Today we’d like to introduce you to Clifford Brooks.
Clifford, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up. My parents loved me and I still found hardship. I was loved, loved, loved and I helped others find that too.
I am autistic. My parents were wonderful with me. My Sweet Momma never coddled but helped me when I felt fractured.
I fell in love. I went to college. I hurt. I married. I worked ten years with the State of Georgia. I divorced and heard God’s voice tell me to write or be killed by it.
So, I wrote.
Then I met a bunch of gorgeous folks who I felt a family and we built the Southern Collective Experience.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The artworld is cursed by a subjective eye. (Hear me out. It is not one eye. It is a diverse one that desperately prays we hear it at once. I speak of a failure of the artist to demand what they are designed to do in order to enrich the world.) Every other vocation provides a basic rubric of work-to-pay ratio. Art does not and it breeds a deep discontent.
Money is a topic that makes artists cringe, and I don’t understand it.
Get an attorney people don’t want to wrangle with. Get an accountant that’s got you like bail money.
If you build a business out of art, don’t let anything run your first gear like your gut. If it feels wrong, we peddle in that sh*t, walk away.
Beware friends who warn you too often about fake friends.
If it was a smooth road, you’d lose what God wants you to succeed at bringing home.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
The Southern Collective Experience is an organization of and for artists founded in 2010 by poet Clifford Brooks. Members are men and women who have achieved a certain level of mastery and accomplishment in their work and who see a need for ongoing professional support among creative peers.
The Collective encourages mutual inspiration and professional growth in a family-like environment across the mediums of visual art, music, poetry, and prose. Members contribute their different gifts and talents to advance the organization’s activities, which include gatherings, readings, exhibitions, performances, publishing, and promotional opportunities through social media and networking. The arts journal The Blue Mountain Review and a radio show, Dante’s Old South, are produced under the Collective’s auspices.
Innovation with an awareness of their arts’ deep roots is a pursuit shared by Collective members. Thus “collective experience” has both existential and mythic connotations. And although we were birthed in the diverse climes of Georgia, the designation “Southern” isn’t meant to exclude contributors from other regions. (Everyone is south of somewhere.) Rather, it highlights iconic, living Southern ethics—welcoming guests, relaxing with loved ones, treating all with integrity and honor. Creators and creative work that share these ideas are welcomed and celebrated regardless of geography.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
Atlanta is my city and I’ve no shade to throw on it.
Contact Info:
- Email: cliffordbrooks@southerncollectiveexperience.com
- Website: https://www.southerncollectiveexperience.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southerncollectiveexperience/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthernCollectiveExperience
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tscetweets
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIL3chuXg_Q&list=PLHw53XPeE9G-wTBzzbuypE1NsuFTr9lYI
- Other: https://www.cliffbrooks.com/
