Did you always know you were going to be an educator?

Kim Dacres: I don't think so. I like teaching and coaching. I think that's a heart. I enjoy conveying information to people. New information, information I find exciting, and for them to get it and make another connection. At first, I thought I would be an attorney and I think you go through some of these same attorneys, doctors, lawyers, blah, blah, blah for what kind of career you want to pursue. It wasn't until I stumbled into Teach For America that I would say, "Oh, this might be something that I enjoy."

Alison Stewart: Where was Kim the artist at this time in your life?

Kim Dacres: All of this is in undergraduate school at Williams College. It was me trying to figure out where do I want to go? That's also where I found art and found art as a potential career and practice. I didn't know what that runway would look like but I got a stronger sense of like, okay, well, teaching is going to provide me with a sense of fiscal stability. I can tell my parents, "Hey, I got a job as a teacher working right down the street," and they're going to be okay and not worry about their children. That's a big thing.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] I remember my mom was a teacher and I remember somebody-- a public school teacher and one of her students was talking about doing something that was quite in the arts. A little bit on the French and she just responded, "How will you eat?" You know what, that generation, that was serious business. How will you eat was a serious question?

Kim Dacres: I think it's a pervasive one still today. Folks have a misconception about this starving artist and being someone that doesn't necessarily have a lot of discipline or you're just lurking about and every now and then you're in your studio. I don't know. Not really necessarily working as hard as we actually do.

Alison Stewart: When you have a practice, it's called practice. [laughs]

Kim Dacres: It's called practice which means it needs to be regular. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: My guest is Kim Dacres, the show is called Measure Me in Rotations. You were very involved with the layout of the gallery of the pieces. Even you chose the wall color which is this deep foresty green. First of all, why that color?

Kim Dacres: I really wanted to make sure there was an earth tone and vibe. I wanted to bring out colors that I thought meshed really well with black and being of Jamaican descent. Black and green and yellow, just natural combinations from the flag. It was really important for me to get the right tone of the color. I went with a friend of mine, another artist, her name is Genevieve Gaignard. We were just walking through like, "Okay, what color do I want this to be?" and she said, "You're probably wearing the color green that you want to use."

I happened to be wearing army fatigue pants and just having another sense of like, I wanted to transform this space. I did not want it to feel like there were black objects, black busts that were just simply filling up white space. I wanted to give illusion of the impression of a passage of time. I thought that was just a more soothing color to have.

Alison Stewart: There's the wood is beautiful, the pedestals. What kind of wood is that?

Kim Dacres: There's a variety of wood species that are in the show. There's red oak, there's an ambrosia maple, there's a pin oak. I was able to partner with this black lumberjack who's based in Dover Plains, New York. His name is Rob, New York City Slab. He was an awesome collaborator for this part of the project. He was able to adhere to the diameter, the height, and how I wanted to match each kind of tree species with the bust because it's part of the grounding spirit of the work. This matches how this student or this individual present themselves.

Alison Stewart: In terms of their placement, it's very subtle, but there's a curve as you walk in because the gallery's not that big. It's one big room and then there's a smaller room. We can talk about what's inside the smaller room. There's definitely, it's very graceful the way it makes a curve. Why a curve? Why not more linear? Just curious.

Kim Dacres: I was tempted to consider a few formations. The most obvious one was a single-line formation because when you line students up, that's the most common one. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: You're right.

Kim Dacres: It's a nice straight line but the next common one is also a curve one so I can see everyone. I thought that that would best make the space a little bit more dynamic while still remaining ADA-compliant so you can see the sculptures in round. It was very important for me to be able to have the hairstyles, and the faces be visible immediately, no matter where you were walking, and that you had the opportunity to walk around and see.

Alison Stewart: You do have to walk around them and each one is different so that you can see the different treads so that you can see if the braids-- There's one that looks like it's braids and they're long but you want to see each detail on the braid. You want to be able to see how the Bantu knots are lined up. It's definitely an in-the-round experience.

Kim Dacres: I think you want that 360 view of the work. You want a 360 view of a person to see a person in full capacity and in full joy and love and all the things that they bring to a space.

Alison Stewart: Does that bring us to the title Measure Me in Rotations?

Kim Dacres: It certainly does.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Tell us what it captures about the show.

Kim Dacres: This show title, it has been one in the making for a few years. I have to credit a fellow Williams undergraduate artist who I attended school with. Her name is Pamela Council, and she's a big fan of corny jokes, dad jokes. She joked with me one time, she said, "You know how tires are measured, measured in revolution, measured in rotations." Ever since then, it just stuck. I had been waiting for the right theme of hairstyles and I thought buns would be the best way buns, twists, knots.

Knowing I wanted to use that title, knowing that that was the connection between the hairstyles, it just made it very easy to say, Measure Me in Rotations. Also measure me by the experience, the time I would have spent passing through New York City public schools and be right back in the same place. Right back in New York, having gone through another experience, another rotation around the sun, another road traveled, another experience with a person. It seemed to me the most cohesive. I think touched on my reading heart too.

My reading teacher heart, we like to have a nice solid through line. A clear signpost that go in between. It felt like that title would be the most comprehensive for this particular challenge.

Alison Stewart: I have a really nuts and bolts question. It's about nuts and bolts. How do you work with the material? Where does the bust begin?

Kim Dacres: That's a great question. The bust begin with a wooden post of four by four inside. I don't want to give away all the secrets. I want you to think of each strip of tire as a sort of ribbon that's been distended away from the spool and then affixed with screws to help hold it in place. There are layers and layers of tires hidden underneath what you actually see. I like to use motorcycle tires and car tires to help give the muscle and the sense of--

Alison Stewart: In the face and the cheeks and jawbone?

Kim Dacres: Exactly. To distinguish between the neck and then the top part of the base of the sculpture. That's where the bust starts. It starts as essentially a single line, a single point, and then adding more of a head-like shape and muscle. Then finally with bicycle tires having being the skin, which I find the most intriguing because it's the sameness of material. All, for the most part, have the same kind of treads, but have different degrees of weariness, different degrees of worn downness that they have gotten.

It's indicative of the dirty-- Sometimes I opt to keep in like, "Oh, I want to keep this broken glass in there. I'm just going to paint it over." Or there's a hooked nail in there I'm not going to take that out. That says something about where the material has been and the personality of them that I want to convey through the piece.

Alison Stewart: Do you have any rituals when you are in creative mode?

Kim Dacres: Rituals? I have a musical ritual. For sure, I enjoy music. Music is a big inspiration for me, and for my work, and for getting up every day. There has to be a song play when I get in the studio. There has to be good energy. I'm a big fan of scrubbing and sagging the space. Just to make sure everyone is good. Make sure I'm good and I feel good. I think those are the two main rituals I have. Aside from obviously my weekly collection on Tuesdays.

Alison Stewart: Tire Tuesday everybody. My guest has been Kim Dacres. The name of the show is Measure Me In Rotations. It's on view at the Charles Moffett Gallery, 431 Washington Street until June 24th. Kim, thanks for coming into the studio.

Kim Dacres: Oh, it was an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

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