George McCalman

Y’all are in for a real treat this week, because I got the chance to catch up with the extremely talented and accomplished George McCalman. He is well known for his work a studio owner and creative director, and he recently published his first book, Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen.

George shared how the idea for the book came about, and he spoke about some of the surprising and interesting things that came up during his research on who to include. He also talked about getting his start in the magazine industry as an art director, shared what convinced him to eventually start his own business, and elaborated on how his style has evolved over the years. George is a master of his craft and a true inspiration to aspiring creatives everywhere!

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Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, tell us who you are and what you do.

George McCalman:
Well, number one, thank you for having me on, Maurice. My name is George McCalman. I am an artist and creative director based in San Francisco. I live part-time in the Caribbean, the country of Grenada. And I run a design studio, which affords me the privilege of doing a lot of creative things at the same time. And I’m also a fine and commercial artist, and I’m often the artist of projects that I am designing and am the creative director on. I do a lot of other things, but that’s it for right now.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a lot.

George McCalman:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, first off, happy New Year to you.

George McCalman:
Happy New Year.

Maurice Cherry:
We’re recording this right near the start of 2023. How have things been going so far?

George McCalman:
It’s been great. I’m in a very different realm than I was even a few weeks ago. I just had a couple weeks of a break from a book tour that I have been on and a press tour in support of my book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen. And so I’ve had a little bit of a reprieve, and so for the first time in many months, I have had the opportunity to really synthesize and make sense of the whirlwind that has come from the second half of this year of this book being out and me going out on a book tour and a national book tour. So I’ve just been really reflective for the last couple of weeks, and so this conversation is really timed well because I’ve been just thinking a lot about my experience of being a published author and people interacting with this book and having their responses and what I have learned from their response to this book. It’s been really incredible.

Maurice Cherry:
And I know you’re currently recording in Grenada. I would imagine having a Caribbean paradise at the finish line of a book tour is a pretty good motivation.

George McCalman:
Well, it’s actually just a reprieve. I start back on the book tour in February. So this is actually not even the midpoint. I’m going to be on tour for this book most likely another year just because I feel really passionately that this subject matter should be revered every day of the year and not just localized to a month or a period of time. So I am taking the message of that to the streets.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. When you look back at last year, is there anything that you want to try to change for 2023?

George McCalman:
Yeah. Expansive. I don’t know that I would use the word change for myself. It’s expand. I learned a lot and I was involved in all aspects of the making of this book, which is a really unique place to be. Most authors are not involved with all of the backend, the making and the design and the marketing. And so it’s been a really comprehensive experience too. And if I would say any adjustment, it would just be more, basically.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’ll make sure that we have a link to the book in the show notes. Yeah, let’s dive more into it. Tell me about the book. I think the name is self-explanatory, but tell me more about the book, what was your idea behind it, all of that.

George McCalman:
The book came from the word … The first sentence of the introduction of this book is I had a curiosity, and that is the very simple truth. I was just curious to know more about black pioneers. And I was just coming to a point where I started realizing that there was an artist inside of me, and so I decided to merge these twin curiosities of, I want to test out the parameters of me as an artist after basically not making art since I graduated from college 20 years before. So I’m a classically trained artist. I’m a painter and a drafts person and a sculptor and a photographer. But when I went out into the professional landscape of being a magazine art and creative director, I didn’t think there was any room for me to be a fine artist. And at the time, there just weren’t people who looked like me in this realm.

And so I knew that would be a hard road, and I decided to go with the convention of working in the corporate world just to establish myself financially and it was an adult decision. But I came to a point a few years ago where I started realizing that there was more that I was interested in. It felt like there was an ocean that I had not touched. And I decided in a flash of inspiration to make this project my first assignment as an artist. And so I researched and wrote and painted a different black history pioneer every day for a month of February, and it just started ballooning. I think that’s the right word. It started expanding from there.

Maurice Cherry:
How did you go about researching and selecting the people to feature in the book? Because as I’ve looked through the book, I have the book actually, you have a wide range of people that you feature.

George McCalman:
I really know that the person that I am personally and professionally has really been framed by my time working at magazines because it’s basically, I got both military and library training at the same time, if that makes sense. There’s a rigor to when you are working under deadline, you have to really be sharp, you have to have your focus, you have to know what the context is of what you’re doing. You have to be really communicative with the people around you. And you have to make sure that what you’re writing is all the time. And so it really trained me to know some of the shortcuts of researching and trusting my instincts around that. And for me, I was interested in people I didn’t know that much about. Even if I knew their name, even if I knew some of their story, there’s always more to learn.

And that’s the thing that I’ve learned in my 15 years as a magazine person before I opened my studio, that even when you think you know everything about a public figure, there is always more. And so it was a trust in the information I was learning, but it was also a trust in myself. And so I was always just looking at the periphery, looking at the fringes, asking myself questions. Who is Edna Lewis? What was Gordon Parks thinking as he was moving through the world? I found myself asking intimate questions to myself of the people I was researching. And so I found myself drawn to aspects of their story, and I was always looking for not just their accomplishments, but their personality. So many of our pioneers were always looking through a contemporary lens, but life was just so much harder then.

And so I can’t imagine what Gordon Parks’ everyday life was. He was always the representative, and there’s always a burden placed on black people in America that we have to represent our community. And I can’t imagine what that was like 50 years ago, what that was like 75 years ago, 150 years ago. How much harder it was to be seen as an individual when your community is always being judged against the majority white community. And so it’s always this push, it’s always this burden, it’s always this pressure. But then you look at these accomplishments and so many of these people, publicly anyway, were really graceful. And so you have to develop this superpower when you’re out in the world. And I found myself thinking, what did these people have to compromise? What did they have to give up? Who did they have to be to be the people that we know and sometimes take for granted?

I was always looking for the hidden messages of who these people actually were, and that just always sparked my interest. It just made me hungry and curious. And even as I was painting them, I found myself drawn to nuances of personality. Gordon Parks was really charming, and so the portrait that I did of him, there’s a twinkle in his eye. I was looking to bring out the anger and the jokingness and the sadness and the power and the force. I really wanted to capture human personality in these paintings and really individualize them.

Maurice Cherry:
Aside from just how poetic that is, that is extremely profound of you as an artist to want to approach it in that way. Even as you mentioned that, I’m thinking of my personal experience, but I’d say maybe a couple of years ago, this was right around the summer of 2020, I was doing a lot of research looking at old issues of Ebony Magazine and Jet Magazine from the ’50s and the ’60s. And one thing that stuck out to me that I thought was really interesting, I saw an ad for … It was some kind of alcohol, maybe gin or something like that. But it was Langston Hughes.

George McCalman:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Langston Hughes was selling alcohol. And I don’t know why that broke my brain for a second because in a way you think of, oh, Langston Hughes, Harlem Renaissance, profound poet. Why is he selling alcohol in Ebony Magazine?

George McCalman:
Yes. We don’t often think of our pioneers as whole people. People who have made mistakes and people who have had different lives and weren’t always doing the things that we focus and categorize them in terms of their professional accomplishments. And you start seeing people are just flawed. Every human being is flawed. We have complicated relationships with our icons in that we have to place them on a pedestal to basically show ourselves and to show the larger community how great we are. And so we always have to work harder to show these things. And then when you see Langston Hughes out of context, it’s confusing.

Maurice Cherry:
It caused me to pause for a minute. Not so much the why behind it, but it made me think … I don’t know. I wouldn’t think of him as a spokesperson for an alcohol company. I’m thinking of him as the poet. And not even thinking of like, oh, well, what are the circumstances that brought him to do this? Because I’m not looking at him being in Ebony in that way as a negative, but it just surprised me to go through the pages and I’m like, “Oh, Langston Hughes is selling gin.” It was gin or something. I don’t know.

George McCalman:
Because Langston Hughes had to pay his bills too.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

George McCalman:
Homie had to pay his bills, and so lots of people did lots of different things to survive.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What would you say is the most interesting or surprising thing you learned while doing this research? Aside from what you just mentioned, which I said is extremely profound.

George McCalman:
Oh gosh. I learned so many things it’s hard for me to pull out. If anything, it just broadened my fascination with basically how we think of our cultural figures. Back to your point of the kind of artist I was at the beginning of this process that I was looking to render a kind of wholeness of people. I was just always interested in the emotional language of portraiture and even how we as black people render each other is going through a current renaissance because we have not always … We haven’t been given the room and encouragement frankly, to render ourselves. And so I knew it was maverick of me to basically not flatten everyone and not render the same style. That would’ve been easy for me to do, but I knew that that was not the right thing for me to do for this project. I really wanted to make sure that I was showing the complexity of who these people were and I was also trying to show the humanity and make that as important as the historical details. That I was basically equating the emotional parts with the historical facts.

Maurice Cherry:
What do you hope people take away from the book? I mean, aside from buying a copy, what do you want people to take away from it?

George McCalman:
Well, I honestly think, Maurice, that we’re super casual about this subject. Not that we don’t know how important it is, but at the time that I started this project, I realized that there wasn’t a book like this and that I wanted people to have it because I thought that we all deserved to have something like this, that we deserve to have this resource. Even though we as black people, we carry our history in our bodies and we have a very particular way of an oral history of passing information down to each other that has survived the ravages of time and racism. This book in and of itself, I didn’t feel comfortable thinking about it until after the book came out and several people have told me that this book is in and of itself a pioneer. Because we just don’t have this information accessible in this way. That there wasn’t a book outside of historical, academic and children’s categorization, that there wasn’t an accessible book just to buy and share about American black history. And so that’s what I want people to know, that this is still a rarefied thing. This is not an everyday thing. This is a pretty amazing resource that we now have. And I made this book for myself as much as for anyone else. I wanted a book like this. And so that’s partially why I did it.

Maurice Cherry:
I also love that the typography that’s in the book for the titles as well as on the cover is from a black typographer.

George McCalman:
There are two black typographers in this book. And because I’m the designer of the book, I was clear that that aspect had to be represented. That I didn’t just want to talk about it, I wanted to show it. It was more important that people knew that that sensibility … There’s this reductive conversation that came up during 2020 again that was like, where are all the black designers? And I was like, “Screw you all. There are plenty of us around. You just need to stop being lazy and do your research to find them because we’re all here.” And I know tons of black designers, and so that’s not a thing. There should be more of us, certainly. But this idea that somehow everyone just woke up and started looking for us, I was genuine. I was like, “Fuck you.” I wanted to know. The two black typographers, one has been in the game for over 30 years, Joshua Darden, and he has a very successful … Which he sold a number of years ago.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Darden Studio.

George McCalman:
Darden Studio. And the other one is a more recent designer and typographer by the name of Trey Shields. A vocal type. And Trey’s hook, and it was a hook that he has just expanded beautifully, was to honor the civil rights protest signs and digitize them and make them accessible to everyday people. And so the book is filled with typefaces. There’re three or four typefaces in this book that both Trey and Josh designed.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Yeah, Trey’s the homie. I’ve had him on the show before.

George McCalman:
He’s amazing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

George McCalman:
He’s amazing. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s switch gears here a little bit and learn more about you. Learn more about your origin story. Are you originally from Grenada? Is that where you grew up?

George McCalman:
Yes. I was born and raised here. The first decade of my life I lived here, and then my mother and I moved to Brooklyn. I grew up in East Flatbush in a West Indian neighborhood. And all my formal education was in New York. I went to Marine Park in Brooklyn and then Midwood High School, which was a medical science high school. Webster attended Midwood High School. That’s my one celebrity, useless factoid. And then I went to St. John’s University and graduated and then started working in the publishing field.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you always have an interest in illustration and design growing up?

George McCalman:
Always. I was that kid who drew in the margins of every page of every notebook I’ve ever had in my entire life. And it was just raw. It just came out. I had no formal training until college, but I was just obsessively drawing. And I drew superheroes and I made up characters and it was all very detailed, and I would just create these worlds and I would be lost in them to the eternal frustration of my mother. And it just came from me. It came from me and it came for me. But I had no encouragement into this world, and I didn’t know enough of it to realize that I could make a career out of being an artist. I saw no road into it. And so it made sense to me to just walk away from it when I graduated from college.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, let’s talk about college. You mentioned going to St. John’s University. We had another guest on recently, Sharon Burton, who also told me about her time there. Yeah. What was it like for you?

George McCalman:
My college education was a dysmorphic experience. I didn’t know what I had until it was in the rear view mirror, as is perfect parable of youth. We have no context to know what it is that we’re learning until life crashes into you when you have something to compare it to. And for me, I had an education that I was constantly frustrated with because it felt that it was out of step with the cool art schools that were in Manhattan. Number one, I was in Queens, which felt so far removed from the center of the art world, which was Manhattan at the time. And so I’d go into all these galleries in Manhattan, and I had friends who were at Parsons and SBA and Pratt, and it just felt like I was at this Catholic university that had a tiny fine art and graphic design department, and I just felt like my education sucked.

And it wasn’t until I graduated school and started working, I realized how amazing my education actually was and how unique it was in the landscape of how people are taught fine art and graphic design. And one of the main things that differentiated my education is that I learned philosophy and theology alongside art history, fine art and graphic design. It was one of the most comprehensive educations I could have received. And it took me a few years to realize that I was actually ahead of the curve and I’m actually really happy that I did not go to a more prototypical fine arts school. I got a fantastic education at St. John’s.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. How’s that saying go? Hindsight is 2020?

George McCalman:
It sure is.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ve heard that personally because I didn’t even study design. I went to a liberal arts private college. I went to Morehouse. And I initially went there because I wanted to … And this was late ’90s, early 2000s. Because I wanted to be a web designer. I had started learning HTML in high school. I taught myself HTML in high school and learned Photoshop. I designed my high school’s yearbook and the paper, and I really wanted to go into it but the scholarships that I got weren’t for art school. I actually never even applied to an art school. And then I got to Morehouse, majored in computer science. And in my mind I’m thinking, oh, well, it’s all the same, right? It’s all computers and design. It’s all the same. And I quickly realized after the first semester, it was not. I switched my major to math, which is what I got my degree in. But I know what you mean about looking back at the education and seeing how it served you versus the time that you’re there and you have this comparison on what your peers are doing, on what others are doing or what you think they’re doing that you feel like you should be getting at that formative stage.

George McCalman:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
So after you graduated, you talk about going and becoming an art director. Did you go right into that right after you graduated?

George McCalman:
I did. It’s pretty common now, but it was a little more unconventional back then. This was the mid ’90s. St. John’s had a internship requirement that your final year of school was spent in the field the entire semester as if you worked. And so the entire semester, I ended up having three options. I remember being going to interview at these three distinctly different locations, and it was kind of a sliding doors. And even then I knew that I was basically deciding my path with these three. One was an ad agency, one was a magazine, and the other was a small boutique design firm. And I remember being confused about which direction I was going to go in. I really did not know. And I walked into the Office of Money magazine, which is where I ended up interning. There was just a vitality. The office was a newsroom and there were people walking around and talking and gossiping and stuff being put up, and I could see layouts, and it just felt alive. It felt like an organism. And in my early 20s, I was just kind of like, yes, I think this is the environment that I need to be in. And I didn’t know anything about magazine design at that point, but it just felt like I needed to be there. And so I said yes to it, and I think it was one of my first really adult decisions.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s really interesting that senior year you got to have that choice. That’s something that I know that a lot of students now don’t get. They don’t get to see the working world-

George McCalman:
They really don’t.

Maurice Cherry:
Before they graduate like that.

George McCalman:
They don’t. Yeah. Because I teach also. I’m a professor of graphic design. And one of the big issues I have … And it’s not an easy problem to solve. I am critical of it while knowing that I don’t have the answers myself. One of the fallacies of school is that it doesn’t really prepare you for the real world. It’s like one of the last bastions of this purity of education. And it often is counter to how the process of the professional world runs. I quickly learned when I started Money Magazine that there was no graphic design class I had that prepared me for how the magazine world worked and how the design process actually worked. I realized how luxurious school is. It’s a place where you can sit and think and talk and show your work, and there’s no real disruption. There are no real crises. There’s nothing for you to solve outside of the assignment that has been given to you that you have months to ponder and to ruminate on.

And so the idea of instinct is just absent in the school diaspora. And so when I teach now, I teach differently than I learned, and I try to infuse as much of a real life sensibility. The other issue with schools is that a lot of people who teach don’t practice. And so you have a completely different and often very dissonant where the education is rigorous and it is really valid, but it is outside of basically the professional norms of how you would actually solve problems. But then the people who are in the field don’t have time to teach because they’re working. And even for me, teaching was a really difficult thing for me to do with the entrenched deadlines of my studio process. And so I understand that it is a very difficult thing to do. I recently took part in a review of students at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard a few weeks ago at the end of the semester in December.

And this was an active conversation that I was one of six jurors, and we were all in different strata of the professional world, and we were really debating and having this conversation about how what best serves the students. If you’re only learning from people who are not practicing, I’m sorry, the education is only so valuable. But then if you’re only learning from people in the field, you don’t learn what being spacious in your thinking and being intellectual and being academic, you don’t learn the value of that in the design process also. And so the answer seems to be a balance between the two, but that is not always the case depending on where the school is and at what stage the professors are and where the students are. So it’s a very complicated metric to figure out.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s interesting you say that because I’ve certainly encountered that even with some … Honestly, some schools that have interacted with Provision Path in different ways. You name a top design school in this country, they’ve reached out to me in some capacity about the show. Which is great. They like what the show is about. It’s filling a gap in their curriculum in some way that they’re not. But then if it comes down to me lecturing or teaching or something, it always seems to boil down to the fact that I don’t have a design degree. That they’re like, “Yeah, but …” I’m like, “Well, stop wasting my time.”

George McCalman:
Stop wasting my time. And those kind of rules and terms don’t really serve anyone anymore. I mean, just the landscape has changed and design, because of technology, is just so accessible. And I know lots of brilliant designers who did not go to art school, and I don’t believe that you need to have a design degree to be brilliant at what you do. There are lots of people who have defied the convention of formal education and produced really entrancing, relevant, resonant work. And to me, that’s what it’s about. And so I don’t subscribe to this hierarchy of academia. I mean 30 years ago it was used to be exclusive and keep a lot of people out, and that was seen as a value, but I don’t think it serves anyone right now. Culture has changed and education has changed. And because of technology, everything is just more accessible. And so it’s really about what you are doing with the technology. It has nothing to do with did you go to school or not? That’s just such a reductive argument.

Maurice Cherry:
I agree. I agree. This actually is making me think of a question that I do want to explore more on the show this year. And since you’re one of the first guests on this year, I’ll ask you. I’m curious what you think about the future of the art and design industry and how it’s going to be impacted by technology. I think we’ve seen in at least the past year, maybe two years, talk about web three and NFTs and most recently AI generated art and things like that. How do you think these industries are going to be impacted by tech?

George McCalman:
I think it already has been. What we call entrepreneurship is actually just hustlers. That’s what technology has given us. It’s given smart hustlers who are pulling and stretching and tweaking and bending the rigidity of so many of our institutions and our disciplines. The word I use a lot is it has expanded the notion of what design is, who it’s for, who it’s not for. And technology has brought so many things to people who would not otherwise have them. It just brings an aspect of the world to your doorstep. Technology for me, because I grew up outside of it and I was an adult … People who were born into technology, that’s what they know. That’s the real world. To me, it’s not the real world. It’s an aspect of the real world. And so I think of social media as tools.

I don’t think of it as real life. I think it’s a facsimile of real life. And so the language of how I talk about it has given me clarity in that I’m not confused about its place in my life. I started learning graphic design before we got our computer labs. And so I had two years of playing with typography, playing with a lot of the conventions of what is now basically archivable materials because nobody does it that way anymore. But because I learned design with my hands, that is how I continue to interface with it. I still draw out everything I do first. And that dexterity, frankly, has made me a better designer. I don’t rely on technology as a starting point for anything that I design. I bring it in to help move the process forward.

Maurice Cherry:
Good answer. I like that. You started talking about tech and that question just popped into my mind to ask you about that. But to go back to your career as an art director, you have a very storied history as an art director for several magazines. You mentioned Money Magazine, but you’ve also been an art director at Entertainment Weekly, at Mother Jones, at ReadyMade, just to name a few. When you look back at that time being a director for all these magazines, what stands out to you the most?

George McCalman:
I can’t give just a simple answer. I can give a collective answer. Because I learned a lot. I learned a lot of things. And I don’t think in terms of best or worse because I think life is too complex for that. But what I did learn was agency. The word agency. Meaning that I am not stuck when I don’t know how to solve a problem. That there are ways and there are many paths to telling a story, and there’s no one way to do anything. And depending on the context of what you’re doing, I learned how to be a better communicator. Because when you’re working with a lot of people who are reliant on you, you learn that you are a cog in a wheel, but that your role, nobody else working with you has that. So everyone is really important to the process at different times.

And so you learn the economy of collaboration. That collaboration can be a really beautiful thing. And that there’s an excitement when you are working with people who are really good at what they do and that want to tell stories as well as possible. And that telling stories is one of the most unique aspects of being a human being. And that that is basically how we thrive and survive as people. We share information and we share stories with each other. And that’s where I learned that. I’m not sure I would answer this question in this way if I hadn’t worked at magazines. And I utilize magazines also to learn. And I did. I used them for two things within myself. To learn the process of what I was doing. And I moved around a lot.

I never worked at a magazine more than two years because I always wanted to learn what I was doing through a different landscape. There are lots of people that get a job and stay there for decades. I am someone who I learn what I need to learn and then I move on. I have always been that way. And so for me, it was what can I learn about the subject matter? I learned about the financial world, honestly, working in Money Magazine. I learned about the inner workings of celebrity culture, working at Entertainment Weekly. I learned about the wellness world at Health Magazine. I learned about technology working at Wired, working at ReadyMade, working at Afar. I really immerse myself in the subject matter to learn more about how these stories focused on this particular field. What was the combination, what was the metrics, what was the engineering of the subject matter? And so I was always kind of process nerd, if that makes sense. And that’s what I was always looking for. And with magazines, the process can become repetitive because you’re doing the same combination of things. And so the first year I was learning about the magazine and the second year I was learning about the subject matter. And then like clockwork, I’d come to the end of the two years and I’d move on.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, was this sense of agency the inspiration behind you starting your studio?

George McCalman:
Yes. I reached a point where I realized I wasn’t learning anything more. I wasn’t learning anything new. And I had all these skills that I wanted to apply in a different way. And it was working at ReadyMade that gave me the inspiration to open up my own studio, which was the second to last corporate magazine job that I had. And ReadyMade was a magazine about do-it-yourself design. It’s basically recycling. What we now call upcycling. It’s taking something that is at the end of its road as it’s being used and refashioning it for something else where it has an entirely new shelf life and you can use those things. And it was really just clever. It was just really clever design solutions. It’s taking cloths and making a kite out of it, or taking old jeans and turning it into place mats. Just stuff like that that is seen as quaint now, but was really at the vanguard of this recycling movement that is just more every day and more common.

It was recycling before recycling, even in California, was as ubiquitous as it is now. And I got to work with a lot of makers. People who just made things and who were just passionately, quietly … And not starting businesses, but just people who were making things for their own edification, for their homes. And I was honestly just really inspired. And I was just kind of like, oh, I know a lot of people who are working for themselves. And when I started thinking about it, I would talk to friends and contemporaries and professional acquaintances and everyone said, “Do it, do it. Do it. When you work for yourself, you will never go back to the corporate world.” And they were right.

Maurice Cherry:
What are the best types of clients for you to work with?

George McCalman:
It has both changed and remained the same. My interest is in culture. The identity of culture. And so I have coined a phrase just internally in my professional world that I am interested in culture clients. And in the early days it was … I live in San Francisco, so there are lots of artisans. There are people who are making small batches of things. There are restaurant owners. I was always working with clients who were working for themselves and needed help with the language and the messaging around branding. And so I worked with restaurants and I designed products and chocolates and tea, but I was really kind of more comprehensive. It was less me coming in to just design a package and it was basically working on the whole branding from the logo to the identity to the strategy to the messaging to the website, just the whole thing. And I realized that I was drawing on my editorial background to tell the whole story.

And so it expanded to … I started working with the tech world and then quickly stopped. Because I realized that they … I remember having a meeting with Uber. This was like 10 years ago. I was working with TripAdvisor and Uber. And these are big names, big clients at the time. I can tell you, TripAdvisor, I consulted with them for almost two years. They didn’t know how to assign photography. And so I worked with them comprehensively working with a photo editor to basically get them a library of photographers, come up with a system of rate assignments. Just basically the basics that one of the largest companies in the travel world had no awareness of. With Uber, it was they had been focused on the service for so long and they were starting to atrophy some of their customers because there was no story. There was nothing.

And the people who started Uber did not think that that was important until suddenly it was. And I remember having a meeting with them where I was like, “Oh, they’re just taking my ideas. I’m just here speaking to them.” And I was like, I don’t trust this field. I don’t want to have my intellectual property just ripped off and I’m not on the inside, so they’re not going to value what I’m doing. They’re going to treat me like a vendor, and I’m not anyone’s vendor. And I was really clear about my value to myself. And so I stopped working with the tech world for a few years and really just focused more on the one-on-one. And I worked with larger companies, but it was still where I had direct access to the founders and the CEOs so that I could thread continuity between what I was doing. I didn’t want to work with any intermediary people, so I had to be conscious of the scale that I was working in just to make sure that the projects didn’t get away from me. And I was also clear with myself that I wanted to keep my studio small, because I wanted to keep it manageable and basically control and frame the quality of the work that I was doing. I didn’t want to be embarrassed by anything that I was doing if it got too corporate.

Maurice Cherry:
I like that idea of culture clients because yeah, working with tech companies, they will just relegate you to vendor status and-

George McCalman:
And they will just steal your shit.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, they’ll steal it.

George McCalman:
No compunction about it. And it’s the people who don’t know what they’re doing that want to steal your shit.

Maurice Cherry:
And I know in my instance, when I have worked with tech clients, it felt like … Or at least I entered into it thinking it would be more of a partnership. We would maybe bounce ideas off of each other or things like this. And in some instances, they just wanted to just cut the check, which I mean, look, I’ll take your money. I don’t have a problem with that. But I was really thinking that it would be more based on how the initial conversations went, why you sought me out, et cetera. And then it just ends up not being that. They just want to have it to be a bullet point on a DEI presentation.

George McCalman:
It is rarely that. And this is even before DEI so there was no representative of that. And that was the other reason. That I was often the only black person. And I was like, “No, I don’t want to do this.” I left publishing because I was tired of being the only black person. And for me, the tech industry has just become the new media publishing industry. I can see the corollaries and a lot of the people, a lot of my contemporaries have gone over and taken our playbook into the tech world. I mean, Apple very much has snapped up a lot of the most prominent magazine editorial art directors in the field in the United States. And so many of their campaigns, I’m looking and I can see the editorial strata of how these stories are shot and presented. It’s all going in that direction. And it should, because it’s the best form of storytelling. Advertising as a medium, as a typical form, I think is not very good at storytelling.

Maurice Cherry:
No, they are not. In addition to the work that you do through your studio, and you alluded to this earlier in the interview, you’re a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. How did that come about?

George McCalman:
Well, it came about the year that I started the original 29 day project of Illustrated Black History. I tell you, Maurice, it was just a year where I just lost my mind and just began drawing and painting obsessively, just everything. I was just manic for it. And it was like it had been bottled up and it all just came out. And so that year I took a sabbatical, which means that I stopped taking on work. And when I tell you that I had no money, I mean I had no money. I was just living off of my savings. It was a really reckless thing to do, and I’m a pretty cautious person. And I knew that it was the right thing because it just came so easily to me. I fired all my clients and just started everything from scratch. And so I gave myself the time to do that, and I was also trying to figure out how to make a living with it.

And so I ended up doing a series. A series of series. And that is also a playbook from my magazine days. You tell a story in multiple images, threading a narrative and a continuity from beginning, middle to end. And so I did several series on my family, on Illustrated Black History, and then I started documenting the visual identity of San Francisco. And I was really fascinated by the human ecosystem of the Bay Area. And I’d been working on another series about how the tech industry started in the Bay Area and how it could not really have started anywhere else and just all of these threads were coming together. And I had this epiphany one day where I knew that I wanted to do a culture column on the makeup, on the genetic makeup of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

And I had been inspired by a morbid thing. It was when Bill Cunningham, who used to be a columnist for the New York Times, and he was a style photographer and he documented black style in Brooklyn and Harlem, and he equated black style with high fashion, which is something the fashion industry did not do and still does not do, even though they think they do. I was just like, “Oh, I think this is what I should do.” And I remember writing a pitch and deciding whether I was going to send it to the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle. And because of my magazine background, I outlined everything to myself and I wrote a pro and con list about the San Francisco Chronicle versus the New York Times and how much creative freedom I was going to have. And the whole idea for the column was that I would be writing, illustrating and designing this column, documenting various events that gave you a larger sense of what the Bay Area was all about and what made it unique and special and also frustrating and just all of the things that just brought all the complexities in.

And I sent that to the woman who became my editor, and she wrote back immediately and she said, “This is brilliant. We’re going to do this.” And I remember thinking at the time, “Holy shit. I didn’t think she’d respond this quickly, and now I have to do this on a monthly basis.” And it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I would go out to cultural events several nights a week, and I just became this man about town for years. And I would show up as a reporter with my notebook and my pens, and sometimes I would live draw and sometimes I would draw later on and I just drew this column every month and designed it for the style section of the Chronicle, and I did that for years.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. When it comes to work between what you do in your studio and what you do for the newspaper, is your approach different for each one?

George McCalman:
I work in parallel lines, as I’m sure my answers are starting to illustrate. I’m always on the inside and outside of what I do, and I’m looking at both sides of it at the same time. And I think I developed that skill as a magazine person because there’s not just the story that you’re working on, it’s the process of how the story is being made that is as important as the story that you’re making. And as a designer, you are at the intersection of words and images, and so you’re never just looking at one aspect of anything. And it has just expanded my brain, I think, where now I can’t help but think of everything through this parallel thread of thinking. And so in terms of making this column for years, I knew that I was training myself to do basically all aspects of what I was doing.

I was always an art director, so I would have been the designer of the column, but I would’ve been working with a writer and working with an illustrator. But in combining all of those skills, I was sharpening my capabilities, but I was also training myself for this kind of repetitive monthly grind where it just became less of a grind. I remember the first year I was just stressed out all the time, and then suddenly it settled and it was not a stress anymore. And the column used to take me several days to do. And towards the end of that initial run, it would take me 24 hours to do the whole thing. And it just became a little more fine tuned. I really was able to pace myself. I knew what I needed to do. I knew what I needed to accomplish. And so you just anticipate what you need and then you do it.

Maurice Cherry:
How would you say your artistic style has evolved over the years?

George McCalman:
To answer your previous question, I do … And I’m answering both at the same time. I think I have developed a way of backing into the style. I often don’t know what style I’m going to do when I start something, and this book is evidence of that. I really just feel my way into what I was doing. The original column had a lot of different styles, but I basically invented a newspaper style because I wanted it to be stylized. I had to do things quickly, it had to be out of a economy of time. So I developed a shortcut of illustrating that for the longest time my contemporaries thought was my style. And then when I started working on the book, even close friends were like, “Oh, this is totally different from what you have been doing with the Chronicle.”

And I was like, “Yeah, this book is actually what my work is actually.” But I’ve been doing this shorter version of it for a while and it has just become what I’ve been known for. But the truth is I tend to start from scratch every single time, and I do it in my design world and whether I’m designing something, whether I am illustrating it, fine art, it is a brand new thing every time I’m sitting to do it, even if I’ve done it before. And so I’m considering all of the layers. I was like, what is best going to serve this story? Is it something that’s in pencil? Is it something that is in paint? Is it typography? I just think freshly about everything that I’m doing, and I throw out what has come before. I honor what has come before, but I don’t get stuck in the nostalgia of what I’m doing. I will throw everything out and start it up again if I think that that is the right thing to do.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the people that have really helped motivate and inspire you over the years?

George McCalman:
There are so many hidden figures in my life. The truth is, it’s not a lot of artists. The artists who inspire my work are not contemporary artists. They’re people that I grew up admiring. And where I find my inspiration is not really in other people, it’s in nature. The natural world really provides a lot of my motivation. But in terms of the people who have inspired they’re close family friends, they’re people I consider mentors in my life that have just always been many times the last few years where I’ve just admitted to my internal community, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just literally making this up. And there have been many times, there were many times that first year of launching out as an artist where there wasn’t a month that went by that I was like, “I don’t think this is going to work. I think I need to stop doing this. I don’t think I’m going to figure out how to make a living. I don’t think this is working.”

And no one person would let me do that. Everyone was just like, “Nope, nope, nope. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.” And I’m grateful for that because that the first year I was absolutely flabbergasted how I was going to make this thing work. And I could see the talent and I could see that there was something there, but how all the pieces fit together in terms of continuity and financial stability, I didn’t see it. And then I got the column and the column I didn’t give the context for. I started six months after I started being an artist. And that was the first light bulb where I was like, oh, I think I know how to package this work.

And then I started getting more assignments and then it just picked up from there. And there were many stages of the process where something else would happen and I’d think, “Oh, okay, yes, that’s how this fits in.” And, “Oh, right. And then I can do that.” And then when I got my book deal, I realized that my column had been training me to do this book and that I had certainly designed lots of books, but this was the first time that I was all things and that I’d been doing a version of that for the last few years. And so I had been prepping myself for this larger project that I think it would’ve been much harder to do if I had not been doing it. So I just started seeing how all the pieces were fitting together.

Maurice Cherry:
What do you appreciate the most about your life right now?

George McCalman:
That I get to do what I love. I am happy. I am as happy as a pig in shit. I feel really fortunate that I am passionately in love with the creative world that I’ve given myself. I get to work with all of the things and the skills that I’ve been given. And there’s so much I’ve learned over the years that I get to relearn and apply in a different way. And I’ve learned that I get bored really easily and I’m not bored by anything that I do right now, which tells me that I’m doing the right thing. Learning is an absolute essential part of what I do, and I place myself on the ground floor of everything that I do because I see myself as a student also. And so I remain energized by what I do. I have a genuine love of what I get to do on a daily basis.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing? What kind of projects do you want to work on? Where do you see yourself in the near future?

George McCalman:
I have to say I’m already doing what I see myself doing in another five years. I’m going to be making a lot of books. I’m designing a lot of books. I am making a lot of books. My next book is actually on the publishing industry. And I’m also starting to expand into three-dimensional spaces. I’m finishing up my first stint as an exhibition designer. I’m designing a museum show that is premiering in another few weeks in California and it’s a major show for a major artist by the name of Mike Henderson, as a black artist who is having a renaissance right now and he requested a black designer specifically. And the cultural aspects of design is something I’m really keyed to and always representing the black perspective so the people know that design is not neutral. I went to school and grew up hearing this fallacy that design is objective and neutral, and I know that it is not.

And so I teach in that way, I design in that way, I educate in that way, I work in that way. And so I just see more three-dimensional spaces. I see designing interiors, I see designing fully comprehensive experiences where you can see the two dimensionality of the design process in terms of type and art on the walls, but also the three dimensional aspect. The mood and the tone and the feeling of what you should be feeling, of what the average person can walk into a space and experience. That is what I’m going to be doing a lot of in coming days and weeks and years.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, your work, the book? Of course, we’ll put the book in the show notes, but where can people find out more information about you if they want to follow you?

George McCalman:
Well, the book itself, the book was published in late September of 2022, so it is everywhere. And the book, I’m really happy to share, has gone into its second printing.

Maurice Cherry:
Congratulations.

George McCalman:
Thank you. Thank you so much. The response has just been … It has been a very emotional few months as people … Because you make a thing as you know as a designer, but then you don’t really know how people are going to respond to it. And so I have just been amazed and rendered mute many times by the messages that I’ve received and the responses of the people that I’ve met out on the tour. And so this book is everywhere. You can get it at any bookstore, anywhere, all over the country. Of course, I always tell people to support their independent bookstores, so if you are buying it, you don’t have to buy it from the devil, Amazon. There are lots of local bookstores that would love to have your support. And as far as just my social media feed, all of it is the same, whether on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. It is McCalman.co. M-C-C-A-L-M-A-N-C-O, McCalman.co.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Sounds good. Well, George McCalman, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show for-

George McCalman:
Thank you so much. Thank you, Maurice.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. One, for just sharing your story of how you come into art and really studied it and then going on as an art director, but then also the process of the book. And I think to me, what is probably most important about this conversation is how you’ve taken that flame of creativity and found a way to really expand it out as far as you can into as many different places as possible. Like you’re teaching, you’re doing client work, you’ve got the book, you’re a columnist, and now I feel like this expansion into 3D space, even as you mentioned, definitely seems like the inevitable next step for where you’re going. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

George McCalman:
Your questions were incredibly thoughtful. I’m really grateful for your interest in talking to me, and thank you. That’s all I’m going to say. Thank you so much.

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Kamar Thomas

Every designer or artist wants to be able to make a living from their work, and this week’s guest embodies that desire. Generally, Kamar Thomas splits his time between being a design educator at two institutions — Centennial College and VCAD — but outside the classroom, he’s a prolific artist who specializes in vibrant oil paintings filled with deep meaning. He also just finished his first book, The Artist’s Creative Vision, which publishes this winter. Very nice!

Kamar started off talking about his teaching career, which also includes stints in the U.S. and Jamaica, and he talked about getting into art and painting as a kid before attending college at Wesleyan. He also spoke on the themes of the Black figure, masks, and abstraction in his work, his first gallery show this year, and what he ultimately wants to convey in his paintings. For Kamar, you can make art from wherever, and also have a great career!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, tell us who you are and what you do.

Kamar Thomas:
My name is Kamar Thomas. I am a fine art painter, primarily an artist. I’m also a professor at two colleges, Centennial College and Visual College of Art and Design. And lastly, because I have finished a manuscript, I will be an author of a book called The Artist’s Creative Vision.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Congratulations on the book.

Kamar Thomas:
Thank you, thank you. When it comes out, hopefully it does come out, I hope it makes an impact.

Maurice Cherry:
It will. I think every person’s book makes an impact, especially for the person who wrote it.

Kamar Thomas:
Especially for the person who wrote it.

Maurice Cherry:
Book aside, how has the summer been going so far?

Kamar Thomas:
The summer has been busy. I fill essentially three roles. I teach and I make and I write. And the summer is my season of making and writing, so I’ve had an exhibition in the summer. I’ve been going to museums quite a bit, and I’ve been just polishing up the manuscript, which is a whole long process in itself.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I see on the websites you’ve got the book here available for pre-order and everything. We’ll also make sure to put a link to it in the show notes so people can check that out.

Kamar Thomas:
Thank you. I’m very grateful. I need it.

Maurice Cherry:
What was your inspiration behind it?

Kamar Thomas:
It came from solving my own problem, which was I was a starving artist, and I didn’t want to be a starving artist anymore so the book is written to, if I can, eradicate that concept, get rid of the idea. And to solve that problem, it’s… The real issue is how does one come up with work consistently that people want to buy? Rather than just making and following the muse and blindly following inspiration.
And I sat down and I came up with a system. And by sat down, I mean with trial and error and teaching people and tried a few other method here and picking up things through teaching and applying them to myself. And the system is combine your interests with your biography, with art history, repeat. Eventually someone will buy.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds pretty simple.

Kamar Thomas:
Sounds pretty simple, just like saving money is simple, but it’s really difficult. Just like exercise is simple, but it’s hard.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Well, I want to get more into your work as an artist, but let’s talk about your work as a professor first. You mentioned teaching at two universities. You’re teaching at the Visual College of Art and Design; that’s in Edmonton, Alberta. And you’re teaching at Centennial College, which is in Toronto, which is on in Ontario. That’s east coast, west coast geographically. How do you balance teaching at both of those schools?

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, balance is a strong word. Let’s just say… What’s the word? Manage. Balance supplies. For a season, there is teaching Visual College of Art and Design is online, and their classes are two to three hours long. And I fit them in the schedule where I can. And I teach at Centennial in person; I’m full-time there. And that schedule is largely immutable. The meetings have to happen, the classes have to happen, and I have to physically be there. And so it’s just a matter of systematizing and being rather ruthless with what I say yes to and being very hands on with the planning. I spend a significant portion of time just planning just 20 minutes here and there. I think if I added it up over the week, it would be at least an hour and a half just on planning what I’m going to do with the time that I have.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, it’s good that you manage both of them because it sounds like one’s online, one’s in person, but then the schedules don’t seem to really cross over either, so that’s pretty good.

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah. If it’s one thing I’ve learned from teaching, it’s systematize. If you repeat anything, figure out the best way to repeat it rather than having to make yourself figure it out each time.
I have a complicated system of things coming into my inbox to moving to a… I gather up a place, I put them in a folder, and then once a day I go in the folder, I put those into the planner ,and the the next day I get out a physical piece of paper and I write down the things from the planner. And I keep it on my person so I won’t have to keep checking the planner. And then somewhere on the paper on my person, I have somewhere to put the new stuff coming in so nothing really slips through the cracks. Some things do, but for the most part, 90%, 95% do not.
The same with art; a system that you can go back to, that you can rely on to produce results is much better than inspiration-based or client-based. It’s more of if you have a method of working, you go, you consult the system. I do this. Let me check art history. What do I have inspired there? Let me draw something from my biography. Go.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s interesting, I didn’t really realize that about teaching myself until I started teaching. Which when I was in college, I would always have professors that would… They wouldn’t necessarily repeat themselves, they’d always just tell you it’s in the syllabus. It’s like, “It’s in the syllabus. I put it in the syllabus.” And I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Then when I started teaching, I was like, I get it, because the syllabus is like your system. You put everything in there, and it’s up to the student whether they read it or not. If they don’t read it, it’s not your fault. You put it in the syllabus. They should have read it.

Kamar Thomas:
Correct. It not only has everything, it has when everything is going to happen and it has how you expect it to happen and it has the consequences of if they don’t happen.

Maurice Cherry:
Yep. And then the students get mad when they’re like, “Well, I didn’t read the syllabus.” Well, that’s your problem. The syllabus is the key to the system for me, so I get it.

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah. That’s exactly right.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you’ve been a teacher for awhile now. Not just with these two colleges, but you’ve taught in Canada, you’ve taught in Jamaica, you’ve taught in United States. What do you learn from your students? Are there any differences between students in different countries and stuff?

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, there sure are. In Jamaica, the difference in students in Jamaica, I was teaching high school. And the difference really… Well, what would have made the difference there is finances, it’s money. A lot of the issues could be solved by a few dollars here and there. The main challenges I was up against was actual art materials, was the space to make the art, was the resources. Once you have the money, those problems are solved.
In the United States, when I became a professor, the problem I faced the most was a problem of agency. And that I loosely define as is this thing for me? The students, a lot of them didn’t feel like making art was… Nevermind being possible, it’s possible, but just for someone else. And so a lot of my teaching was geared towards having students not only believe that it’s for them, but making projects that reinforce that belief. And there are very few things more encouraging than a few dollars in your bank account.
In Canada, it is the students I teach now, it is a equivalent of a community college. And the students I teach are adults, and they want to be professionals, and they need tangible results. The difference in Canada is students are a little more responsible because they’re a little school older. But they just need the resources. They need to know when and where what’s happening. A lot of my job is just finding things for my students to enter, finding outlets for them.
In Jamaica, it is a straight financial barrier. In the US, it is a problem of agency a lot of the time. And in Canada now, it’s a matter of finding and connecting the students to the resources.

Maurice Cherry:
I found when I talked to some educators here in the States that teach at HBCUs, it’s a combination of those things that you mentioned. If they’re teaching on HBCUs, it’s often the lack of funds and resources as well as the agency, depending on what program it is or how many people are in the department and such. It’s interesting how the problems scale based on not just country, but also just where you’re teaching and the students that you’re teaching, the type of students you’re teaching.

Kamar Thomas:
That’s correct. The agency is a rather complicated problem because it’s not an individual problem. You can’t really solve it by one student, you have to get the whole class to want to do well. And as a result, the individual will do well within that, so you have to set the expectation and then you have tom in a way, make it known that what they’re doing is hard, and it’s supposed to be hard, and see if you can get them on board for the difficulty. It’s a really delicate dance. But the US, that was the problem I faced, and hopefully I rose to the challenge. And I apologize to the students if I have not.

Maurice Cherry:
Do your students take you up on office hours?

Kamar Thomas:
Yes, they do. Because drawing is a bit like singing where it’s your voice, with drawing it’s your hand, it feels, and it’s your art, it’s what you are trying to say, a lot of the things that I give in class, it feels like I’m attacking them personally. They take up the office hours to tell me that I shouldn’t have attacked them personally. And then we have sessions to show them, no, it’s not you, it’s understanding of the subject matter that we’re doing is not quite there yet. This is what you’re doing. You’re over here. I need you to get to here.
An example of that would be I’m teaching measuring things, just measuring, and I’m I say, “You draw a line, a straight line, a perfectly vertical line and then you measure every other angle from that.” If I say picture a 90 degree angle, you have that in your head. If you cut that in half, you have a 45 degree angle. If you’re looking at a line, you can guess what that angle is because you know what 90 is and you know what 45 is. If it’s below 45, you can say, “Oh, that’s about 30,” et cetera.
And what students do, they don’t do that, they just guess. They just put it down, it looks right, and they come to office hours and say, “Hey, you were picking on me.” And I said, “I knew you guessed because you immediately put down something before attempting… Before I even finished the sentence.” Yeah, they take up office hours, they get extra time at the beginning.
Now, at the advanced level, when they’re about to graduate, they want to know if there’s a gallery showing, which ones I should contact. If there’s an art festival, how do I get in? What do I do now? I’m about to be out there. What do I do now? And I have a whole packet for them. I have what’s the steps that they take. What are the expectations? I break out the spreadsheet. Rent is $1,500. If you sell for $500, you need to sell three every month. You need to contact 10 people every month as a result. It’s 30 days in a month. If you do one every other day, you’ll get to 10; three of them might buy. And if you do this over a year, you won’t run out of money. That’s what my office hours are for.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, back when I was teaching… Oh my goodness, this might have been over 10 years ago. I started off teaching in person, and then I asked to be moved to teach online because my students were wearing me out. One, well, my students were all older than me, and so a lot of them tried to think that they would punk me because they’re like, “You’re my son’s age.” And I’m like, “So? I will fail you if you don’t get these assignments right.” Some of them would ask me to… They would bring their kids to class and they would try to use office hours as babysitting. They would have their kid come to office hours. And I’m like, “Where’s your mom?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” What am I supposed to do? I’m not running daycare over here. And I asked to be moved online because I was like, I can’t keep coming out here and fooling what y’all doing this stuff.
And online is just different because the students just have to have more discipline. And again, this was 10 years ago, pre-pandemic. Now where I think everyone’s used to doing virtual work. Just trying to get them to have the discipline to just say something in the forum, just participate in class. Because there was a participation element to their grade. And then when they have office hours, it’s just like, “Well what can I do to make up for the time that I wasn’t speaking?” I’m like, “You can’t. You can’t make up participation. There’s no extra credit for participation. You didn’t speak up. That was it.” Trying to do anything they could just to pass. I would have students that would try to justify why they thought it was okay cheating because the class was online. And if the class wasn’t online and Wikipedia wasn’t there, then why would it be available as a resource? They’re very creative.
I was teaching a… It was basically principles of web development to business students, which was probably why they were so duplicitous, because it wasn’t design students, they were business majors that just needed a credit. They didn’t really care to learn, they were just like, “What can I do to get past you?” Essentially. And it would be just so disheartening because I would have students that would fail my class two and three times coming back doing the same stuff, and it’s like, “Do you want me to just pass you out of pity? Because it’s getting there. It’s hurting me to see you doing the same stuff. The assignment has not changed from semester to semester. I would think you would be better at it because you’ve done it before.” Yeah,. I do miss teaching though, I just don’t miss all of that, I don’t miss all of that.

Kamar Thomas:
Some people you’re not going to get when you are in… What is it? The lower school levels of everybody, and everybody’s decent. But as soon as you go to high school and you’re high school as 2,000 people, you know at least one or two crazy people, just absolute… You see them, you cross the street.
In teaching, some people it might be they might not make it. It might be that they, for whatever reason, their motivation, they’re unwilling to do the work; and that’s fine. I do my absolute best to not take it in any way personal. I actually take it as a point of pride to produce the same professionalism, no matter what the student comes with. And I treat them extra, extra nice just to make the D or the E that they’re about to get a bit more palatable. But I’m-

Maurice Cherry:
Wait, did you say D or E?

Kamar Thomas:
Listen, there’s no time machine. You’re going to fail this class. It’s over for you.

Maurice Cherry:
Wait, wait. There’s a grade that’s a E?

Kamar Thomas:
There’s a F.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, okay.

Kamar Thomas:
It exists, but I explain in great detail, the grades that are coming, and I explain the connection. And I try and point out what they can do next time, provided and they take it again. And I make it really long, and it takes a long time for me to do it. When they come back the next time I say, “Remember that long list I sent you? You haven’t done it. You showed up when there was three weeks remaining in the semester and you were asking me to perform a miracle, but I am merely a teacher. I am not the Lord. I cannot turn the water into wine. I’m sorry, I can’t make time return itself.” If you plan on making it, you have to come to a certain number of them to get participation. A lot of it is merely giving people the benefit of the doubt that they’ll try again and not taking it personally. And I’m going to be honest; it’s been really difficult.

Maurice Cherry:
I can imagine. I can imagine.

Kamar Thomas:
It’s very, very difficult. But again, systematize. I’ve seen it before now. I’m actually mad if it bothers me at all when I see the second time. I always think you’ve seen this before. You really [inaudible 00:21:30]. You see it’s not the first person that has come in three weeks before. Go look for the three weeks before folder, search to your computer. Oh, here it is. Oh yeah, this is what I said. Got it. And then I go and set out the template.
And that way, again, because in the US, agency was the problem, I always wanted to preserve the idea that this person felt like what I was teaching was theirs. And so I would try and be excruciatingly kind, the kind of understanding, “Oh, you’re still going to fail, but it’s an understanding fail.” It’s with love, it’s with kindness, it’s with accountability. And I think if the students have changed me in any way, I’ve become way more understanding and way more empathetic. Still going to failure you, though, but way more empathetic.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I get it. Sometimes I know students are going through a lot, and you try to do as much as you can. You want to get them to the level where they hopefully are understanding and doing it for themselves, and then sometimes you just don’t have that. But I think as educators, you and I both realize that it comes with the territory.

Kamar Thomas:
Unfortunately, yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s switch gears here a little bit and talk more about you. I think, as folks can probably tell by now with the quiet storm voice, that you’re from Jamaica. Tell me what it was like growing up there.

Kamar Thomas:
I’m from port Antonio in Jamaica. Place called Boundbrook, which is near the town of Port Antonio. Yeah, it’s called Stony Hill. As the name suggests there are stones. It’s a hill in areas. Not forest. There are trees, lots of them. There are dogs wandering on your properties. That’s your dog now. My neighbors knew all of my business. It’s a small place and it’s…
My parents, man, they did a great job. They did what they were supposed to do. And as a result, I felt like I could… Not only was I supposed to do well in school, but it was like, yeah, when I pass any exams and I come home with some a good report, all right, that’s nice, but we were expecting this. And that environment, I think, is what I credit for my trying so hard at anything.
Growing up there, our national heroes are all Black people. Every teacher I ever had was a woman. The prime minister was a woman at the time. When I came to the US and the term African American or Black had anything negative attached to it, I was very, very surprised, to say the least, because we don’t really have any negative connotations towards a Black identity in Jamaica at all when I was growing up. Things may have changed. But when I was growing up, we didn’t.
I come to the US and, oh. In Jamaica, you’re a man, and you come to the US, you’re a Black man. What does that mean? And my work is a direct result of trying to answer that question exactly. What does that mean exactly? And the answer for me was to expand what I think Black identity is, to expand what identity is in general. And to do that, I make a whole bunch of paintings that refer to my identity on the one hand, but also does so in a more abstract way. I make a whole bunch of paintings that are abstract, but they’re real, and I’m trying to say identity is abstract and also real.

Maurice Cherry:
When did you first get into art and painting?

Kamar Thomas:
Ah, so that is a really good question. In Jamaica, we have, when we leave school, they’re called Caribbean examination council exams. Everything is exam-based. And I took art in these exams, and I got just a little bit below the best, so I was into art in high school.
As a profession, absolutely not. That’s not in the tables. That’s not a thing. It was at my university I met my painting professor; her name was Tula Telfair. She was born Capon. She had long hair. She wore Prada dresses. I don’t know if it was Prada dresses, I just know these dresses were expensive. And she got oil paint on them and it didn’t bother her. And she drove an Audi, a blue one that sounded like a hair dryer. And she could paint quite a bit.
And I was thinking to myself, I understand being a professor pays, but you’re not buying an Audi from professor money. And I actually asked her, I got up courage, “Hey man, how you sell these paintings? How does this work?” And she’s like, “Well, you have to get very, very good and go take the classes you need. And we can talk about it when you get into the class.” And I did. I took the classes that was needed. And while I was painting with her, she just treated me and all the other students as if we were already professionals.
Now, to many people, she was mean, but it’s a very specific thing where she wants you to be ready. As soon as you step out, she wants you to be already ready. And so she would come into this studio and say if she were a curator and she gave me a show, she’d take it back immediately. I need to be painting way more than this, and then just leave me to contemplate what she just said. She would come in and just really treat me like an equal, to be honest, treat me like, “Look, when you graduate, nobody going to know what this is. This is not fun and games. You really need to be making the work consistently and professionally.” And somewhere along the line, it just happened that I felt like I was a professional. It was very gradual, but a few well placed curse words got it into my head that one should be a professional, treat it you would like any other job. It was really in college.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s get back more into you, into your background. Was your family really supportive of you getting into art?

Kamar Thomas:
That is such an interesting question. Supportive is a strong, strong word. My father is an EMT, and before that he was a fireman. He’s out here saving lives. My mom was the secretary to the dean of a college in Jamaica. This serious working people. And they send their son to America definitely not to paint, definitely not.
I’m there. Initially, I was doing physics, and it went okay, but I decided, okay, if I attack the painting with the same consistency I was doing physics, I might be able to make it work. And I, behind their back, just major in art. Don’t tell nobody. Get down to business. And it’s time to graduate now. And I call them up and I go, “Hey, the graduation is nice, but it’s me and 700 people. Nobody cares. Why don’t you come to this thing I’m having called an exhibition?” And they came and I made some sales, but I told the people, “Could you wait and give me the money in the exhibition so that my parents could see that I’m out here making it?” And they did. And they’ve been supportive ever since.
They’ve been supportive of me as a person, but because I hid it initially from them, as an artist, after I graduated, they were on board. And they have the ordinary fears. All parents are afraid that their children will perpetually depend on them until they’re 60. Parents live like, “When are you going to grow up?” And once I demonstrated that I got this, I’m fine, then they were very happy. Then it was like, all right, relax, mom. You don’t have to tell this lady that’s doing your nails. Then it’s a matter of holding them back right.
But before that, if you’re an artist listening, your parents are afraid you are going to be broke. Avoid it at all costs and you will be supported. And then you’ll have the problem of having them… Telling them to relax on the support a little bit.

Maurice Cherry:
What made you decide to go to Wesleyan for school?

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, so I got into medical school in Jamaica. Got into the University of the West Indies. I’m 17 years old applying to things, my dad’s an EMT I saw those medical books. And my dad has been going on, ambulances, picking people up, so I was barely familiar with what medicine actually means. And I thought to myself at 17 years old, nah, can’t do that.
And I was in this program for… I don’t want to say gifted. It was the Association of Quietly Excellent Scholars and Thinkers, AQUEST was the name of it. Just a group of people who met. And they said, “Apply to some colleges in the US. They give scholarships.” And I applied to a few and a few said yes. And I picked Wesleyan because it gave the most.
I went blindly with not very much information. These are the days of, of course, paper applications and paying for internet at internet cafes for half an hour at a time. The kinds of research that people do today, not possible. The virtual tours and the flying in and doing it, that’s not a thing. It’s you see a name, all right, it’s in Connecticut. How much of a flight is that? Okay. All right, apply, see what happens. And what happened was they called me and said, “Hey, you’ve been accepted.” And I go, “Great. What does that mean?” “It means you’re going to get a visa and come and you live here before.” “Oh, all right.” It was more of I need to get an education, and medicine at 17, at 18 is rough. That choice was too difficult, so let me go to a liberal arts school and figure out another path.

Maurice Cherry:
And what was that path? Of course, it was art, but tell me about that.

Kamar Thomas:
Initially, it was physics. In general, I really like excellence of any kind, but I really was into all of the great physicists, Faraday and Einstein and Niels Bohr. I read these people’s biography. I loved the mathematician, Riemann’s hypothesis. I was reading that. I was just in the library reading up about people, with their mind, with their head, they were doing things. And that kind of a thing was impressive to me because I’m nearsighted so physical feats, they were impressive, but they were hard. I wasn’t going to catch anybody. Got glasses and sorted that out. But what really wowed me was sitting into the library and reading. Wait a minute, this guy, Newton, came up with the theory of gravity and figure out white light is made up of all the other colors and invented calculus, and then he turned 26. Whatever he’s doing, I need to have some of this. These people were what were impressive people to me.
And then I went to college and I found out what professional physics was, which is you write some code and you run a model and then you refine the code and then you run the model. If you are a professor and you’re at the end, if you can manage a tenure position, you have a grad student write parts of the code and run the model. It’s not this romantic notion of sitting down and solving the kinds of universal questions I was hoping for. It was more of can you learn to code? And can you learn the math? And can you learn the math to tell it to code?
And so I figured that out around my second year when it was time to decide a major. And I was doing some drawing and I said, “If I actually flipped a coin, flipped it, heads, I stay with physics, tails, I go with arts.” It was tails. I then went, “This can’t be real,” so I went online and I took a random question answer generator, and it ended up with art as well. I said, “All right, I’ll go with art.”

Maurice Cherry:
What?

Kamar Thomas:
That’s what it was. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
You just left it up to chance, huh?

Kamar Thomas:
Left it up. Because again, I figured… Let me put it in perspective.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Kamar Thomas:
There was a guy in my classroom, his name is Zin Lin. He was from Burma. He skipped both levels of calculus, and multi-variable calculus, and was the TA of the physics class while he was taking it. And there was fives Zin Lins in my class of 20 people. And there are people who they’ve been doing physics so long, they are as good at physics as Mozart is as good at music. These people are good, good. You’re not going to catch them in your lifetime.
And I was working an extreme amount just to… I would get 92%, and that would be a B because somebody got 108% and the A was moved up to 108%. It’s this kind of environment where the effort I’m putting in, I’m thinking if I apply this work ethic to basket weaving, I’m going to have some amazing baskets.
And again, I was already doing… It’s not a random pick, it was something that I was already doing. I was taking languages, and I’m doing art at the same time, art and art history all at the same time. And I figure if I threw myself at this art the way I’m doing at physics, I’m going to be all right, I’m going to be cool. And that’s why I was comfortable leading up to chance. For those listening, that’s not wise. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. If you already have an arena of proven work ethic, go for it. But if not, then put some more thought.

Maurice Cherry:
You’re attending Wesleyan, you’re majoring in art, and you graduated. After you graduated, you ended up going back to Jamaica for a while, and then you ended up coming back to the States. Tell me about that time.

Kamar Thomas:
I graduated, and I just couldn’t come up with the money to move to New York so I stayed near that the school and worked at a little supermarket, sold paintings and again realized… really figured out that I don’t have a gallery, I don’t have a curator backing me. I have no critics looking at my work. I’m just a guy out here, but I need to eat. And so I would, for jobs that I was applying to that were arts related, I would send them what I was working on and just let them know that I painted as well and let them know what it was about very quickly. And many of them would respond, and I wouldn’t get the job, but they’d buy a painting or they’d refer me to somebody else, and they would buy a painting. I figured out pretty early, if you tell people, they will buy.
Then, of course, my visa expired and I had return to Jamaica where I was hired as an art teacher at my old high school. Taught 8, 9, 10th, and 11th grade. And then after that, while I’m in art school, I’m doing the same thing I did, just whenever I had to email somebody or whenever I met someone and I took their number, I just told them that I painted. And it worked the same way in the US, it worked in Jamaica. Somebody was like, “You paint. I never met an artist before.” Said, “Well, now you have. Would you send them what I’ve done?” And I sold paintings. And people would pay me in installments, so they’d pay a little this week and then another bit next week in Jamaica, and that allowed me to save up the money to apply to graduate school. Came to graduate school, did pretty much the same thing. And I’ve been doing it since.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, it seems like you always had your eye on the prize when it comes to that, which is good. Even though you were doing other things like teaching and stuff, you still were telling yourself and other people, “I am an artist.”

Kamar Thomas:
Yes. I think around half of the battle is just showing up and making the work and committing to telling people. Around half, which seems like an exceptionally large percent but the thing is, if you continually tell people, you are going to need to show them something that you’ve told them about, which is going to make you want to continue to paint. And the more you paint, the more you want to tell people, and it starts this virtuous cycle of making something, talking about it. And the more you talk about it, the more you make, the more you make, the more you talk about it.

Maurice Cherry:
But it’s also just keeping that dream in the forefront. It’s not about having whatever the weight of reality or the weight of the world kill that idea for you. You still had it in the front of your mind, I am an artist, I am an artist. You’re telling people, you’re doing it. I think that’s just a powerful thing for people to keep in mind as they go through whatever it is they’re going through as part of their creative journey; keep the dream at the forefront and keep striving towards that.

Kamar Thomas:
I was raised as a rather religious person, and in the church, they have daily bread. They have daily readings, daily Bible texts. And as a young child, this is bothersome. This is a problem. You’re up every day? kind of a thing. And I applied that same concept to my artwork, which is the daily reminders and daily things and daily… not affirmations, but something entirely dedicated to reminding me that I can probably be better but also looking back at what I’ve already done to give myself the permission to just do a little bit more. All around my house, I have all kinds of… Well, I have paintings that I’ve made, so I see them every day.
But I also have whiteboards here and there. And I’ll write a quote that I want to keep repeating. And one of them, the most recent one I have written is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. I didn’t realize that that’s where that came from until you asked me that question, but it’s the idea that you have to do something every day to remind, to get yourself to do it so that inevitably when you don’t feel like doing it, you’ve had 47 days of reminding yourself of the importance and looking back at what you’ve done so much, for how much you’ve done so far. And you eventually will just keep making stuff just because you’re in the habit of reminding yourself.
The same with exercise. I haven’t really missed a workout in years. And when I have to miss one, I feel it because when I get up, I exercise. I don’t even think about it. I get up, I exercise, them’s the rules. The same, I get up, I exercise, and before I leave, I have to see this thing that I wrote down with my hand. I’m surrounded by paintings that I like, so it’s a constant reminder. I think that’s really key when you’re pursuing something that is a creative risk, to constantly and regularly remind yourself and encourage yourself because outside is not going to do it. There is no reassurance coming. You have to provide it for yourself.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s get more into your particular art style and your process. Based on what I can see from your website, I feel like after you came back to the States from Jamaica, this is when you really started to come into your own as an artist, not just in words, but in deeds as well by the actual paintings that you’ve created. Tell me about your process. What inspires you to make the art that you do in this fashion?

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, so the main inspiration was the difference of being a Black man from Jamaica to the US and trying to work out what identity means and trying to make something that says it’s a little bit more complicated than you think. And what changed in graduate school was I more clearly could articulate what the art was supposed to do and I could use better metaphors. I could talk about it better is really what changed. And talking about it better is a function of thinking about it better and more clearly.
The change I want to make was I want someone to look at whatever identity they occupy as something that’s within their control. That sentence took two years of making artwork that I didn’t like to figure out. It took two years of trial and error and critiques in graduate school.
And once you have a clear direction, then I choose from the tools that are available to me. Oil paint I can paint really realistically or I can paint really abstractly or I can use technology to manipulate how an audience interacts with that artwork. And I make series of paintings that are somewhere between really abstract or close to realistic to walk people painting by painting through the idea that your identity can also be… Sure, it can be tangible, it can be reifined, it can be reaffirmed, but it’s also changeable by you. What changed in graduate school was I refined the message a lot more.

Maurice Cherry:
And now you have a connection with one of our other guests on the show, Bennie F. Johnson. He’s the executive director currently of AIGA. How did you two connect?

Kamar Thomas:
After I graduated but before I graduated, a parent of one of the students graduating was walking by the cafeteria, and they had some paintings of mine in there. And she Googled me and contacted me and said, “Hey, I’m in the art business. I’d like to have a conversation.” And we had that conversation. And she introduced me to Bennie. And we went down to DC and I painted Bennie and his wife and hung out with his kids. Wow, those kids must be grown by now that I’m thinking about it, probably. He was really little boy and really little girl, but now they must be big.
Yeah. I made two paintings of him and his wife. And I actually painted their face with face paint with the kids. But the kids are just rough with the face paint while stabbing daddy with the paint brush. I’m like, “You have to be gentle. Just paint a little bit at a time.” And just attacking his face. And same, his wife Akira, I believe is her name, [inaudible 00:46:26], painted her as well I painted them both. I painted a pair of paintings, and I delivered it. And I believe it’s still in their home to this day. It was a lovely experience, and I thanked them for trusting me to do that.

Maurice Cherry:
He texted me the photos. They’re really something. I know the photos don’t do justice to your work, but they’re really striking

Kamar Thomas:
Again, remember I’m from Jamaica, I’m from this hill in Jamaica.

Maurice Cherry:
Stone Hill.

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, Stony Hill. Washington, DC may as well be Mars. It may as well be a different planet. This is a place where people work in the government and people talk about the Capitol. And people are like, the president’s going to be… White House down there, and this is an Anacostia. And this is professional. He’s driving around and telling me about all this, and my world is expanding. And I thank him quite a lot for that, just telling me about the history of the place and the residents that were there and the kinds of just work that people do.

Maurice Cherry:
Actually, Bennie wanted me to ask you a question. When I talked with him, I told him I was interviewing you. He’s like, “Oh yeah,” and he texted me the photos. Bennie wanted me to ask you about how you use the Black figure and abstraction in your work.

Kamar Thomas:
Yes. When I came to college in 2008, around ’08, ’09-ish was when occupy Wall Street happened. And it was activisty, activist town, activist everything. I arrived in the United States in 2014. And if I remember correctly, that was when one of the first big public police shootings happened. It was just bam, I stepped out of the airport, and then the shooting happened. It was on TV. And it was very much in the air, the making of work that was overtly describing the Black experience as well as it is lived by many in the United States. And I said to myself, “They don’t need anymore negative portrayals of Black people.” I understand, I get it fully what’s happening, but I think… What’s his name? Do you know the book Between the World and Me?

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Yeah.

Kamar Thomas:
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Yeah. If I’m a writer, he got it. He nailed it. He got it. I don’t need to write another one like that. I think he has it. I said the same with my paintings. I think when I look through what’s being made right now, I think they got it. I don’t think if I say something, it will be nearly as impactful as if I really focus on this idea of agency, of mutability, of aspiration. And I think now more than ever is when it’s needed.
Never say never, but for the most part, I look at the Black figure… I want, when I’m an old man and my memory’s going in the art history books, they see images of representation that are complex, that are layered, that are nuanced, that are not only in relationship to whiteness, that are exploring the same way every other artist gets to explore. And so that’s how I use the Black figure. Complicated. Take its place, like everybody else.

Maurice Cherry:
Masks are a regular theme in a lot of your work. Tell me about that.

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah. Masks are a metaphor that I return to. And masks in the Caribbean… In Toronto, they recently had this big carnival called Caribana. It’s where one gets to put on a mask and put on a costume and go outside and essentially simulate sex through dancing, essentially, to a beat. And that’s only acceptable if you’re wearing this costume. You can’t just do this at your day job. You can’t pull up to accounts receivable and start doing this behavior.
And I use and I think about masks in that way. It allows you to occupy an identity that gives you privileges, that gives you the ability to act in a way that you ordinarily wouldn’t. And you don’t have to keep it forever. You can change it. And so masks, as a notion of identity is look, of course you are who you are, you’re born or you’re born, but if, when it comes to making art, if you view all of it as yours and like you’re supposed to be there, suddenly where you take influence from is much wider. If you view that the creative production is for you, then telling people about it is not that big a deal. If you think that you are supposed to be passing this class, that your identity is, yeah, pass classes. Then chances are, you’re going to work to pass that class.
Masks are this wonderful metaphor that I keep going back to, I keep finding nuances. Mask can conceal things. You can put it on, you can rob somebody, you can get away with it. Masks can review things. You can wear a mask for ritual purposes to act in ways to enter into states like trances, to enter into states, well, at carnival, et cetera. And masks, with the pandemic, went from being something to protect other people from getting infected with COVID to protecting yourself, to being a status symbol, to… The meaning of it changed over time, so I’ve been fascinated by this concept of masks.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you talked earlier about this exhibition that you had recently. How did it go? Tell me about it.

Kamar Thomas:
It went okay. What I did was I rented a gallery and just paid them the rent for a week and told as many people as I could about it. And people came and purchased the work. It was undertaking because when you pay for the gallery, you have to do everything. You have to show up and hang the work and sweep out the gallery and paint the wall and nail in the painting onto the wall and set up the lights. But from a introducing Toronto to my work perspective, it went swimmingly because one does it. I can show you better than I can tell you. It was a matter of inviting people. Many of them were new to Toronto. And I sell my art mostly to people who have never really bought art before, so it was a great success in that way. I got many, many people who didn’t even think of themselves as people who buy artwork to buy art and to think about it.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s awesome, that’s awesome. I’m glad that it was really successful for you in that way.

Kamar Thomas:
Thank you, thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
Are you planning on doing another exhibition this year? Or surely in the future, you’re planning on doing something.

Kamar Thomas:
In the future, yes. My time for the next couple months is taken up with the book and with… I’m going to be the coordinator of the program I’m teaching at Centennial, so it’s a lot of emails and a lot of tours and a lot of interviews, et cetera is coming up.
But next year I’m planning to… I’ll be painting the whole time. Next year, I have anywhere from five to 10 exhibitions that I’m putting into the calendar. But I’m going to be producing the work to get that done now next year, 2023, by January, the book will be out. By March, I’ll have at least one exhibition. By June, I’ll have another. By July, I’ll have another. By August, I’ll have another. And if my papers are right, I might have one or two in Jamaica as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, you got a plan. That’s good.

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah, I have a plan, but saying man makes plans, God laughs, because COVID really.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, well, that’s true, that’s true.

Kamar Thomas:
Here there’s a whole monkeypox coming on the scene.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Kamar Thomas:
We can’t get a break in this century.

Maurice Cherry:
What is it that you ultimately want to convey with your work?

Kamar Thomas:
Yeah. Ultimately, I want people to see art as something that is for everybody. And I want them to see it as a decent job. Now, will you get rich doing it? Probably not. That being said, will you get rich doing anything? Probably not. It’s not more difficult than anything else.
I want people with looking at my work to understand and think through their identity as something that they get to pick. I want to overall increase agency in the world. Increase not just confidence, but the idea of possibility.
My largest challenge is getting students to not just believe that they can do what I’m asking, but that they’re supposed to do what I’m asking, and they’re supposed to do it well. If you look at identity, there is… I think Ben Akerlof, he’s an economist, and he says identity is one of the most significant economic decisions that someone can make. That means when you pick your identity, you pick what clothes you’re going to buy, you pick what shoes you wear, what colleges you can get into, what person you can marry, what neighborhood you’re going to live. And I want people, after having consumed my work, see the significance of those decisions and see that they have much more agency over them. They have way more power.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at your younger self, let’s say your 16 year old self, when you look back at him, what advice would you give him?

Kamar Thomas:
Oh man, that’s such a really good question. At 16 years old, I was honestly not listening to nobody. You weren’t going to tell me I’m not going to be pretty good at physics. You weren’t going to tell me I’m not going to be pretty good at anything.
At 16 years old, well, I would actually say go to the dance, is what I would say. When I was in college, they had these things called winter dances. And I was a member of the ASA, African Student Association, and they had a dance. And every year they would ask me, “Just come practice for the dance and do it on the night.” And I would go, “No, I have to paint. I have this problem set to do.” And I never did the dance, never did the dances because, again, your undergraduate was so hard I never did them.
And it was in graduate school I realized how much I missed by not doing the dance, how much outside of class relationships I could have formed if I did the dance, if I just went through the thing and practiced and maybe gotten 98% instead of 100%. You still get an A. I realized at that time, because when I started selling paintings, I realized the need and the importance of human relationships. That’s most of life. Life is group work, is what life is.
I would tell my 16 year old self, A, just go to the dance. Sure, be focused, but you don’t have to be all that focused. Go to the dance. You will have a good time. You’ll form human connections. And when they need help, you’re going to be able to help them. And when you need help, they’re going to be able to help you. But go to the dance is what I would say.

Maurice Cherry:
At this stage of where you’re at in your career as a painter, as an educator, now as an author, how do you define success?

Kamar Thomas:
Yes. I was talking to someone earlier about this concept. I woke up when I was 26 years old and I realized that I had all that I wanted. I wanted to be a painter, and that’s what I did most of the time, most of my days. I applied for a professor job, and I was working as a professor at 26.
Success for me was spending my time doing and utilizing God’s gifts as they have been bestowed to me. And I can learn pretty quickly and I can teach fairly well and I can paint, and I do all of these with most of my time. Success is doing or using the gifts that you have for most of your time. Doesn’t have to be all the time now. We all have to pay taxes and commute to work; most of the time. And for me, I have all I want.

Maurice Cherry:
Given that, and you’ve sort of, I guess, already teased this out a little bit, but where do you see yourself in the next five years? What work do you want to be doing? Any bigger projects or anything like that?

Kamar Thomas:
Whenever I run into any new medium, I try and figure it out and do a project in that medium. Now I’m looking into AR, so Instagram filters and Snapchat filters, provided Snapchat still alive as a company. Those are the kinds of AR that everyone would be familiar with. Augmented reality is what AR stands for. And I’m thinking that this can be a really strong addition to my work. And I’m thinking if I can figure this out, if I can learn that small bit of code… I’m taking a class here and there. In four or five years, I will have two, three projects tying technology and the art that I’m doing.
When I moved in Quebec, all of my friends were concept artists, and they worked in the entertainment industry designing monsters and trying to tell stories. And a part of my job now as a professor is I found myself helping people become illustrators and helping them learn to design those monsters. And as such, I’m looking at them watching much more stories, so there might be some short films in the mix. There might be some form of narrative in the mix.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and about your work and everything online?

Kamar Thomas:
You can find me at kamarthomas.com, or you can find me on Instagram at O-H-K-A-M-A-R. As mentioned earlier, I was a flowery languaged young man, and I got the sentence, “Oh, Kamar,” quite a bit so I made that my Instagram handle. And you can find me at those two places primarily, or if you type my name, Kamar Thomas, into Google, I am proud to say you will find me.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Kamar Thomas, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. One, I think just like your energy, you really just come across as very self-assured and cool as well as artistic. But I think also just telling your story of coming from Jamaica and always putting your artwork and the work that you’re doing and who you are as an artist at the forefront as you’ve went through life I think, one, it’s granted you the success that you have now, but I think it’s just a really great example to set for others out there that can hopefully do the same thing. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Kamar Thomas:
Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a privilege and an honor.

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Brian A. Thompson

When Dian Holton told me that a Black designer was behind the new $100 bill, I had to reach out and have him on Revision Path. I mean, how often are you able to talk to someone who’s design work is literally seen all around the world? (You might even have it in your wallet right now!)

While we couldn’t go into specifics about the whole US banknote process. Brian and I had a great conversation about his inspiration as a banknote designer, and he talked about how he got into the field right out of college. He also spoke on how having Asperger’s is a design superpower for him, and shared information on the latest project he just finished called “Colors That Heal.” Brian is true living design history, and I’m so glad to have the opportunity to share his story with you all!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Brian A. Thompson:
My name is Brian Thompson. I’m a senior journeyman banknote designer at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I’ve been there 32 years. Yeah, 32 years, but now I’m the old guy. I used to be the young guy at 19. I think I was the second youngest to be employed there but now I’m the old guy.

Maurice Cherry:
How has this year been going for you so far?

Brian A. Thompson:
It’s been different because of the pandemic but the work is still intense, and it still requires the same focus.

Maurice Cherry:
How have you changed over the past year? Have there been any lessons that you’ve learned? And this can be work-wise or personal, anything like that.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yes. It’s not that I never took life seriously, but you have a better time looking at yourself in the mirror and looking at what you need to change. I think this is probably the most relaxed time I’ve ever had while working because I’m able to balance out the different stresses and things, and the anxieties that come with work of this nature. It’s very intense. I’ve said this through interviews before that doing banknote design is like putting together the most difficult puzzle you can put together in your life, and I’m finding that I had an opportunity to look at every piece for a chance while working from home, and evaluating each piece, and knowing that each piece of that puzzle was more significant than ever before.

Maurice Cherry:
And now, to that end I know that you can’t talk directly about the work you’re doing because that whole bank note design process is super top secret but can you give just a broad overview for our audience about the work that you do?

Brian A. Thompson:
Banknote design is an art form that I don’t think people pay attention to. They’re look at the Mona Lisa, they’ll look at different pieces of artwork that have been deemed as art, and say yeah that’s a piece of artwork, but when it comes down to currency they look at it as a value or something that is used for spending or commerce, a vehicle of commerce to buy and sell. It’s currency. That’s what it’s for. It’s to buy things with.

Brian A. Thompson:
But if they ever stopped, and when they get it in their pocket and look at the art form that’s on there they would be blown away. There’s so many intricate details that are put into currency design that needs to be paid attention to from the sculpture or the portrait, the line work that’s in it, the different colors, the micro text, all of those different things it takes time to do. It’s not only just for security but it’s also for aesthetic points of view.

Maurice Cherry:
I remember being a kid and I wouldn’t necessarily say be into money design, but really looking and studying a bill and seeing how it’s designed and put together, but you’re right it has so many intricate little details. Of course, you’ve got signatures and you’ve got serial numbers on there. Some larger bills have a bit of a plastic strip that goes through it, and even as banknote design has changed here in the US I’ve just always found it really fascinating how much goes into the design of a bill. That’s really interesting.

Brian A. Thompson:
Studying different currencies all over the world I see how they’ve actually approached currency as well to get the attention of the user, and it’s amazing how they place certain things in the location of the banknotes to get people’s attention, be it color, or be it texture, even being substrates. Some countries are using plastic substrate versus paper, and that’s done so that people will pay attention to it, and not only pay attention to it, and not only pay attention to it but utilize the technologies within the banknote for their own security for something that’s authentic versus what’s counterfeit, and I think that’s pretty cool to watch how banknote design has evolved in the technological aspect as well as the aesthetical aspect and how it mergers together and becomes a piece of artwork when you first see it, but it’s also a piece of artwork that is being utilized for commerce.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you mentioned being a banknote designer for 32 years. How have your responsibilities changed over the years?

Brian A. Thompson:
I would say my first seven years I was training. I was training for the job, so I served a seven year apprenticeship while also going to school at the same time. I went to the University of District of Columbia and while I was there I was also doing the apprenticeship, and the apprenticeship was designed where it was six month increments and every six months you were evaluated to move to the next stop, but when I was there, when I first started there it was actually six months whether you were going to complete the apprenticeship or be dismissed from the apprenticeship, so you had to hit the marks that you were asked to by your journeyman and I was able to hit every mark, and I did all seven years, not one day was skipped.

Brian A. Thompson:
I really am happy I did not skip any years because everything I learned was apply-able and [inaudible 00:08:33] right now. It actually gave me an opportunity to have longevity within this career because of everything I learned within that seven years. I felt like if I missed something or if I would’ve skipped a year I would’ve missed something very important and vital for the current conditions that we’re in, in dealing with the coronavirus and just this pandemic, because I’m able to work without a computer. I’m able to work with just processing and thinking about designs in my mind and doing doodles and just shaping out different things I need to shape out to problem solve, and that’s something you learn in the apprenticeship is that it’s a lot of thinking versus drawing. You have to think about the entire banknote front and back and the different layers of it, and think about the counterfeiters that are going to try to counterfeit the banknote.

Brian A. Thompson:
You have to be four to five steps ahead of them mentally while you’re designing and I think that’s a very, very important thing for people to know it’s that we’re not just throwing anything out there. We’re really calculating and thinking about every single piece and where it’s put.

Maurice Cherry:
That is both fascinating and extremely rigorous. So, you had these six month check ins over your seven year apprenticeship and at any point in time for one instance you didn’t come up to a certain point in the check in you could be dismissed, right? That could be it.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. You can be dismissed out of the apprenticeship immediately, if they didn’t think you could cut it you were gone. It was pretty simple. But you couldn’t really go into it thinking that because if you went in with fear you would pretty much fail.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian A. Thompson:
That’s one thing I would never allow myself to do is walk in fear. I said, you know what? I’m confident, and I gave it 110% every single day to the point where I remember my journeyman telling me, this was so funny, the first day at work I came there at 6:00am on time because I worked from 6:00 to 4:00 10 hours a day four days a week.

Brian A. Thompson:
And he would say, “It’s 6:00. You’re late.” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” He says, “Well, if you show up on time you’re late. Always be here 10 minutes before schedule. You have to condition your mind to be always ahead of the curve.” That’s one thing Mr. Sharpe used to always tell me. Always be 10 minutes, or always be ahead of the curve no matter what, and he was right, and I actually live by that.

Maurice Cherry:
And the Mr. Sharpe that you’re referring to is Ronald Sharpe who’s the first black journeyman banknote designer in the history of the country.

Brian A. Thompson:
Absolutely. Yeah, Ronald C. Sharpe, and Clarence Hilbert was the second, and I’m the third.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. So, has it always had this black lineage.

Brian A. Thompson:
I don’t think the hiring was based on color. It was always based on ability, whether you could do the job or not, and Ron he was a police officer first, but his whole emphasis of becoming a police officer is so he could become a banknote designer, and one thing about being at that time when he was there, and I remember him telling me, is that hey I wanted to be a banknote designer so I started as a police officer and I waited for the apprenticeship to open.

Brian A. Thompson:
When it came open he applied, and that’s how Ron got in. That’s also how Clarence got in too. Both of them technically were police officers when they first got in. I came in right out of high school.

Maurice Cherry:
I was going to ask how did you first learn about banknote design?

Brian A. Thompson:
I learned about that particular job from my father. My father actually was a cylinder maker for the actual printing presses at the bureau and I was in high school when he told me, and at Suitland Visual and Performing Arts School under Dr. Thompson at the time, and Ms. [Dodi 00:12:09], they really pushed us for four years to develop a portfolio, so our portfolios when we graduated were equal to anyone that went to any art school. It didn’t matter where, SCAD, or any Pratt institute, our portfolios pretty much were just as equal as any college portfolio, and that was their push is when we graduated from high school that we could get into any college we wanted to, or we could pretty much cut it wherever job we were going to and they were correct. My portfolio was ready to go and I applied.

Brian A. Thompson:
And clearly, at that time the bureau liked what they saw and I got hired in the apprenticeship.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Right out of high school you went into the apprenticeship. So, when you went to the University of the District of Columbia you were doing these both at the same time.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. And I’ll tell you what’s interesting about that story is I was actually … When I went there I was under Dr. Yvonne Carter, and Dr. Yvonne Carter, she was an African-American woman and her artwork was unbelievable. She was a contemporary artist, pretty well known. From our research from her she was from the Carolinas and she actually started teaching at the University of District of Columbia and then she was the chair person of the art department, and I remember her sitting me down. She never yelled or raised her voice. Dr. Thompson had a very calm voice, but she had a way of talking to you to really line you up real quick.

Brian A. Thompson:
And I was right out of high school, just got this hot job, and I came in her office pretty cocky. And she sat me down, and she said, “Son, no matter how good you are you always have to be ready to learn, because if you go in cocky in life you’re going to miss a whole lot,” and that stung me, but she was so calm at all times, and she was the one that pretty much tightened me up, her and Dr. Smith. And they took me under their wing when I was in college and really, really made sure that the skills that I had from high school were honed for this particular job and just as an artist in general. They always taught me, yes, that’s a great job but we want to develop you as an artist that works there, not someone that’s developing the art to work there, which I thought was amazing, and very right. That was very true.

Brian A. Thompson:
They wanted me to be an outstanding artist outside of the platform of where I was working.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Outside of those two professors, what else do you really remember from your time going to the University of the District of Columbia?

Brian A. Thompson:
One thing I do remember, and I remember Ron and Clarence telling me when I first got there to learn my history. Please learn your black history because you’re going to have to be two steps ahead. In reality, you just have to be two steps ahead as an African-American because we know about the racism within our country, and they were just getting me ready. And being at an HBCU it got me ready.

Brian A. Thompson:
We had so many people that came up there to give speeches such as Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Chancellor Welsing, even Louis Farrakhan came up there, and we would hear all these different lectures from these black intellects that were really giving us knowledge on how to survive in the world that was stacked up against us as African-Americans or minorities. And I took all of those things, and those different principles, and just honed them to the point where if I felt like I was in a racist situation I knew what to do. I didn’t just be quick to react and get all upset. I would reflect back on those particular stories and the history that I learned about African-Americans and how we evolved above it, and that’s something I always stand by. There’s no point in getting upset. The point is understand how to evolve around it and to defeat it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. There’s something about an HBCU education. They really try to drive home of course knowing about your history but then making sure that you contextualize it in your current place in the world and what that means. You know?

Brian A. Thompson:
I’m telling you. I’m so happy that I went to an HBCU to the point where I didn’t push my son, I just asked him if he will go to an HBCU. He is now at Bowie State University now.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Okay.

Brian A. Thompson:
As a senior, so he’s enjoying that. I wanted him to get that same kind of background like I said to understand how to deal with just the world as an African-American, or just a minority, and just understand how to posture himself.

Maurice Cherry:
Is he interested in art and design too?

Brian A. Thompson:
No. He’s an athlete, but he actually went the ROTC route, and he’s doing very well. He’s actually going to be going into the military as an officer when he graduates.

Maurice Cherry:
Very nice. Very nice. Bowie State also has a pretty good design program. We had on the show, I think it was, not last year, about two years ago I think, Jen White Johnson who teaches there at Bowie State, but they have a really great program that they’re doing some great stuff. I met a couple of the students there. Gosh, when was this? 2019 I think. There’s this conference that goes on at Harvard called Black in Design. They have it every other year. They started in 2015.

Maurice Cherry:
And I think it was 2019 there were a group of students and educators from Bowie State that were there, so they do a really good job in their design program.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. I’ve actually visited there, and I actually have a … I can’t think of his name right now, but he actually invited me to come over there to speak, but because of the coronavirus just really shutting down last year I didn’t have an opportunity to go up there to speak to them. But I try to keep my pulse on pretty much art programs within the HBCUs that are locally around here such as UDC I’ve not spoken at, but I have spoken at Coppin State probably three or four times mainly in their sociology department. I’ve spoken at Howard University at their sociology department as well, mainly coming from the aspect of being a person that has Asperger’s and going and speaking to their seniors about a person that’s living with it, and understanding what they’re going to come up against when they run up against somebody like me, and just understanding you can’t just throw a textbook at these individuals.

Brian A. Thompson:
There’s a certain type of love and respect you have to have for a person that flows like I do, that’s wired like I am. It was a great honor to speak to those two HBCUs and the seniors loved it. I actually enjoyed talking about my life with them and they got a lot out of it. I’ve actually gotten emails from students saying “Thank you for your lecture. It really helped me. It gave me a sense of focus and purpose. I knew I wanted to be a social worker, but thank you for doing so, for showing me a person in real life that I would come up against.” So, that was a pretty cool experience.

Maurice Cherry:
Can you just give a primer to our audience on what Asperger’s is and how it works for you as a designer?

Brian A. Thompson:
Asperger’s is a form of autism. There are two types. There’s a high functioning form which is Asperger’s and there is a lower functioning form. Where I’ve always locked in with Asperger’s is socially you have social issues. Some people have social issues where if they go in a crowd they get nervous. There’s so many layers to it, but for me personally I don’t drive. It’s very difficult for me to drive a car because of the anxiety and high anxiety with it, and my wife will tell you that. I’ll be sitting on the passenger side and she’ll make a sudden move in the car and I freak out.

Brian A. Thompson:
But I realize those are my triggers. You know? There’re certain triggers I have. I’m another person where everything has to be really in order for me. My house is immaculate. Everything has to have a place, which gives off vibes of a person that has OCD but that’s actually an Asperger’s type of thing. So, with me having Asperger’s has given me a sense of focus where if I lock into something such as being an artist I’m going to go very far with it. I’m going to search, research, draw. There isn’t a medium I haven’t tried, and I just want to master it, because it’s such a sense of focus, and that’s one thing I can say about the person that has Asperger’s. It’s actually a superpower to me. It’s not a disability, because I can really lock into a subject matter and try to master it as much as possible.

Brian A. Thompson:
Pretty much as a banknote designer it gave me an opportunity during those seven years because I was laser focused, so I had no intentions of ever messing up because of how I’m wired. But one thing when sudden changes hit me it does throw me through a loop sometimes but I have to lean on my foundation of what I know and I stick with that and just figure out what those sudden changes are where it doesn’t throw me off too much.

Maurice Cherry:
I can imagine the superpower part you mentioned. With banknote design being as meticulous as it is the fact that you can really hone down and focus on those details that is a real superpower. That’s a real benefit.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. Through high school I was totally engulfed with knowing who MC Escher was. Escher was a really, really detailed illustrator. I’m telling you, from high school even till this day I still look at Escher drawings and just blown away to the point that I was focusing so much on Escher I had to learn Georgia O’Keeffe’s stuff as well to balance myself out, because O’Keeffe works so loosely and big and broad with colors, even though her colors are very muted, and her colors also had a lot of desert thematic to it because that’s pretty much where she did a lot of her art.

Brian A. Thompson:
I work in that world, so I’m in the middle of those two particular artists, and I zero in on those things to the point where if I feel like I’m working on something too tightly I will actually do a contemporary art form just to loosen my mind up to just keep going to make sure I’m balanced, because I can become very technical and when it’s time to work loosely it’s hard for me to gauge back into that, so that’s why I’m constantly doing contemporary art as well as very tight illustrations just to keep a balance so that I can just function as an artist.

Maurice Cherry:
I want to go back to your time at the University of the District of Columbia. Once you graduated because you were doing this and your apprenticeship at the same time, what were those early days of you being a journeyman designer like? Can you give us a sense of what that was like?

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. I was actually in college as well as doing an apprenticeship and I was a father and a husband.

Maurice Cherry:
You were juggling a lot.

Brian A. Thompson:
It was a lot happening. My day would start with me leaving with a heavy portfolio headed straight to the school, and I think I would finish up on campus around maybe 3:00 or 4:00. That was the early years, because I would actually work six months, and then I would actually go to the job for six months, the apprenticeship, and my apprenticeship would freeze until I return back.

Brian A. Thompson:
Later on, what I would do was go to school at night, so I would work my day and then go to school at night, and that was just tough because I would only spend time with my kids when I got in the door, which was pretty late. I would get in maybe about 6:30, 7:00 coming in from school. I think at that time I just had maybe two kids, which was my oldest two boys, [Tayvon 00:23:52] and BJ. Those were some tough days, but I pushed through it. I pushed through it.

Brian A. Thompson:
But it was a lot on my shoulders, but like I said me being laser focused it didn’t really rock me and I came off kind of rigid at times because I was so focused in on the art that the perception was that I was arrogant, and that’s just one of those Asperger things. People would look at me, “Oh, he’s so arrogant. He doesn’t talk.” I was just focused. I was just laser focused on what I had to achieve and I had to finish that apprenticeship. I had to graduate from college.

Brian A. Thompson:
And once I achieved that goal, on to the next task.

Maurice Cherry:
What are some of the highlights of your career as a journeyman designer? You’ve had over 30 years of work in this industry designing banknotes. What are some of the highlights?

Brian A. Thompson:
I think the major highlight right now for me was designing the new $100 bill because I watched how pop culture gravitated towards it and it was embraced very quickly with pop culture. And not just pop culture, the hip hop culture. If anybody knows me they know I’m a hip hop head. I just love old school hip hop.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Brian A. Thompson:
The Tribe Called Quest. The Goodie Mob. The Wu-Tangs. That’s my era of hip hop and it always has been, and I even go further back than that to the Boogie Down Productions to the Public Enemy. I just love hip hop and I watched how hip hop embraced it and actually gave the 100 a nickname, and the nickname they’ve given it was called The Blue Face.

Brian A. Thompson:
So, I’m like, wow. And I’ve watched how it evolved in pop culture where it became clothing, where it became artwork, or pop art. And I’m like, wow, look at how this design just blew up around the world. My daughter sent me something where they had taken this design and made it a purse.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Brian A. Thompson:
I have a niece that works in a museum where she sends me stuff all the time. She says, “Look at this. They made this product out of it. They made this product.” I’m like, this is crazy. So, to see that design just go out into the world and become a part of pop culture is huge. I was designing it for a purpose and I’ve actually watched it become pretty much a very iconic piece.

Maurice Cherry:
There’s even a rapper called Blue Face.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. That’s right. That’s the part I’m talking about. It’s like it evolved. It went further. I was just doing my job. That’s the focus. I’m trying to make sure I’m creating a banknote that can be utilized in circulation and not fail. I had no idea it was going to become this artistic phenomenon, which is unbelievable, and it still blows my mind today. And you know the crazy thing, a lot of people don’t even know who I am, which is okay, which is fine.

Brian A. Thompson:
People will find out who I am and they’re like, “Oh my god. I met the guy that designed the 100,” and that thing came out 2013.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Brian A. Thompson:
And people are still finding out about me. And actually, if you look on IG I only have 1,700 friends, but I see other people that do art and they have 1.5 million. You know? And it’s cool. I just sit back like, wow. People really just don’t know what I do, and I really stay away from the lime light for that very reason.

Brian A. Thompson:
So, I have very good artist friends that have reached out to me that I’m really good friends with and they respect what I’ve done, and they’re like, “Dude, you made history. When you designed that 100, dude, you made not only American history you made African-American history as well.” You know? Which was unreal. It’s still an unreal experience and when I look at it I’m like, wow. I cannot believe this one thing I did, and I was just doing my job, I actually made Clarence and Ron proud, because they didn’t have an opportunity to do it.

Maurice Cherry:
I would say more than history. You have contributed to the culture. I know there’s this saying among … I’m saying millennials. I’m an elder millennial myself. But in millennials and Gen Z about how people are doing things like quote unquote for the culture. What you’ve done has been such a contributor to the culture in general. You need to be in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. That’s major.

Brian A. Thompson:
What’s a trip is that I’ve heard that so many times, and I’ve not gotten a phone call from them yet. I don’t know if they’re waiting for me to retire. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll wait. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s all good. My focus is I just want to be the best artist I can be for me, and for the general public. I just want to always be a creator where I don’t get boxed in with one job that I’ve done. I want to be known as a great artist one day, just a guy that has done multiple things with his art, and that’s really my goal is just to be a great artist and leave a legacy which I’ve already done. I’ve already achieved that.

Brian A. Thompson:
And one thing I tell students when I do go to those … I do a lot of … What do you call them? Where they call people in to do their professions. I do a lot of those kind of things where I’ll go to high schools.

Maurice Cherry:
Like career day or something like that.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. I do a lot of career days, and I tell those kids, I say when you hear about African-American history it’s always within the pages of a book, but you’ve never actually met someone that actually made African-American history that’s right here in living color that you can ask questions. And that’s one of the biggest things I will say about the 100 that has been so rewarding is that I’m able to speak to students while living, and they can talk to me and ask me any questions because I’m living history. I’m living African-American history, and just to see their eyes light up is the most rewarding thing. That’s the most rewarding thing is actually seeing a kid’s eyes light up and just like, wow, I’m speaking to history. I’m not just reading about it, or reading about this person because he’s dead. This guy’s standing right in front of me. That’s huge.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I really appreciate your humility. You and I will talk offline about seeing what we can do to get you in touch with someone at the museum because I think the work that you’re doing … Wait, actually, have you been to the museum yet?

Brian A. Thompson:
Yes. Me and my wife went there. We went from the basement all the way to the top and I was floored. I’m like, wow, this is so great, and she looked over at me and said, “Why are you not in here?” I’m like, “Look, babe, you already know my …” She knows me. I’m very humble. I’m not going to push myself. I’m not going to push it. But that is something that I would love to do is make sure that not only I’m there I want to make sure that Ron, Sharpe, and Clarence are there that are a part of my story. You know?

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brian A. Thompson:
Because when they hear my story they’re going to hear theirs as well, because like I said these guys deserve honor big time for what they instilled in me. What they gave me … And I’ll never forget what they told me in the backroom my second day there. They said, “Come to the back room. We want to talk to you. We know you’re at an HBCU. We know you’re at UDC. We want to give you everything that we know about this job and about our art ability and put it in you,” and a key thing they said is, “We want to leave this world a gift in you,” and they weren’t wrong. They said, “You’re going to be able to achieve stuff that we never had the opportunity to do.”

Brian A. Thompson:
Now, it’s not that they weren’t able to design currency. At that time, currency wasn’t being changed. It just wasn’t being changed at that time while they were there. They were later in their careers, so a lot of times they were just doing other projects, but they knew that I would have an opportunity, and those guys worked. They made it hard for a reason because they knew it would be tough sometimes when they weren’t there. So, I want to be able to give that honor to them.

Brian A. Thompson:
And I’m still in touch with Ron Sharpe’s daughter. We’re friends on IG, as well as Facebook, and she checks in on me just to see how I’m doing and also see how she’s doing. But Ron and Clarence have both passed.

Maurice Cherry:
And so, you are the one that’s holding the torch now for this particular kind of type of design which is very specialized.

Brian A. Thompson:
It’s very specialized, and like I said it’s only been us three as African-Americans to ever do it, and their story has never been told. And I’m telling you I’m going to tell their story along with mine, because they’re a part of my story. If it wasn’t for them I would not know what I know. I just wouldn’t. So, I understand how that works.

Brian A. Thompson:
And that’s something that most artists need to be humble about as well is that it took someone to pour into you for you to pour out. For you to pour out it took someone to pour into you and to labor with you and show you how to get your craft to a certain point of expertise. Don’t forget those individuals. You just didn’t birth out great. It took somebody to make you great, and that’s something that I will never forget.

Brian A. Thompson:
I remember Dr. Thompson from high school who pushed me. I remember Dr. Smith and I remember Dr. Carter in college who pushed me, and I remember Ron and Clarence who actually trained me on my job as a journeyman who pushed me. All of them made me.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. We’ve got to see what we can do to get you in the museum. We’ll talk offline about this because I think even just that part that you said right there and learning about the history of how you had other black banknote designers that helped you out that’s a story that everyone needs to know. I think that’s something everyone needs to know.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, speaking of projects. You are an artist outside of being a banknote designer, so I want to talk about that. There’s a project that you finished just recently called Colors That Heal. Can you talk about that?

Brian A. Thompson:
Man, that right there was one of the most rewarding projects. I had just started teaching at PG College last year as an adjunct professor, and I taught a class called Art as Therapy, and what it was designed to do was to get people to slow down in their life and just pick up a paintbrush or a pencil and just relax. So, I actually taught that class to teach people how to use art as a therapeutical thing for their own life because it’s always been therapy for me, and I turned it into a course.

Brian A. Thompson:
And they did so well where PG College actually called me back to actually do it again this year where I’m going to be teaching families which is going to be children and their parents on how to just connect together as parent and son or daughter where I’m going to be teaching them how to do art to just relax and actually tighten up their bond as parents and children. But my point is I flipped it again because it’s the same principle but Colors That Heal was a project that I thought about when my cousin called me, and he says, “Hey man, do you have any artwork laying around the house? I need like 25 pieces.”

Brian A. Thompson:
I’m like, “No. I don’t have 25 pieces hanging around. If I did they would probably be sold or I’m trying to sell them.” So, I said “I’ll tell you what I do, because I’ve been doing all this research on art therapy I have an idea.” I said, “I’m going to create pieces that have colors in them that help people heal and relax when they see them.” So, I created 25 pieces that when people see those pieces they immediately will relax. They will immediately calm down.

Brian A. Thompson:
And these pieces are actually in the lobby of a hospital, where this hospital was switching from one … One organization bought them out, and now … It’s called Luminous Health actually bought them out. It’s Luminous Health Doctors Hospital. And he said, “Man, can you come up with some pieces.” I said, “Sure, I got it.” So, I came up with 25 pieces for them and they literally just hung those pieces up this past week, and they look amazing. They look absolutely amazing.

Brian A. Thompson:
And like I said, they’re designed for people when they walk in that lobby to immediately just calm down and just have a sense of peace. That was the whole point of that project, is because people don’t realize how art is impactful. Art can change how you feel immediately when you see it. Colors can make you react a certain way. And I picked colors, and I did research, on what colors heal people and I used all those colors within those pieces, different shapes, different forms, where when folks see them they immediately calm down. It’s not an aggressive type of a picture.

Brian A. Thompson:
Everything’s very laid back. I used watercolor by the way because I wanted to have translucent imagery in it. I used air brush as well where you have different colors fading into another color. The project was beautiful. I’m very, very happy with that project. It is a brand new project. It’s like a month old technically, but it just got hung up. And I got a phone call from my cousin and said, “Man, thank you for this outstanding job. Thank you so much.” I’m very proud of that project, and plan to do more of that kind of stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I was just going to ask do you plan on expanding that out, maybe doing that with more hospitals, or with a health system, or something like that?

Brian A. Thompson:
I would love for it to go in that direction because I just think there needs to be more of it. My wife noticed that when she goes to the hospital, because she’s a nurse, when she goes to the hospital she notices that there are pieces like that, that look similar to mine, but they’re very generic and they just kind of throw them up there. And they pay millions of dollars for these type of exhibitions to be up on their walls.

Brian A. Thompson:
And she was like, “You did this for your cousin.” She said, “I’m blown away.” She said, “You did this because you really wanted to help people heal.” I’m like, “Yeah.” So, I just believe in giving bach, man. You know?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Brian A. Thompson:
I just believe in giving back and art has been such a vehicle for me to express myself. I just want to see it become more of a tool to heal people and to make people feel good when they see it, not to be an impulsive spender where they’re like I got to buy this because it’s going to have value later on in life, but when they look at this piece that it’s a reflection of themselves and it hits them in their core, their heart, saying you know what? I like this piece because it’s a reflection of myself.

Brian A. Thompson:
I think if more artists looked at it that way instead of trying to make a dollar then I think you would probably have more artists that really were humble and would create more because when you start grinding to try to produce art just to make sales you kind of lose your edge, but if you’re creating art to help people, man, that’s a different level. It’s a totally different level.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. We’ve had a few fine artists on the show before that have said pretty much very similar things to that, like being able to create without … I forget who it was. I think it might have been Fahamu Pecou who said this, or maybe someone else we interviewed, but it was along the lines of how the art just seems to be better when it’s not tied to money, like when you don’t have to tie it to some financial goal or something the art just tends to be better.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that 100%, because as artists we’re always looking for inspiration and when I get inspired I start painting, or I start drawing, and I’m doing it because I want to do it. I’m not doing it for a dollar. You know? Or commerce. I’m doing it because I want to get an expression out and I want to get a reaction from people that is healing. My background is I’m also a pastor too, and I have a ministry called Easel Outreach that it’s for creatives. It’s for creatives to have a spiritual balance within their life. That’s one of the other projects I’m working on, and that’s going very well.

Maurice Cherry:
What are you obsessed with right now?

Brian A. Thompson:
I’m not really obsessed with anything. My main focus right now honestly is to evolve myself as a fine artist. That’s my push. I really want folks to know me as a creative, as a person that is extremely creative and can go in several different directions from either art or music, because I compose music too. I create music that has no lyrics so it’s pretty much in the realm of ambient music. I have two projects on pretty much any music platform, and it’s called Instrumental Witness.

Brian A. Thompson:
So, I don’t use my name particularly. I have an artist name, which is called Instrumental Witness, and I have two projects out there and both of them reflect healing. The second project was geared towards people that do yoga and meditation. It didn’t get a lot of sales, but that wasn’t the point. Just like art I want to put something out there to help people heal, or to help people feel good, and that’s what’s out there. And it sounds pretty good. I get emails sometimes saying “Thank you for creating this piece. It gets me through my day. When I’m cleaning the house, or if I want to relax and chill I put your piece on.” So, I love just that kind of background, or should I say response from the music that they’re listening to that I created.

Maurice Cherry:
What advice has stuck with you the longest? It can be personal advice, professional advice. What do you find yourself coming back to time and time again?

Brian A. Thompson:
One thing my grandmother told me as a kid, and I stick by this, she said, “If somebody can upset you they can control you.” I’ve always stuck with that. So, what I do is when some people come at me trying to get a reaction out of me of anger I just remain peaceful. There’s a scripture in the Bible that says, “Be quick to listen and slow to speak.” I walk with that. So, when she said that to me that’s the first scripture that came to my attention, and I actually flow like that. I’m very quick to listen to people and I’m slow to respond, because I want to make sure that they may be speaking in anger but I’m always going to speak back at love regardless of the situation, and that’s how I posture myself.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s say somebody is listening to this interview, they’ve heard about of course your work as a journeyman designer, but also as an artist that wants to help people and help heal people. What advice would you tell them if they want to follow in your footsteps?

Brian A. Thompson:
Honestly, man, just follow their heart. If you want to help people follow your heart. There’s something that I talk about where there’s a certain rhythm that everybody has within their life. You have to follow that rhythm. If that rhythm is fast then you produce fast, you create fast. If that rhythm is very, very laid back ten you produce that way because that’s what you’re going to get in response. There’s something about the rhythm, and like I said that’s why I like hip hop. Hip hop has an aggressive rhythm with it, and I technically listen to it when I’m working out, but when I want to listen to stuff that’s laid back I’ll listen to piano chill where I can reflect and meditate.

Brian A. Thompson:
Pay attention to the rhythm in your heart and that will help you produce the art or creative abilities that you’re trying to produce. You’re heart will tell you what you need to produce. Don’t go off what everybody else’s doing. Don’t go off of what’s hot and what’s not. Produce from your heart.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What do you want this next chapter of your story to really involve?

Brian A. Thompson:
I will probably be producing different pieces, or shall I say different collaborative pieces, not even collaborative pieces. I’ll probably be producing collections of different things, pretty much like the Colors That Heal project I’m going to be doing more of those kind of things. And the way I really focus on that I look at what’s happening in the world and I’ll look for something to help heal it. If there’s chaos happening, which there’s a lot of it going on right now, I’m going to try to produce pieces that cause people to relax and heal and be at peace.

Brian A. Thompson:
So, those are the kinds of projects that I’m going to be working on just so when people see it they just have a sense of peace, and that’s very important to me. But you’ll see different collections that will come out, maybe a collection of six, maybe a collection of 20, but they’re going to be a collection of pieces that give off a certain rhythm of peace.

Maurice Cherry:
Just to wrap things up here where can our audience find out more about you and about your work and everything online?

Brian A. Thompson:
I’m on IG. I’m at Brian_TheArtist. I’m not saying it right. It’s Brian_The_Artist_Thompson on IG.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. And of course, people can go to any bank and get a $100 bill and see your work there also.

Brian A. Thompson:
Yeah. That’s the universal piece of artwork that’s there. Yes, it is. If they actually want to see the pieces that I did, the Colors That Heal, that’s actually at like I said Luminous Health Doctors Hospital in Lanta, Maryland or maybe Greenbelt, Maryland and they can actually see those pieces hanging up in the lobby. It’s like 25 pieces.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Nice.

Brian A. Thompson:
When I looked at the project it was like I’m going to look at it like I’m producing for a gallery, and that’s the way I’m looking at it. When you walk in there you’re going to feel like you’re in an art gallery.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Sounds good. Brian Thompson I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I think the thing that probably strikes me the most aside from just the historic nature of the work that you do and the reach that it has globally is just how humble you are. You are super humble and to me that reads as someone that is really doing this for the love of the work, and the passion, and really reflecting on how it makes people feel, like the fact that you’re also an artist that does this work that wants to heal people is a good balance with the meticulous-ness of the work that you do as a banknote designer, so I think it’s good to one show that balance, but two also to illustrate to people that there’s a person behind this kind of work that does this sort of thing.

Maurice Cherry:
So, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Brian A. Thompson:
Thank you for having me.

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Joseph Cuillier

“If you don’t see it in the world, see that as an opportunity.” Wise words from this week’s guest, the one and only Joseph Cuillier. Joseph is perhaps most well known for The Black School, an experimental art school teaching Black/PoC students and allies to become agents of change through art workshops on radical Black politics and public interventions that address local community needs.

I spoke to Joseph fresh from his move back to New Orleans, and he spoke on how the city feels now in the midst of gentrification and other new developments. We also spoke on his work with The Black School and the school’s principles, the unique studio model that helps fund the school, and how he works to center Black love in such a unique learning space. Joseph is truly building upon a family legacy to help educate the next generation and beyond!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, tell us who you are and what you do.

Joseph Cuillier:
My name is Joseph Cuillier and I’m an artist, a designer, and the founder and co-director of The Black School.

Maurice Cherry:
How are you holding up these days?

Joseph Cuillier:
Good. I am good. I just recently moved from New York City. I lived in Harlem for about five years, and Brooklyn before that for about five years. I just moved to new Orleans after 10 years in New York, and I think I’m much better because of it for a lot of reasons. There’s been a pandemic and people have been trapped in small apartments, in cold climates, and it’s good to get away from that. It’s good to be closer to family, I see my family a lot even though I lived in a different part of the country from them. I would come home holidays and summers, and that was difficult not being able to see my family. Being closer makes it so much easier. And trees and sunshine man, that’s a long way. That’s long way, and good food, and good people, and good music. Everything that makes New Orleans great is healing me at the moment, at this traumatic moment for all of us.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I want to go to new Orleans so bad.

Joseph Cuillier:
Come through and let me know.

Maurice Cherry:
I will as soon as all this pandemic mess is over, and I feel comfortable jumping on a plane I want to go to New Orleans.

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah. Hopefully sooner than later.

Maurice Cherry:
I know you’ve been away for 10 years, but does the city feel different to you now?

Joseph Cuillier:
It is very different. To be clear, I moved to New York from Houston. I was living in Houston at the time, but both sides of my family are from new Orleans so I would always be here. Holidays, summers, things like that or whenever, a birthday party, it’s family reunion, just to come down and see family. I think new Orleans is going through a lot of the things a lot of black cities and black communities around the country are going through. There’s gentrification, there’s new things happening in this city for better or worse. And I think a lot of people feel frustrated because they’re not being included in the decision-making of the new thing.

Joseph Cuillier:
Or the new thing is coming and that means you have to leave which is messed up. There’s a lot of displacement in New Orleans, and in a way it’s a little bit more kind of celebrated due to the aftermath of Katrina, and the displacement that man-made disaster created. It is very different but in a lot of ways it’s still the same. There the blackness, there’s deep love, there’s deep creativity that is just baked into the city that I don’t think gentrification is strong enough to ever change that. Natural disaster or anything I don’t think is strong enough to change that.

Maurice Cherry:
How has it been kind of working and moving through this pandemic? Was that a loaded question?

Joseph Cuillier:
That’s a layered question. A layered question. What does that mean to me as a husband and a father? What does that mean to me as a designer or an artist? What does that mean to me as a person that creates platforms? A person that brings people together to exchange knowledge? First it’s been difficult but not insurmountable. Our family, we found ways to make the best of it. We found ways to still have romance between me and my wife. We have our indoor dates or our out in the park dates. We found ways to meet with folks, meet up at the park, chill on the porch, chill at the patio, things like that. And as a kind of artists and designer it’s been a shift. For me it’s been less about making work and showing work and more about purpose, more about spirituality, more about laying foundations.

Joseph Cuillier:
And before the pandemic we were rolling, I talk in the we because I don’t do this work alone. My wife is my partner in life and in our endeavors, our ventures in the world. Shani Peters, she’s an artist very much in her own right doing really big things. And also just the work I do is very collective, I bring people together to work on issues and problems much larger than one person could address or transform. This slow down gave us the opportunity to refocus and think about the long-term vision for the work. The Black School was in New York, it was functioning as this kind of school that was mobile in architecture, so we would attach ourselves to host other schools, would be high schools, middle schools, youth organizations, art institutions, and we would do programming and collaboration.

Joseph Cuillier:
And now we couldn’t really do that, we couldn’t get people together. I mean we shifted some stuff to Zoom, but it’s only so much that could shift and keep going the way the world was turning. We shifted to thinking about where we wanted to take the organization. After all these years of programmatic success doing the art school, doing The Black Love Fest, doing the design apprenticeship, we felt like we really needed a space of our own. That meant sharing that idea with the people and be like, “What do you think? Is this something you would support?” The response we got was overwhelming yes. Folks came out of the woodwork, we ended up raising 300K to build the community center in my hometown of New Orleans. We’ve raised money for staffing the school, we’ve made all these connections of people who want to support in any way they can.

Joseph Cuillier:
Long answer, the shift, the slowing down, the re-jiggering we had to do to work in this moment meant that we had to do some deep thinking, and some deep listening, and have some deep conversations to really think about, “We’re standing still, how do we see the future? How do we want to see the future?” Because we have a moment now to really think about the future. And for us that meant moving to New Orleans and trying to build a school, trying to build a radical black art school in the Seventh Ward.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s jump more into The Black School, because I’ve been hearing about it for years now from different folks who I’ve had on the show. I was a mentor at… Well, I guess you could call it the mentor. I don’t know. I think they called it mentorship at NEW INC in New York City. I don’t know if that’s where I first heard about it, but I definitely heard about it during my time kind of mentoring and helping advise folks there. I really want to learn more about in essence what this radical black art school is all about. For those who are listening who may not know, can you just talk a little bit about the school and its mission? And we can sort of dive in from there.

Joseph Cuillier:
The Black School is an experimental art school that teaches young folks and old folks black history, design, activism. And the idea is radicalizing our people to envision a future where we’re not just tolerated, but a future that we create, that we build with our own hands so it’s a radical black art school.

Maurice Cherry:
And now there’s a lot of different principles that the school follows, among them self-love, prison abolition, environmental justice, LGBTQIA rights. How are these principles reflected to students?

Joseph Cuillier:
Well, the principles were developed by students. The first workshop we did was we did this community engaged research. This high school in Brooklyn, we went around the surrounding area and within the school. And we asked folks what you love about your community? What you want to change about your community? And what The Black School should teach? And based off of that feedback we got from folks we did this principle, this platform creating exercise, where we just went through the things, the issues, the ideas that folks are raising. And then we distilled them down into these overarching principles. And we’ve continued to add as we go, especially looking back to ancestors, the history, the things that were laid down for us before we even got here. And we took those kind of principles and built this larger kind of I guess rubric to learn from.

Joseph Cuillier:
And that includes self-love, it includes black love more specifically, and includes all the guiding principles of many different black radical organizations. We took inspiration from all these different ways black radicalism has popped up through feminist initiatives, queer initiatives, art movements. And that’s kind of how we came up with the principles, and we share those back in our card deck, we share them back in our website, we share them back in the topics that we explore in the school. Maybe a workshop will be based on this one principle or these two principles. We are making sure our young people know what we stand for, know something that possibly they can stand for, and are aware of a political language to describe the experiences that are happening in the world.

Joseph Cuillier:
They may see white folks from out of town moving into their grandmother neighborhood, they may see the cost of living in their neighborhood going up, they may see the bodega start to sell different things, but they may not know what gentrification is. And they may not know the history or the tactics that folks have used in the past to fight those issues. It’s our idea that we create learning tools, and learning opportunities to share that back with folks so they can know what to do, so they can know that they don’t have to recreate the wheel every time they see a problem. They can just build on what’s already beneath them.

Maurice Cherry:
And now the interesting part about the school is that it also contains a design studio, is that right?

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah. The Black School studio is full service design firm. We do client work. I’m traditionally trained as a graphic designer. It was a matter of seeing the teaching that I’m doing. Since I graduated that’s not just something I do on the side, but at the center of my practice. And the studio allows me to do that to the greater extent. We do client services, we have experienced upper level designers, but we also have apprentice. And the design apprentice are young folks, high school age who have no experience in graphic design. We teach them the basics, the fundamentals of graphic design, typography, image making, grids, all of those fundamental things. And then we teach them Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign. And then once they know just those basics, then we put them on actual client projects so that they’re learning on the job from seasoned designers.

Joseph Cuillier:
And we’re collectively creating too, because I mean what company doesn’t buy and sale, or trade on black cool? What company doesn’t use black youth culture to move their message forward or sell their products? It’s our idea that instead of having all these people coming into our community take the things we create and sell them back to us, how about we talk to our community? How about we communicate with each other in the ways we know how? And how about we harness the power and energy of black youth culture, a culture that has made it all around the globe and back? And right now black youth culture is the culture, so how about we harness that power? And that’s the idea, that’s the vision behind the design school being rooted in a school… I mean, that’s the vision behind the design firm being rooted in a black school.

Maurice Cherry:
And how do the studio and the school work together? Does the studio help fund the school or what are some ways that they work together?

Joseph Cuillier:
That’s the vision. When you’re doing this type of work it becomes very easy to become very reliant on grants, donations. And that may be fine but what happens when funding trends change? Right now black people and black liberation is kind of a hot topic but 10 years ago it wasn’t, we were in a post-racial society. What if we go back to a post racial society quote unquote, and these foundations start funding other causes, other issues more aggressively. I mean is what we’re doing really self-determined? If that’s the case, in my opinion the answer is no. Not to say the money we get from foundations isn’t cool, that’s our money, that’s the money, the wealth our great grandparents have generated for this country. But being realistic we need our own.

Joseph Cuillier:
I believe in black nationalism. I think we need our own everything, but we definitely need our own sources of revenue if we’re going to run a sustainable organization. The idea from the design firm is the design firm can generate income, earn income and fund the school. Now it’s two years old so we’re not there yet. We’re still kind of trying to figure out how it works, how it functions but that’s the idea. But the school and the design firm they’re kind of tied together. And we have students from the art school that come through the design firm. Students that show a little bit more interest, students that maybe want to learn more about graphic design specifically, students that may need opportunity to make some money, need a job, or a seasonal job or something.

Joseph Cuillier:
This is our way of generating income for our community. Because it would be irresponsible to go to black youth and be like, “There’s economic future for you in art.” Because honestly I’m a professional artist, my wife’s a professional artist, and it’s hard to make money out of art. It’s hard for us. We do all these other things and generate income in all these other ways, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable setting some young people that come from disadvantaged backgrounds, that are economically oppressed. I would be irresponsible to tell them, “You know what, you can make a living in art.” I mean you can, but I need to give you the tools, I need to give you the map, and the pathways that I found to make a living in art. And design is one of those pathways.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. I mean, that makes sense, you want to definitely… Especially with kids at that age, they see a lot more than I think we think they do in terms of picking up on patterns and behaviors and stuff like that. And it is one thing to say, “We’re the black school and we want to do these things.” But then also… Or even as you’re saying, making money as an artist but then having to do these other things. You don’t want to lie to them essentially.

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah. I don’t want to send them out in the world unprepared like what we call real art schools do. Sending their students out in the world without necessarily the tools to do the most basic of things, sustain their lives. It wouldn’t be a radically black art school, it would be just an art school if we did that. We do pay our students. It’s a very different way of looking at schools. We pay our students to learn because we believe our students need it. If you’re not flipping burgers or stacking grocery sales, how are you going to generate income for yourself, for your household, if we’re asking you to come spend this time with us learn about black politics, learn about home design, learn about the nexus, where they meet. We have to be realistic about what the needs are of our young people while they are in our care.

Maurice Cherry:
And then this might… I don’t know, this might be a silly question. I think basing some of this off of my personal experience, but as you’ve been doing this have you been getting a lot of black community support financially?

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah. We did a crowdfunding campaign to go fund me. I mean, everybody supported, black, white, Asian, Latinx. Everybody supported, saw the vision, but a lot of our support was from black folks. Monetarily, just connections we made. The black folks at Adobe reached out, folks that work there. We found ourselves in very different places, and we find ourselves with a lot of resources that the story being told about us is like we all come from a lack. But there is a lot of resources in our community. [inaudible 00:25:25] showed up with those resources, made what we do even possible. If it wasn’t for the black community there would be no Black School.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, as we’re recording this, and it’s interesting because we were supposed to do this a while back. And I know you were moving and everything, had a bunch of stuff kind of going on. But I had written back then… And just so people who are listening, this was… When was this? About the fall last year I think we were supposed to record initially?

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I wrote down about how several major cities in the US have been protesting against the death of black people at the hands of police. Fast forward to now, same thing. And then you of course have all these companies that are committing themselves to at least saying black lives matter. Although it’s now been shortened out to BLM and I feel some kind of way about that, how quickly people just sort of roll it off the tongue. How are you talking about these things at the school?

Joseph Cuillier:
That’s funny that you say it because there is this linguistic activism, insane black lives matter. I never thought about that, shortening it to BLM defeats the point. But you’re right, you got something there. But I’m sorry I was distracted by what you just put on me there genuinely. Say again the end of your question.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. How are you talking about what’s happening now? I guess I could say two black people, but there’s a lot of shit happening to black people right now. But I’m speaking specifically about people protesting against the death of black people at the hands of police, companies that are now kind of coming on and giving their support and saying that they support black lives even if it’s just for show. How are you talking about these sort of metacultural thing at the school?

Joseph Cuillier:
How are we talking about it? It’s hard for me to say specifically to this moment, but generally it’s been a while now that the light bulb came on for me. And I realized that history is a cycle, and you say from fall to now we’re in spring, this cycle has turned over once more. And our folks are in the street, and companies are pandering pretty much to the movement the same way it happened this past summer. This happened when I graduated from Pratt around the same time while I was at school. I was in graduate school for design and Trayvon happened and it was there… It wasn’t there that happened. Everything that’s happening now has happened to a lesser extent. It’s more intense now but it was happening. Then Eric Garner happened a couple of years later.

Joseph Cuillier:
Well, I’m referencing George Zimmerman getting off, because that was a moment for me because I didn’t see him getting off. If I’d only looked at history, of course he was getting off. There was no way he was going to jail if I looked at history. But we get into these moments where we just forget about history, everything’s out of the window, we live in a new world. But history tells us this cycle of black people being brutalized comes to a boiling point and black folks said, “No more.” And white folks say, “Let’s figure this out, let’s make this right.” Then time passes, white folks stop caring, black folks continue to be brutalized, boom cycle continues. That’s why The Black School exists, to be 365 know.

Joseph Cuillier:
Every day of the year to yell that we need our own. How many times are white folks going to have to tell us no before we realize the answer is no. You want your freedom, you want your justice, you want economic opportunities, the answer has always been no. We ask they say no, we ask they say no, we ask they say no. And the cycle happens where the no’s are replaced to, “Maybe.” The no’s are replaced with, “Okay. Give us some time.” The no’s are replaced to, “Later.” But always behind all of that facade it’s always no. This moment still weighs heavy on my shoulders, it’s not like it doesn’t affect me anymore. But I know that this is just a cycle, I know they’re not going to stop killing us.

Joseph Cuillier:
I just know it and it’s not because I’m a psychic, history tells me. 400 years in this country tell me, if I opened up the books they wrote it’s going to tell me. I just got to take that note and say, “I’m going to build with my people. And my vision and what I would love to see in the world is a black nation for Black Americans.” Of course there’s a lot of black nations in this world, but a nation for Black Americans, that’s my goal. And if that’s not the answer, cool, but that’s the direction I’m walking in. We need all of it, it needs to be ours. What that looks like I don’t know, but we need our own.

Maurice Cherry:
What does it look like to center black love in a learning space?

Joseph Cuillier:
I think it looks like we all have seen it in our own experience. Maybe it’s learning from your mother over the kitchen table, or maybe it’s learning from a grandfather out in the garage and the driveway. There’s all these ways we learn in our community that are rooting in love, and rooting in care, and rotting in blackness. I think we can look to that, go back to history, we look at our personal histories and what kind of learning spaces felt loving, and felt effective? What kind of learning spaces worked for me? You’ll probably think of your living room, you’ll probably think of your kitchen, you’ll probably think of your backyard. That’s where we’re taking inspiration for the architecture of the school. Whether that be bricks or just how we’re structuring the curriculum, how we’re exchanging when we’re in this space, how we’re talking to each other, how we’re laying out the desks.

Joseph Cuillier:
We don’t even have desks, because when I think about the ways I like to learn it wasn’t in the desks. It was maybe over a work table, maybe it was an artist studio and it was over a work table, maybe it was in a circle on the floor. It’s all these other ways that are not being showed or even explored in the conventional school. One way is asking folks what they want to learn, not walking into a space with any assumptions. Before we start a workshop we ask our students what you love about your community? What you want to change about your community? And we may show up with screen printing supplies, or collage materials, we may show up with part of the workshop. But the rest of it, what we’re making, why we’re making it, who we’re making it for, that comes from the students.

Joseph Cuillier:
We are sharing the skills we have and the resources we’ve been able to generate and acquire, but it is an exchange. They are sharing their experiences, they’re sharing their needs, they’re sharing their passions, and that’s the learning community. It goes both ways, it’s not a teacher at the front, students lined up at the back. They are empty vessels, I have the knowledge, I put the knowledge into the empty vessels, they go out into the world [inaudible 00:34:30] repeat. It’s not like that. It’s really about you know about this very specific thing in the world, I know about this other very specific thing in the world, let’s put it together and what could we build?

Maurice Cherry:
Now there’s a third part to The Black School. I know we talked about the actual school itself, we’ve also talked about the studio. There’s this sort of third component to the ecosystem which is events. How have you been able to keep that going even with this sort of pandemic that’s keeping people apart?

Joseph Cuillier:
We haven’t kept it going. We have done workshops which is events, but specifically Black Love Fest, our music festival we do, we just paused it. Right now it’s going on the second year. We do it every summer, so last summer we didn’t do, this summer we’re not doing it. When it comes back it will be in collaboration with the New Orleans African American museum so it will be in New Orleans. The past three years it was in New York city two years, and then Houston at Project Row Houses.

Joseph Cuillier:
If you’re into the black school and the work we do check out Project Row Houses if you haven’t already, because they are the precedence that we’re working off. They’re the antecedent, they are the ancestors when we’re talking about ancestors that have done it, are still doing it. We essentially paused it, which was needed, we were tired anyway before the pandemic even came. And there’s no sense in getting people together and potentially hurting the people that the whole intention of the festival is to care for our people. It would just be a contradiction. And honestly I’m Zoomed out. I’m Zoned out.

Maurice Cherry:
I hear you.

Joseph Cuillier:
No more Zoom so we’re not doing a Zoom festival. I don’t think the intention behind the festival would even translate to Zoom. The intention is a barbecue, a cookout with some guiding principles behind it that we’ve talked about already. We can’t recreate everything in the digital space, we can’t create the real barbecue that we’re trying to create in a virtual space. It just makes sense to pause it, again do some deep listening, some deep thinking, some deep compensation. And then bring it back when we’re ready, when the world is ready for it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, when we started doing… Or we were going to do a live tour in 2020 with Revision Path. I had been talking to a couple of AIGA chapters, and we had started the tour. I started in February in LA, did a show out there in Leimert Park with a local architect. It was great, standing room only. And when we’ve done past events… And I get what you’re saying, it’s the actual space itself that becomes this crucible for fellowship that you just can’t recreate over a Zoom call. Even when we’ve done events in New York, we’ve done events here in Atlanta. And for me the best thing about the event is when it ends, and people are still staying around talking for an hour, hour and a half, the venue-

Joseph Cuillier:
Stacking up their plate metaphorically.

Maurice Cherry:
… Right. The venue’s kicked us out, we’re standing outside and folks are like, “Well, let’s go to a bar and keep talking, or let’s go to a restaurant or something.” That kind of fellowship you just can’t do the same thing over Zoom. When the lockdown sort of first started happening and the chapters were getting back to me like, “Oh, well we can do a Zoom call and we can do this.” I was like, “I don’t want to do that. I’m already Zooming enough for work and I don’t want to have to try to do the same thing over Zoom.” One, because it’s just not the same. What I think the audience gets out of it aside from listening to the people, is to actually meet up with other black creatives in their city that they may not even know about. The fact that the event exists means that people are coming to it, and without that actual physical event then it’s just not the same.

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah. There’s a lot of things the internet can do, what you’re describing ain’t one of them. We haven’t figured that out yet with the internet. I think the intention is to love up on each other, the vision is to create this movement that will get us to where we need to go. When we’re doing the festival in Project Row Houses, Fox News actually came by. The local Fox chapter not the Fox News, but the local Fox station came by. And they asked me, “What is this about? What are you doing?” And I was like, “This is a movement. The purpose of this is to start a movement for black love, and to center black love at the center of what this country is.” Don’t we deserve it? Don’t we deserve to not just be tolerated, but to be loved after all we’ve done to literally build this country, to expand the freedoms and the rights of this country, to fight for them, die for them.

Joseph Cuillier:
I mean I was a little more and more crass. I was like, “The intention is for America to pay reparation, and dissolve, and reconstitute under black love.” I told Fox News that, they did not air it but that’s at the heart of what we’re trying to do. And we’re using the vessel that is the cookout, that is the street art, the public art, that’s some part of our culture, that is the performative nature. You dress up, we sing, we dance, we do all of these things that is just natural to our way of being, our blackness. And I think that it’s worth the wait, if it takes two years for the pandemic to subside it’s worth the wait. So we’re just going to wait.

Maurice Cherry:
Now kind of switching gears here a bit from the school which we’ve talked about for a good while now. You mentioned being in NYC, but you’re originally kind of between Louisiana and Texas. You kind of mentioned you kind of went back and forth a bit. Being in that sort of part of the South, I’m pretty sure art, music, and design were kind of a big part of your growing up, right?

Joseph Cuillier:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it didn’t look like graphic design or fine art, but it’s definitely been with me since day one. The story I tell growing up in Baton Rouge, where I went to elementary and middle school. And my family we would go to Southern University football games, and it’s a HBCU so we had tailgate. All day before the actual game in the evening, we would barbecue or have a seafood boil. And this was every weekend which is crazy. The amount of food that we would buy, cook, eat with people, it’s crazy that we did this every weekend. I’m realizing that as I’m been growing up, and I am doing seafood boils now, I’m hosting them or I’m hosting a barbecue. But the funny moment that I always remember is maybe the week before the season started, my mom came home with a handful of clothes like the Polo’s and the Tommy’s. The things we were wearing at the time. And the other brands like the Sean John, and all that, and the FUBU.

Joseph Cuillier:
And it was such a moment of joy. I can see now that I was being brought up and cultivated into fashion design. I was being made a connoisseur of design. That may have been the intention consciously, or maybe an intention subconsciously, to have just a big stack of fresh clothes just thrown on my bed like, “Here, now you’re set for the whole season.” And as long as I can remember I’ve loved fashion, I’ve loved clothes, and I think that kind of introduced me to design. But when it came time for me to figure out what do I want to make myself as opposed to not just being a connoisseur but a creator. And I tried fashion, I tried street art, I tried a lot of different things, but graphic design was the thing that I don’t know, just came the most natural to me. And learning about it, learning the history of it, it was fascinating to read about the Bauhaus, read about the International Style, read about the shifts that were happening in art and design in a world that was creating these new ways of thinking, and these new ways of making.

Joseph Cuillier:
And technology too, also being so [cordially 00:44:20] in term with it. And that kind of put me to graphic design to study that. But even with that, the medium, the form making was interesting to me, but I think of myself as the designer that doesn’t really care about design. I know about the Bauhaus, I’ve been to the Bauhaus, I’ve been invited to the Bauhaus but I don’t care anymore. At the time I did, but right now I’m way more interested in learning about Orishas. I’m way more interested in learning about my family history, and how that relates to New Orleans. I’m way more interested in learning about black radical politics. The work I do is me just taking those ways of making and those ways of seeing, and just imply my interest to it. And as a result I think I look a bit different than most designers. Like my career, the things that I make, the things I put out and produce with these skills, in a lot of cases may not even look like design, period.

Joseph Cuillier:
But I think that’s my approach and it comes from those early influences, those early cultivations that my family placed on me. I come from a line of educators. My grandfather Joseph Cuillier, Sr, has a school named after him in New Orleans on the West Bank. There’s reasons for me to approach art and design from the lens of a educator. And it was kind of put into me before I even realized it was there, it’s been there. Growing up in Houston, being around Project Row Houses at the time that I was discovering fine art, it kind of put in pressure in my head like, “Oh, that’s fine art.” I learned about fine art in a city that took a very different approach to art. Thanks to the folks that Project Row, and Rick Lowe, and all the artists, and collectives that came together to create their vision. To be clear, Project Row Houses is a organization that started from this artists being challenged by young people in his community.

Joseph Cuillier:
They came to the studio, the folks from a local high school, and they saw what he was painting and they were like, “We don’t need you to paint about issues happening in our community. We know the issues. Who is this for because it’s not for us. You’re a creative person, how about you do something about it? How about you use your creativity and try to apply that to the issues and see if you could get some moving and shaking.” To have that down the street while I’m in college, and I’m just starting to go to galleries, and just starting to go to art spaces, it kind of made me think, “Oh, this is fine art.” When really it’s this ghetto eyes pushed it aside version of fine art that hasn’t really been supported in the same ways like an object maker is supported in the fine art world. Someone who makes paintings and sculptures. Long story long, the way I came up and where I came up has everything to do with the type of artist, the type of designer I am and I’m grateful for it. I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. There’s been this thing that’s been going around lately around this concept of decolonizing design, where I think the notion is that you’re sort of introducing different sort of design cultures or things. It’s a person’s teaching practice or design practice in order to break them out of particular I would say just Eurocentric design sort of standpoint. Would you say that’s what you’re trying to accomplish with The Black School? Is something similar to that?

Joseph Cuillier:
Yes. And I’m just trying to decolonize not even in a metaphorical sense. I’m literally trying not to be a colony anymore. My wife was talking on this call and she was talking, and it was a group of folks from around the world. I don’t remember the country. Or I would’ve know the callers to even know the country. But it was an African sister and she was saying that decolonization has nothing to do with America. Africa we were colonized, what y’all got over there is something different. But really the opposite is true. I mean, not the opposite but we are still a colony. The colony never ended, we never decolonized. I feel like design, the tools we have to transform are tools that we can use to just de-colonize, period.

Joseph Cuillier:
I do believe decolonizing design is a part of that. We got to learn about the contributions of black folks to the design discipline. But we also have to learn about the contributions of black folks, period. We got to learn about the contributions of black folks to revolutionary thought. We’ve got to learn about the contributions of black folks to cultivating land, to building economic engine systems. And I think that will help you as a designer of course, but I think it will help us to the eventual goal is liberation, freedom, justice, these bigger ideas. Because I think design has that power. I have a deep faith in art and design, not the art world or the design world, but the actual mechanisms, methodologies, the act of creation.

Joseph Cuillier:
I think we can not only make it look sexy as far as revolution. I think we can make it look good because we have the skills to do that, but I also think we can do it if we use design in ways that are decolonized. It doesn’t have to be all about client services, that can generate revenue, that can generate income, that could generate economics in a community, but it also can be about… There’s an issue of gun violence, maybe we can design our way out of that, and it’s not going to be about typography. But there’s this certain set of perspectives and approaches that we use in design that can translate to bigger problems we see in our communities.

Maurice Cherry:
What is it that keeps you motivated and inspired these days? I mean, I feel like… And just for people that are listening to this, we’re recording this the week of April 19th, we don’t really know… Both Joseph and I don’t really know kind of what may transpire the next few days, that by the time you listened to this podcast might’ve already set some shit off. But it’s a rough time for black folks right now, which is an evergreen statement these days. But what keeps you motivated to keep going?

Joseph Cuillier:
Family for sure. Baby got to eat so got to get up and do what you got to do to make sure that happens. I just got this book and I just came back from Jackson, Mississippi. Freedom, by Edward Onaci, I think he pronounced it. And it’s inspired by another book of the same name, Dr Imar Obadele. And Obadele was a part of this black radical organization called the Republic of New Africa. And their vision was to take the southern states of the United States, so from Louisiana to Georgia and build a independent black nation. Which is one of the most creative, imaginative visions I’ve had or I’ve witnessed for black liberation. I’m super inspired by the work of those folks. At the moment that’s what I’ve been reading about. I just came back from Jackson, Mississippi, where they tried to get it going. And we obviously don’t have a black nation in the borders of the United States, but they got…

Joseph Cuillier:
Or folks inspired by that movement have bought all of these properties in West Jackson. We’re staying at this co-operative for New West Jackson that owns 67 properties in the hood. And they’re building farms, they’re building housing, they’re building economic engines in the space to employ people, to bring money to the space that has been all but abandoned. Isn’t crazy. Jackson is the capital of Mississippi, and if you drive around Jackson you come away with a clear idea that white folks in Mississippi don’t care. They do not care that it’s their capital, it’s like 90% black. And all you got to do is roll through West Jackson and you can see how much folks do not care. You would think, “Oh, this is a image of this state that we are projecting out to the world.” That does not matter, not to the white folks in Mississippi. And this cooperative has…

Joseph Cuillier:
Like you turn the corner onto a block and it’s like just walking into a oasis after walking through hundreds of miles of desert. It’s beautiful, the houses are beautiful, the land is beautiful, the people what they’re doing, and their vision for the world is beautiful. That’s one of the things that is inspiring me. I’ve really been into kind of reconnecting Afro spirituality, Afro spiritual practices like the hoodoos, and the voodoos, and Orisha based Yoruba kind of religious concepts. That’s been super inspiring to me today, I mean for the last couple of years. But right now it’s something I wake up thinking about, going to sleep thinking about, and it’s a lot of different things. My mind goes and gets pulled in a lot of different directions. Like yesterday my tufting gun arrived in the mail. You know what a tufting gun is?

Joseph Cuillier:
It’s a rug creating machine and it looks kind of like a gun, but the gun shoots yarn through a back in fabric you would use to make a rug. That’s one thing that I’ve been super inspired by. In that instance, buying that comes from my still love and interest in fashion. And it’s showing up in my practice as like I’ve been making these textile art works lately for the last few years now. I’ll create a collage, and Photoshop, print it out on fabric. And then sew it together, or make some new kind of construction out of it, some new kind of architecture out of it. That’s super inspiring to me, riding my bike is super inspiring to me, my wife and daughter. I lack no shortage of inspiration which is a good thing and a bad thing, because it distracts me from finishing one thing. Get super excited about something, then move to the next thing, then move next, but I’ll always come back.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Has there been a piece of advice that has stuck with you over the years as you’ve gone through life, as you’ve built out the school and everything?

Joseph Cuillier:
It’s hard to call anything to mind specifically. I think there’s lessons learned that may not be succinctly wrapped up in statements of advice. With certain lessons you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, which sound depressing. But it’s taught me that you might as well just do what you want to do, because either way you’re going to end up at the same place. You might as well just say F it and be who you want to be, do what you want to do. Because I mean you could fake it, and be unhappy, and still not reach where you’re meant to reach.

Joseph Cuillier:
Or you could just live in that thing and deal with the initial discomfort of just being in your skin, and being who you are. But I think eventually you will end up where you need to be. I really believe in purpose right now more than ever, because I’ve been forced to sit down and think about that a lot. I believe what’s meant for you is meant for you, can’t nobody stop or take that. But it takes time for folks to really figure out their purpose, and it’s not just like a goal, it’s a moving target. I say figure out what that is for you, and live that unapologetically. Just go hard.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing? How do you want to… I imagine of course you’ll still be wanting to build out the school, but what does 2026 look like?

Joseph Cuillier:
Whoa, I think I need to put some pen to paper about that very soon. But hopefully the school… Not hopefully. What it looks like is the school will be built, will be functioning, doing art and civic engagement initiatives with our local community. That may look like our design workshops, or apprenticeships, or a community garden where we’re feeding ourselves food from the land. Hopefully it looks like me still creating, making things. I think of myself as a person who does two sorts of things, or artist or designer who does two sorts of things. I make things, object making, and I make experiences, platforms, producing and sharing knowledge.

Joseph Cuillier:
And I see those as two different kind of sides of a coin and hopefully I have a balance. Right now it’s real tilted towards the platforms, the community building, but I would love to spread it out a little bit more evenly. Hopefully The Black School is up and running to a degree where it’s second nature. We have our rhythm, we have our stride so it allows me, frees me up to do all the things, follow all those inspiration, and passions, and pursuits that kind of make me happy, and fill me with joy and fulfillment.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more about you, and about your work, and everything online?

Joseph Cuillier:
On Instagram, you can follow me at Joseph Cuillier first name, last name, or at The Black School. On the interwebs you can go to my website, josephcuillier.com or theblack.school. Not .com, not .org, .school, so theblack.school.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Sounds good. Well, Joseph Cuillier, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Really thank you for talking about the school, and really how you’ve built it out, what you’re trying to do in the community. I’m glad that we were able to spend a lot of time really diving into what it’s about, and its structure, and of course what you’re trying to do in the community. I think it’s something that is super important and I really want to see kind of where this goes from here. Thank you for coming on the show, I appreciate it.

Joseph Cuillier:
Thank you, brother. Appreciate you, appreciate what you do. You’re building this platform for folks like us to just share knowledge, share experience, share space, it’s super appreciated.

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Azarra Amoy

We’re back across the pond this week and having a good ol’ chat and a spot of tea with one of London’s most brilliant artists — Azarra Amoy. It was a good time to catch up with her since she just got a new studio!

Azarra spoke on how art is like her diary, and she walked me through some of her inspirations and talked about growing up in London and even spending time in Bangkok before transitioning into her current artistic career. Azarra’s colorful, kinetic designs are a welcome sight during these times, and may also inspire you on your creative journey!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Azarra Amoy:
My name is Azarra Amoy, and I am a multifaceted RS and designer, creative thinker and a student of this crazy world we call life. Or shall I say, yeah I work as an artist, and I’m also a part-time designer. So I work with presentations for a creative agency called Empire. So I do that three to four times a week. And then the rest of the days is all for art.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What is the feeling in London like right now?

Azarra Amoy:
Quiet because we’re back in lockdown. So we’ve been in lockdown just before Christmas, which was a bit mental because it was literally a last minute thing. They were like, yeah, you can spend Christmas with your family. And then literally three days before they’re like, no, everyone’s on lockdown. Basically all the presents you bought, send them back.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh no.

Azarra Amoy:
You aren’t seeing your family. So I don’t know how many people actually stuck to that. But right now, I feel like a lot of people are fed up because this is our third lockdown. And it’s just like in and out, in and out. But I’ve just been trying to keep myself busy personally. And check up on friends, family, and try and find some normality in this.

Maurice Cherry:
How have you been doing just kind of overall this year so far?

Azarra Amoy:
So far this year it was quiet. I literally took time out for myself. I was like, before everything gets a bit crazy or if it does get a bit crazy, I just want time for myself because the end of 2020 was a bit nonstop crazy for me work-wise. So it’s just been nice just to just chill, let me think. Write down some goals that I want to achieve personally and professionally. And just take time, eat right, detox from all the drink and food that I ate over Christmas period and just yeah, just reboot.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you I guess … Can you talk about just some of those goals you might have for this year?

Azarra Amoy:
So one of the goals was to sort out my studio. So I moved out of my last studio just before Christmas, and I needed to find … It was a bit last minute.com. And I’ve been trying to find places, but it’s really hard because we’re on lockdown. So it’s through video calls and just trying to work out through pictures if it looks okay. But luckily yesterday I got the keys to a new studio. So I’m really excited to get in there and just fix it up and make it my second home.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh nice.

Azarra Amoy:
So it’s a bit hard sometimes working from home, separating from work and personal time.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Well, congratulations on the new studio.

Azarra Amoy:
Thank you. I’m really excited.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s one thing that I’ve been thinking about over this whole pandemic quarantine thing, is I got to get my own space. I like my apartment where I’m at. And I’ve worked out of my apartment for a long time. I’ve been doing the working remote thing since 2009. So I’m not unfamiliar with it, but the difference is that I had the option to leave the house.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I could go and work from a coffee shop or work at a client location or travel or something like that. And granted, right now our restrictions aren’t super strict at all. I’m in Georgia, which honestly has been open since last May. There’s been … We had three weeks of lockdown in April. And then we’ve kind of been open. To that effect, our rates are super high because people have been traveling and just coming and going as you please. But as I’ve been working, I was out of work and then got a new job. And I’ve just been thinking, I really want my own space. Granted, my apartment’s nice, but I really want to have that separate workspace that’s just for creativity.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It does make a difference. I miss having my studio space. I was like, I just need to get something.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Azarra Amoy:
But luckily I found a place that’s really nice. It has a balcony and all sorts, so I’m just really happy.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh nice. So what do your days look like now with lockdown and the new studio space and everything?

Azarra Amoy:
So I usually have a routine, I get up early, do a little meditation, work out. So I’m addicted to spin at the moment. And I login to work at 9:30, so I work three to four days a week depending on how busy they are. And yeah, I login and I usually have schedules set out for me already. So I just crack on with the work. And my team is really small, they’re really lovely. We all have game nights and stuff, and just try and make it as normal as possible. And yeah, I do that until 6:30, and then I usually eat and then spend time on personal projects, whether if that’s just me just trying to do a sketch or a digital collage, those are sort of my go-to things that I do.

Azarra Amoy:
And I do them without even noticing that I do them, if that makes sense. Some people chill and watch Netflix and stuff. But for me, doing a little sketch, a little doodle on something is my chill time. And not everything that I create, I show. So basically I always say that my art is like my diary. It’s like what I feel in the day, or something that’s on my mind because I’m not really … I feel like I’m not a great communicator with words, but I communicate well when I draw. So that’s my output.

Maurice Cherry:
I got you. What are some of the projects that you’re working on right now?

Azarra Amoy:
Art-wise or work-wise as a designer?

Maurice Cherry:
We’ll say art-wise. We’ll say art-wise.

Azarra Amoy:
So art-wise, I’m working with a publishing company. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention them yet, but looking to do some illustrations for a children’s book. So I had just recently done a mock-up of stuff. So I’m just waiting on feedback if they’re liking the direction that it’s going. I’m trying to do some personal paintings because fingers crossed with COVID, I will be able to have a solo exhibition, which has been on my list for forever. And last year was meant to be the year, but obviously with what happened, it was a no-go. So I’m hoping come October, that will happen. So I’m just slowly putting their stuff into motion.

Azarra Amoy:
And I’m going to be on a panel for a studio space that’s in Brixton, London. And I’ll be on the panel for their residency. So I’ll be helping select who gets a year’s residency with them. So I’ve been working with that team just discussing a few things. So that’s what I’ve been doing art-wise.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, you’ve got your hands full with a lot.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. I try to keep as busy as possible.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you usually have sort of a limit of the number of projects that you try to take on?

Azarra Amoy:
I listen to what my body tells me, if that makes sense. So if I feel like I’m really run down, then I have no problem just saying no to whatever project comes. It’s like, no, sorry, you need some you time just to just relax. So I just go off on how I feel, and that’s how I take on the work.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So these are … Just the projects you mentioned between a book cover, personal paintings, doing this panel, talk to me about how you approach a new project. It can be any type of project. What’s sort of your thought process when it comes to that?

Azarra Amoy:
I guess with a lot of projects that do come my way, they usually come to me because they know my style of artwork. So for example, I feature a lot of black … All the women I feature in my artwork are black women. Me myself, I’m a black woman. So yeah, I think it just comes from … I’ve been lucky enough to be able to navigate where the direction of the artwork goes because they know my style. So they know that’s the sort of direction, and what I’m trying to portray and uplift black women in the artwork that I do. So that sort of is usually the base. And then from there, I just then add on what the client wants, if that makes sense. And yeah, and then from there I usually do a mock-up. And then they give feedback.

Azarra Amoy:
So that’s how I’ve always really done it. So and usually I research into certain stuff. So right now, I’m really interested in the black Madonna, which is religious, the black Virgin Mary.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Azarra Amoy:
Let’s put it that way. And I’ve been looking to the history of that, which is really interesting because these countries that are really popular with the black Madonna are not exactly the most black-friendly places. So it’s really interesting how they worship this idol of this black Virgin Mary. But in day-to-day sort of experiences, they’re not like that with people of color in real life. It’s just a weird, she’s allowed to be worshiped, but if you put a black woman in front of them, they’ll do anything to put them down, if that makes sense?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Azarra Amoy:
I just go off of what surrounds me, what comes to mind, stuff that I see [inaudible 00:12:42], things that I see in movies, magazines, blogs that just trigger something, and I’ll just start researching.

Maurice Cherry:
We’ve actually got a church here in my neighborhood here in Atlanta called Shrine of the Black Madonna. It’s a church, it’s a cultural center. They do events and stuff there. So I’m familiar with the concept that you’re talking about. Do you usually try to have some religious iconography in your work, or is this just a particular … Or is it a particular figure I guess you’re kind of obsessed with right now?

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah, it’s just a particular figure that I’m obsessed with right now. So yeah, not all work features, but it just … I don’t think I have any religious features, no, in my work. So this is just something new that I’ve come across that I find really interesting, and we’ll see where it’ll take me.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Is there anyone out there that you would love to collaborate with?

Azarra Amoy:
Oh. I guess right now it would be interesting to … I have no one in mind, but there are a lot of people that I have collaborated with have been London-based. So it would be nice to collaborate with people from different countries to gain their experience, to understand their experience and how it’s similar and how we can collab. Does that make sense?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Azarra Amoy:
But I can’t think of no one from the top of my head right now.

Maurice Cherry:
From looking at your style, your style actually reminds me a lot of another mixed media artist that I had on the show. God when was that? That might’ve been about two or three years ago. This guy in … He’s in New York. His name is Kendrick Daye, D-A-Y-E.

Azarra Amoy:
Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
He does kind of this similar collage mixed media kind of work. So your art reminds me a lot of what he’s doing. You all have very sort of similar styles in terms of I think the color and the elements. I think your work at least from the work that I’ve seen, there’s a lot of play on symmetry.

Azarra Amoy:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
With portraiture and things. You try to have a lot of symmetry, which I think is really nice.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. I like the whole kaleidoscope kind of effect in my work. So there’s always some sort of symmetry as much as possible.

Maurice Cherry:
What would you say is the hardest part about what you do?

Azarra Amoy:
Knowing when to stop. As an art issue, always something try to over-perfect. And I speak to my cousin every day, and there’s this painting that I’ve literally been working on for about two and a half years. And I just don’t know when to stop. I’m like, no, it’s not right. It’s not right. And he’s just like, it’s never going to be right. Just show the world. The art is amazing. I’m just like, no, it’s not ready. And just know when to say, okay, that’s enough. It’s never going to be right sort of thing. And you can always add … The beautiful thing about art, you can always add to it. Just because you start and you show the world, doesn’t mean that, that’s the end of it. You can add on to it. You can take away. You can make it into something completely different.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s true. That’s true.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
So kind of switching gears here a little bit, were you born and raised in London?

Azarra Amoy:
Yes I was.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, tell me about that. Did you kind of get exposed to a lot of art and design growing up?

Azarra Amoy:
Most definitely. My parents are both creatives in their own way. So my dad paints. And well, he enjoys painting. He’s a painter and decorator by trade. And my mom just dabbled in everything I guess. I guess that’s where I get a lot of my creative talent from. So she was a hairdresser. She was that crazy mom who had the bright hair, then green hair, and then orange hair. Every time she turned up to pick me up from school, her hair was always different colors. So she was the crazy, cool art mom. And she’d done fashion, yeah just around the house little DIY projects. Whenever she was sewing, she always used to set me little tasks to do. So I’ll make a pencil case from scratch. Make little bags for myself.

Azarra Amoy:
Just stuff like that. So and I think she got that from my grandma because my grandma’s like, “You must know how to sew. It’s a key thing because you don’t have any money or you don’t have anything, at least you can sew the clothes on your back.” You can make curtains, you can make a chair, you can do whatever. As long as you can sew.” So that’s one of the skills that was drummed into me from a very young age.

Maurice Cherry:
So it sounds like being exposed to all this so young, did you have a feeling that this is what you wanted to do? Or was this just a part of your world?

Azarra Amoy:
It was just a part of my world to be honest. I didn’t even think of it as a career choice or anything like that. It was just a way of life, and it only hit me that actually this is what I really want to do as my career choice was not until I moved to Bangkok and I went there to work in doing something completely random. I was working as a governess, which is like a nanny almost for a family out there. And I was just getting really down. I was like, no, this is not being homesick, this is something else. And it just wasn’t clicking to me. And then one day I was just sitting on the sofa and I was like, I know. I know why I’m so down. I know why I’m feeling a little depressed.

Azarra Amoy:
And I was like, I haven’t picked up a pen, I haven’t drawn anything. I haven’t made anything. That’s what it is. So as soon as that popped into my head, I jumped in the bike taxis, I went to the nearest shopping center and bought up a whole load of art supplies. And it just that feeling of just being creative again, I was just like, yeah, I’m coming back home and this is what I’m doing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Were you studying abroad? How did you end up in Bangkok being a governess? That seems like such a random kind of departure from what you were doing.

Azarra Amoy:
So my friend was actually working as a governess out there. And she’s like, oh, there’s this family that’s looking for a governess. I’m going to put your forward, do you mind. And I was like, I have no experience in this. She’s like, it doesn’t matter. Go interview and if they like you, then come over. And I was like, well, this is a bit out of my comfort zone. I was tempted to say, no. But I felt like it was one of those things that in a few years time I’ll kick myself like, why didn’t you just take the opportunity. So I went with it, and I had about three interviews with this family. And they’re like, yeah, just we’ll pay for your ticket. Apartment’s paid for, just come over.

Azarra Amoy:
And I was like, oh okay. And I stayed there for a year, and yeah, it got to the point where I was just like, this is not where I’m meant to be. But I absolutely love Bangkok. There’s a place in my heart for Bangkok.

Maurice Cherry:
You are the second person that I’ve interviewed recently that has had some tie or connection to Bangkok. That is so … Yeah I just interviewed an artist in Washington DC here named Reggie Black. And he spent four years in Bangkok as a designer and doing talks and stuff like that. You let me know because you were there, was Bangkok a really creative city?

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. There’s loads of stuff to do. It’s like the city that kind of, it doesn’t sleep. Which is not like London. London, people always think that London’s busy and stuff. But come a certain time, things just shut down. But Bangkok’s just, they have a night market. There’s just lights, there’s culture, there’s just artwork everywhere, music. It’s just a really nice atmosphere. So yeah, definitely I would love to go back to Bangkok under creative or creative reasons anyway.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now you went to the University of the Arts in London. Can you tell me what your time was like there?

Azarra Amoy:
Oh, I was there for a while because the University of the Arts, they have different campuses.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Azarra Amoy:
So, well different colleges under the University of the Arts. So the first one I went to was the Art College in Camberwell. Camberwell Art College it’s called. And I had done a foundation art course there. So that course is just to help you build your portfolio and understand which direction you want to go in creatively. So you do a bit of fashion, a bit of graphic design, a bit of sculpture, painting, et cetera. And then from there you branch off into which field you’re more comfortable with. So that was my first college, and I actually went into graphic design. And now looking back at it, I was like, why did I do that? Because I was really interested in sculpture, but I thought, oh, how can I make money as a sculpture?

Azarra Amoy:
I’m just thinking, I think people are in your ear like, how can you make money from being a sculpture. Graphic design makes more sense. So I went down that route. And then I ended up in London College of Communication, which is where they do mostly sort of graphics, digital courses there. And I had actually done a foundation degree, which then turns into a full degree if you did the final year. So I had only done two years of that. So I have a foundation degree in graphic communication. And I was like, I actually absolutely hate this. So I was like, but I want a full degree. So I managed to sort of blag my way onto another degree course, which was something completely different, magazine publishing.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Azarra Amoy:
So I spoke to the head of the course. I was like, “Yeah, I’m really interested in doing this course. I have experience.” which was not true. I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “Oh okay.” She looked at my grades. She’s like, “Okay, you can join the course, but over the summer you have to do some coursework to make up.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” And she’s like, “Okay.” And I made it happen thank God. And from there, I graduated in magazine publishing, which is a weird course because it’s a bit of design, a bit of PR, marketing, all of the stuff that you need to know basically of how to run a magazine.

Azarra Amoy:
So by the time I graduated, it was that weird shift between print into digital. So I was like, this course was mostly about print. And now I’m graduating and everyone’s transitioning to digital. I was like, what is going on? I was like, all the places where I had done work placements at, their print … All the prints of their magazines were being shut down the department, the print department of their team. So I was just like, everyone’s just shutting down. I don’t know anything about digital. So I think that kind of scared me and I just sort of was stuck for a while thinking, what am I going to do next? I don’t know anything about digital. Should I take a course or something?

Azarra Amoy:
And I think I was stuck in a rut for a long time. And I just continued at my job that I was doing during uni, which was working in retail. And that, that’s when … After that, that’s when I went to Bangkok, and that just opened my eyes.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Well, it sounds like that trip to Bangkok was what you needed, if you were at this point where you had went through all this school and you were feeling stuck.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
A change of scenery will do it.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah, because over here I saw they sort of sell you a dream. They’re like, yeah, once you leave uni you’ll be able to get a job. And that’s what I thought. I was like, yeah, as soon as I go through it, I’ll be able to get a job easy. No. Not like that at all. Everyone I speak to, they’re like, yeah, we saw the same dream. And then it hits you. Life hits you.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I know that feeling all too well. I graduated … Well, I didn’t go to design school, but I graduated with a degree in math. And I really had no career prospects lined up after school. I was still working like you. I was working the job that I was working while I was at school, which was just selling tickets at the symphony. Just selling to old white patrons that wanted to hear Chopin or whatever. Telling them where to sit and stuff.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
And it wasn’t until a few years after that, that I sort of ended up falling into design. But yeah, sometimes that’s how it is. School’s … And that’s not really I guess the fault of … I don’t want to say it’s the fault of the schools. It’s really the fault of the market.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Just because you come out with a degree, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re ready to go right into working somewhere because maybe you need a portfolio or maybe the school that you have has a different reputation that this company doesn’t go for. So I don’t know, it can be tricky. I know it’s tricky here in the States. I can imagine it’s the same way overseas as well.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah, definitely. It’s not easy. And as you said, it’s true, you can’t blame the institutions for the lack of opportunities once you leave. But I think with the course I was saying, the foundation degree course, that was meant to be heavily work experience-based. And when we joined, everyone was like, where’s this work experience? Because we were meant to have industry teachers come in every week.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Azarra Amoy:
To teach us from different companies and stuff. And we literally had one the whole year. We’re like, this is not what we signed up for. And we were all meant to be allocated sort of a mentor from the industry, which they were going to provide. So there was meant to be a mentorship scheme and stuff. But yeah, it didn’t work out that way.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Azarra Amoy:
But here I am. I found my feet.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So you went to Bangkok, you worked there as a governess. You didn’t like it. That sort of sparked you wanting to become a designer. And you came … Did you come right back to London after that?

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. Straight back to London.

Maurice Cherry:
So what was your plan once you got back?

Azarra Amoy:
I had saved some money whilst doing this job because I didn’t have to pay rent or anything like that. So I had saved, and I was like, okay, I’m going to give myself a year to really try and get this running. And if there’s no progress, then I’m going to have to really rethink this. So when I came back, I was just applying for sort of any artist call-outs and stuff like that. And I was just … I just began painting. And luckily I had a friend who used to do an evening called Arts Meets Music. And he was like yeah, why don’t you display some of your artwork at one of these events? And I was like, amazing, jumped on it. And then from there, that’s how I met people. And someone told me about, oh … Some of my artwork [inaudible 00:27:32] murals.

Azarra Amoy:
Because my paintings are such large scale paintings. And they’re like, why don’t you do murals? So I was like, oh, I never thought of that. I just thought street art is murals. Spray paint, I’d never touched a spray can in my life. How can I do this? Well, let me just apply for a call-out that I saw, which was local to me. And I actually had a dream that told … People think I’m crazy when I say this. I actually had a dream about it. And I was like, I woke up from this dream and I was like, yes, let me do the application now. And I actually won. And I was like, oh, this was a sign. So I had done it, I was like, okay, I’m going to literally win this because I’ve never spray painted in my life.

Azarra Amoy:
And the mural actually came out really nice. And it’s still there in Brixton until this day. And from there, people just started contacting me. “Oh yeah, do you want to do a mural here?” “Do you want to do a mural there?” And I was like, wow, I was really not expecting this. And I found a new passion for something else as well. That’s how I got into the murals.

Maurice Cherry:
And speaking of which, that’s the mural that’s … People can see that in the cover art for this episode. The one that you’re standing next to.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s quite a mural. So you worked on all of that by yourself? Or did you have a … Did you work with another artist or anything?

Azarra Amoy:
Yes. So this, the mural that you’re talking about, I worked with another artist called Lynette [inaudible 00:28:49]. And I worked with her on two other projects as well. So the person who created the project, [inaudible 00:28:57], she knew both of us. So she knew that we worked together, and she wanted two artists who had a good relationship who can work well together. And she’s more of a calligraphy artist. And I’m more of a sort of paint now, visual graphics. So both of our styles just seemed to work together. So she commissioned both of us to do the project. And yeah, and it worked out amazing. I’m really happy with the outcome.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, it’s a beautiful mural. It’s a beautiful mural.

Azarra Amoy:
Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
And I’ll make sure that I will link so people can see the full thing because with the cover art it’s just sort of cut off in that square. As I was looking through your website and looking at your projects, one project I saw that I really liked was the work that you did with MTV. How’d you end up working with them?

Azarra Amoy:
So they contacted me last year about the award. And they’re like, it’s a really short turnaround. But we really love your style, and really think that it will suite … My art style will suite the award winners. So all the award winners for the … It was … Let me get the name off the award. Generation Change Award. All the winners are black female women or women of color, sorry. And I was like, well, I paint women of color and I paint women. So I was like, yes. All these women who have won, so it’s Raquel and Willis, [inaudible 00:30:23], Louisa Brazil, Kathea … She’s going to kill me for pronouncing her name. [inaudible 00:30:32] and [inaudible 00:30:33]. Sorry, my pronunciation of the names are terrible. And yeah, these women are amazing. They’re doing so much for our generation, for the future generation, fighting. They’re all amazing activists within their field.

Azarra Amoy:
I was just so excited just to be asked just to create something personal for them. So all of the awards … Each of their awards is hand-painted and customized to them. So it was a very special project. I was very happy to be selected and honored.

Maurice Cherry:
So these days when it comes to big, high profile projects like that, are the projects coming to you, or are you seeking them out?

Azarra Amoy:
Luckily they seem to be coming to me. I have no idea where MTV saw my stuff from because when they contacted me, they showed me some of the artwork that they liked. And I was like, this is so random. It’s literally just random artwork that I just posted on Instagram, not thinking anything of it. Just, oh, this is what I’ve been doing during lockdown. Here’s a painting sort of thing. Just didn’t think about it. And those are the ones that they selected. So it was interesting because I would’ve thought it would be something that … Like another big project that I’d done before or something like that. But no, they contacted me. I was very lucky.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of your influences? Like I mentioned, the work that you’re doing, this sort of collage work is very vibrant. And certainly very unique. Who influences you or what influences you I should say?

Azarra Amoy:
As I said before, a lot of the collages and painting that I do are stuff that I do daily. So they just represent my mood. It could be influenced by a song that I’ve just had on repeat all day that makes me feel good. I’m like, oh, I’m going to do a collage on that. I know it sounds typical, but literally the women that I have around me are amazing from my sister, my mom. A lot of the other artists that I work with are mostly females. So yeah, they push me and inspire me constantly.

Maurice Cherry:
At this stage in your career, you are doing these large scale projects and things of that nature, what does black art mean to you?

Azarra Amoy:
Black art for me is a place to be free. It’s a way for me to share my experiences and also hopefully uplift other black women. I think that’s important because representation especially in the art world … I don’t know about in the States, but over here the art world is very white male-based. These institutions are very white man, paint a sculpture sort of thing. And that’s even projected in the education within the art education when I was at uni and school. So for me, it’s about representation, authenticity, and just uplifting. That’s what art means to me. It’s just being free.

Maurice Cherry:
What is sort of the London design scene like for you right now? Being on lockdown, are there ways that you’re able to connect with creatives?

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. So I’m part of … What’s that group’s … I sign up to online courses. So one of the courses that I use is Black Blossoms. So it’s an online art school. And you sign up and there’s different art courses. So every week there’s a different course. And I’ve been literally killing those. I’m right now, the course that I’m on is the Art Revolution in China, which is really interesting. Just opening up my eyes to different genres of art that I just wasn’t exposed to. And having these other women in these blossom art groups, and all of us just sharing opportunities like oh, someone’s contacted me to do this, but I just don’t have time. Any of you sort of have any idea of someone or if you want to do it? And we’re just sharing contacts, sharing opportunities because everyone’s just trying to eat. Some people have been made redundant from jobs and stuff. So I think, I feel like there’s a real sense of everyone coming together and just trying to help each other out.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. That’s a good thing that you’re able to kind of use technology as a way to reach out to people and to sort of have that fellowship and that … Also the ability to kind of work together. I don’t know if you collaborated with anyone solely on a virtual level with any work?

Azarra Amoy:
I worked with a team who I had done murals with in the past. And I was actually scheduled to do a mural with them summertime last year, but it didn’t work out. So in the end, it ended up being a digital project. So from there it’s just, it was all online-based having to work from that sort of platform, I wasn’t able to research how I usually research sometimes. So especially if I’m doing artwork in a certain location or reference if it’s referencing a certain location, I usually go out with my camera, take photos. I just spend the day there, really just take in the atmosphere, but being obviously locked in the house, I’ve just had to find other ways. So YouTube, and watching old documentaries on the area, just trying to gain as much information. Trying to put out contact people via Instagram, which is a bit wild. But just people who you see off on the area and you can try and, “Hey, this is a bit weird, but I just want to get an understanding what this location means to you.” Or get as much interviews and stuff like that, which I’ve never really worked that way.

Azarra Amoy:
So definitely even after we come out of lockdown, I think I’ll be using those forms definitely to my practice.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Sounds like you picked up a new skill over the pandemic.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. Which is cool because I’m literally … I’m a person who keeps themselves to themselves. So it’s definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone having to talk to people. And even doing interviews, I don’t like my first Instagram Live at the end of last year. And I was like, I’ve never done this before. I was so nervous. And just doing radio shows as well I’ve been doing. So it’s been practice. I’m not great at interviews, but I’m getting there.

Maurice Cherry:
Practice makes perfect, let me tell you. Just the more that you’re able to do it, the more comfortable you’ll become. That’s really the best way to do it. You get more comfortable, you end up kind of being able to pull on … Particularly if you’re talking about different projects that you’ve done. You’re able to kind of pull those narratives out really easily. So if I could give any advice, I would say, take all the opportunities that come to you because each of them is just a way for you to get better at it.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. Definitely. And it’s just fighting the inner demons as well because it’s so easy to sort of self-sabotage. Be like, oh, I don’t want to do this. It’s out of my comfort zone. But you just … I just push myself all the time, and just be like, come on Azarra. Come on. Do my little speech to try and motivate myself and be like, you’re going to look back at this and think, oh, what was I panicking about? It’s so simple.

Maurice Cherry:
Because the flip side to it especially I think with doing a podcast interview is that the audience is vast and varied and diverse. There may be someone that’s out there listening that is like you. And is like, oh, well if she’s doing it, then I can do it.

Azarra Amoy:
Yeah. And I hope there is someone out there. You can do it.

Maurice Cherry:
How do you define success right now?

Azarra Amoy:
Success for me is doing what I love. Yeah. Doing what I love and getting paid for it, which is the dream. So I’m always selective as well on what I work on. If it doesn’t feel right, if it doesn’t sit right with my core, or if it doesn’t feel authentic to me and feels forced, then I try to avoid it in a sense, but not restrict myself at the same time. So for me, it’s just what brings me joy at the moment because especially in times like this, you have to be selective with your energy. Even though you’re not being around a lot of people, it’s draining. So just trying to find happiness in everything.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you think your life would have gone if you weren’t a working artist? What else do you think you would’ve been doing?

Azarra Amoy:
I can’t even imagine that life. Something creative definitely. But maybe in a different field. For ages, I wanted to be an architect. Which is completely random. And I was actually so close, I applied for it at uni and everything. And I just last minute changed my mind and done the art foundation course because I was like, I haven’t explored all that’s out there creatively. So for me to just rush into being an architect doesn’t feel right at the moment. But yeah, probably an architect or maybe something with children. I love kids, so a teacher. There’s one. I probably would’ve been a teacher.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What sort of work do you want to be doing?

Azarra Amoy:
So I would love to be working full-time as an artist, and hopefully have my own creative agency and be doing what I do full-time. Even though as much as I love being a presentation designer, I would like to have more time to do projects that I really well. Whereas, working as a presentation designer, you’re restricted by what the client wants, Gram brand guidelines and stuff like that. It’s very sort of corporate, I would say corporate design. Whereas, as a creative, if I had to … My agency, I would be able to be selective and really push the boundaries and collab more with other people. Which is definitely on my list of things to do. Just get myself out there and just learn and work with other people. That’s the big thing for me, learning new skills as well. And just bringing that all together.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find more about you and about your work and everything online?

Azarra Amoy:
So you can check out my website, which is azarraamoy.com. And I’m also on Instagram @AzarraAmoy. And also on Twitter, which I don’t tweet that much, but just in case. It’s, ThisisAzarra. That’s my Twitter account.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Azarra Amoy, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you really for kind of sharing your creative journey and showing how you can really sort of find creativity in sort of the most seemingly unlikely of places. You were a governess like you said, in Bangkok. And you decided, oh, this is what I want to do. But no, the art that you’re creating is so vibrant and beautiful. And I’m just really excited to kind of see where you go from here. Hopefully one day we will be hearing about that exhibition that you’re planning.

Azarra Amoy:
Yes, definitely.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, so thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Azarra Amoy:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

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