Documentary producer Kendrick Hopkins has so many local Emmys that his wife has relegated one to use as a doorstop. So it’s not surprising that he describes his near-death experience in cinematic terms.
Last summer as a lightning storm gathered over the Outer Banks, Hopkins was sipping an Orange Crush on a patio near the beach when he looked at his wife, a nurse, and said, “Something’s not right.”
Minutes later, the 43-year-old Newport News resident woke up on the ground, trying to convince paramedics — and himself — that he didn’t need to cut short his long-awaited family vacation.
The whirlwind that followed gave him a diagnosis of Brugada syndrome, a rare genetic condition that can cause a dangerous irregular heartbeat. Its victims often die in their sleep by middle age, without ever knowing hey had it. It affects about 5 in 10,000 people worldwide, but may account for up to 20% of sudden deaths of people with otherwise normal hearts, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.
A few days later, doctors told Hopkins he needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. He had less than two hours to decide.
“When it comes down to it, having this thing in my chest means nothing versus having my kids wake up and find me dead in the morning,” Hopkins said.
As he recovered in the hospital, reevaluating his life, Hopkins received a text asking him to participate in an art show called “Made in Newport News” organized by old friend Asa Jackson, the founder of the Contemporary Arts Network and former commissioner for the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
Hopkins hadn’t told Jackson about his condition, and it was an invitation he normally would have refused, preferring to stay behind the camera. But his diagnosis changed everything.
Originally planned for a couple of weeks, the exhibition remained on display across from Taste at City Center for over two months. As the show went on, Hopkins’ view of his own work shifted, highlighting parallels between his artistic goals and the pair’s goals for the arts economy in the city and the region.
Hopkins and Jackson grew up in Newport News, but didn’t meet until 2014 — when Hopkins chose Jackson for inclusion in “Curate 757,” a WHRO series exploring the art scene throughout the region. Hopkins was at the start of his production career, and Jackson was a studio artist who had never thought about opening a gallery, much less a nonprofit to promote other artists’ work.
“I think what he does is one of the most important elements of an arts ecosystem, which is documentation,” Jackson said. “It gives a historic stamp on a place and time. In the art world, we call that provenance.”
Hopkins’ work has done that for at least a dozen artists and musicians, Jackson said, but until he stared death in the face, he’d never considered taking the spotlight as an artist when it came to his documentary work.
Hopkins sees himself a lot like he sees his hometown: always a bit of an underdog, always with a bit of an edge.
“Maybe the city’s starting to embrace it; maybe that’s what that whole art show was,” he said. “It’s the fact that we can have creatives, and we can be a little different.”
That identity is important to him, Hopkins said, but after his recent scare, he thinks that maybe that underdog mentality has made him — and the city — think too small.
Jackson agrees but he thinks that applies to the region as a whole.
“I think that the reason why we lose so much and sort of maintain that local ‘small dog in the fight’ thing is because we don’t know how to unify the region,” Jackson said. “If we talked about each other with more value and saw each other with more value, the world would see us with more value. And I think that is the underdog hump we need to get over.”
He gives Hopkins the same advice.
“Asa was like, ‘Get your flowers. Get your credit for the stuff you’ve done for the arts community,’” Hopkins said.
Hopkins is still getting used to the hardware nestled next to his heart and living with the fear of what happens if it malfunctions.
At first, he didn’t want to drive with his kids in the car, afraid of causing an accident. He still has trouble sleeping, and sleeps on the floor rather than risk magnetic interference from his Sleep Number bed.
But then he thinks about the two projects he has coming out in December. One is about Victor Wooten, a bassist and producer, airing online Dec. 7. The other, showing the journey of textile artist Nastassja Swift as she copes with her brother’s incarceration, airs on WHRO Dec. 15.
“I might not even have seen that video come out,” he said. “It could all have been taken away.”
Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com
