St. Paul artist Seitu K. Jones gets his first solo museum exhibition at 75
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For artist Seitu Ken Jones, his new solo exhibition at the Minnesota Museum of American Art really begins with a portrait of himself as a young child. His father, Kenneth Jones, who died in 1987, painted it over 70 years ago. While unfinished, the painting captures a tenderness and an innocence that a father saw in his son.
“It blows my mind still,” said Jones, 75, standing face to face with his younger self. The painting has been in storage for decades. His father had always wanted to be an artist but, Jones said, the racism of the time prevented him from pursuing his dreams and he went on to work for the post office.
“Here's an opportunity to get it out and to share this exhibition space with my dad. It almost chokes me up to say that, but it is amazing,” Jones said. “Dad would be so proud.”
On nearby walls are Jones’ own paintings of family members, a landscape of two cousins sitting in the grass overlooking a river, a painting of “Sabian” ice fishing (“My crazy father, my crazy uncles and my crazy grandfather were all these mad Minnesota fishermen”) and a bright sunny portrait of his twin daughters “Jacke and Jowell.”
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An intimate practice on view for the first time
Family and connection to the land are infused in the artworks across the exhibition,“The Smell of Earth: Seitu K. Jones Working in the Elements,” the first solo museum exhibition during the St. Paul artist’s four-decade career. Jones is famous for large-scale public artworks that have shaped the visual landscape of the Twin Cities including a 2014 meal for 2,000 people on Victoria Street in St. Paul to the 2019 Walker Minneapolis Sculpture Garden installation “Shadows at the Crossroads,” and most recently, artwork for the St. Paul's Kellogg-3rd Street Bridge reopening in November.
“The Smell of Earth,” however, is not about his larger-than-life public tableaus, it’s about the work rarely seen, from his more intimate studio practice, which includes everything from painting and charcoal drawings to sculpture, woodworking and seed cultivation.
As his longtime friend, collaborator and fellow artist Ta-Coumba T. Aiken puts it, Jones is a “renaissance man, and he’s a family man and he creates in that for his ancestors to rejoice and celebrate him.”
Aiken added: “He has a lot of different facets, but he's sort of an art historian. He goes to the soul of things. He speaks to his people as African Americans and people in general.”
“The Smell of Earth” is not only Jones’ first major solo show, it’s a retrospective tracking his career from the Black Arts Movement and Civil Rights Movement to today.
“I was doing what many artists were doing: doing posters, doing sets for plays, just being a part of recognizing the fact that we were the cultural arm of this Black revolution that was happening in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Jones said.
‘Artists were probably the first farmers’
From there, Jones went on to develop a visual language and symbology around one of his perennial themes: collard greens.
“I have been working with collards as the theme in my work, as a way of accessing Southern cuisine, as a way of accessing African American culinary traditions,” explained Jones, who is himself a gardener, another family tradition. Jones told a story of his great-grandfather who was born into slavery in Kentucky. After serving in the Union Army, his great-grandfather moved north to Red Wing, where he worked as a porter at the St. James Hotel, which is still in operation.
“He moved to Rochester, rented a farm, and that's where my grandmother was born. My father was born in Old Rondo. That makes me a fourth-generation Minnesotan,” Jones said. “That story is a story that needs to be told over and over and over again because there was this Black presence that was in all of these old river towns here in Minnesota.”
The collard greens show up on carved wooden boxes and seed packets on shrines.
“This is sacred and special,” Jones said. “One of the things that I have maintained is that artists were probably the first farmers, folks who could recognize colors and patterns, and over a long period of time, and so I've always tried to embrace that in some way.”
Self-portraits
The exhibition is also filled with self-portraits: a colorful painting of Jones’ feet in a field of collards greens; colossal black-and-white drawings of Jones as he appears to be levitating, a close-up of his eyes and one from 2020 called “Strange Fruit” that shows feet hanging among the autumn leaves of a tree.
“I have done a number of self-portraits over the last 10 years, placing myself in the role that many African American males have found themselves in for the last 400 years here in America, from being elevated to being on the ground with boots over you,” Jones said.
One of these portraits, the size of a twin mattress, has been placed on the floor of the museum. It depicts Jones’ head resting on cracked asphalt with the boots of someone standing just out of frame.
“We thought that it was important to install it in that way so that people could have that really visceral experience of Seitu reflecting on his own position,” said Alexandra Nicome, who co-curated the exhibition with Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski – both have been organizing Jones’ archives for years. “By forcing the viewer into a difficult position above Seitu, it forces you to face him on the floor.”
A ‘well overdue’ exhibition
Aiken, who has known Jones since the ’70s, calls Jones a badass with a huge heart and ticks off his accomplishments, from the Bush Artist and McKnight Artist fellowships to their joint public art projects.
The exhibition is “well overdue,” Aiken said.
“I have exhibited and been a part of museum shows across the country, but here in my hometown, this is my first solo museum show. Now, why and how does that happen, and why did that happen for this bald-headed Black artist here in Minneapolis, St. Paul?” Jones said, surrounded by his work at The M. “I don't know. I don’t know.”
Jones mentors many young artists and creative professionals, including Nicome.
“I will work towards this opportunity being open to other artists that are coming after me,” he said, “so that they don't have to wait until they're 75 to have a museum show.”
“The Smell of Earth: Seitu K. Jones Working in the Elements” is up at the Minnesota Museum of Art in St. Paul through July 25, 2027.
