When I was dropping off a couple paintings in downtown San Francisco, I spotted this man near the corner of Pine St. and Market. Among the pinstriped suits, crisp shirts and power ties that populate the financial district, his tweed jacket and oxford shirt made him look more like a humanities professor than a professional financier. For the background, I replaced the 100 California St. building with an Empire State Building that I built out of the barcode from my logo.
8-Rock
A couple weeks ago I re-read the novel Huckleberry Finn, and ever since then I’ve been combing through old magazines–really old magazines–for their drawings of enslaved Black people. My drawing for today is inspired by some of those old engravings, from 19th century issues of Harper’s, especially. I slightly altered some of the clothing and the poses from those drawings, but my 21st-century sensibility is evident in the expression on the subject’s face. I’d like to think he looks dignified, wise, and defiant .
8-Rock
If you’ve spend any amount of time in an African American community, then you are familiar with the phenomenon of the Sunday suit. It’s analog in Black women’s clothing is the Sunday hat. But there are those older gentlemen — mostly in their 60s and older — who wear a Sunday suit every day of the week. In Oakland, one of the places where these style-conscious gentlemen gather is at the Merritt Restaurant and Bakery near Lake Merritt. On any given day you can find some of the most stylish older brothers you’ll ever want to see, dressed in some of the most wonderful suits — both vintage and contemporary — along with matching shoes, hats, and ties. I don’t get to Merritt Restaurant as often as I used to, but when I do get a chance to stop in, I always find these sharply-dressed men an inspiration. I can only hope that one day, in 30 or 40 years, I will have both their presence of mind and their sense of style.
8-Rock
I recently returned from Seattle. It was an interesting trip for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I really didn’t see very many Black people in Seattle. NYC/Atlanta/Oakland/D.C. it ain’t, at least when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad place; but after living in Oakland for the last 11 years, the homogeneity of the place was a bit of a shock. So when I did see other Black folks in Seattle, they really stood out for me. The other reason this man caught my attention was because his pose reminded me of two of my favorite images, this wonderful photo of James Baldwin and the famous portrait of Sylvia von Harden by the painter Otto Dix.
8-Rock
When I was a kid growing up on Long Island I used to love those occasions when a field trip or other event gave me the opportunity to ride the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). I loved watching all the commuters. With their trench coats and briefcases and newspapers, they all looked so official and purposeful and adult. I looked forward to the day when I too would board the train, not as a kid on a school outing, but as a adult employee of some New York city museum — perhaps The Met — taking the train to get to my job every day. That day would never come. I ended became an English professor instead of a museum administrator, and I’ve never lived more than 10 minutes away from my work. So when I recently had the opportunity to take the train into downtown San Francisco for a several days of meetings, I enjoyed watching the other commuters just as much as I used to when I was a kid. The commuters were a lot more different colors and genders than when I was child, and there were very few trench coats. But they looked just as official and purposeful, and traveling to work alongside them made me think of my 9- or 10-year-old self and smile.
8-Rock
I could be that I have Superbowl on the brain, but it seems that everywhere I look I’m seeing big middle-aged guys who look like they must have been football players when they were younger. This includes my barber who, in fact, did play football when he was in school. The man in this drawing appeared to be about mid-40s. I saw him at the big Whole Foods in downtown Oakland. He was around 6’2″ and solid 250. My guess? Lineback for either Big Ten school or an HBCU.
When it’s NBA championship season, if wonder if I’ll start spotting for hoop players everywhere I look!
8-Rock
One of my favorite things about the UC Berkeley microfilm room is the way that every morning the staff makes poster-sized color copies of the front pages of major English-language papers from all over the world and posts them on the walls across from the information desk (and elsewhere).
In mid-January, world headlines were focused on the protests in Tunisia, and as I stood in the entryway of the microfilm room studying the various front-page stories on the issue, I noticed that the man standing next to me and reading the same pages, had an incredibly troubled (sad, concerned, despondent) expression on his face. Though I cannot say for sure, I have a feeling that this story I was scanning from the perspective of an interested foreigner from half a world away was a lot more personal for him.
8-Rock
I have to admit that I’ve been following covered of the protests in Cairo with a tenacity that borders on obsession. Between reading AP and the Times on my iPhone and googling the Al Jazeera website, I’ve been able to find what amounts to the closest I can get to hour-by-hour coverage. Back in 1998 I spent 5 days in Cairo during what had to be the hottest week of the year. The city was amazing and intense and, even after spending traveling to megacities like New York and Bangkok, it was quite intimidating. But I loved it, and it stays on my mind, even to this day. I think about it almost every day.
This drawing is inspired by the amazing story of the Cairo residents who joined together to form a human chain around the Egyptian museum to protect it from looters. Such collective action is only ever possible among people who truly love their city. To the protest Cairenes–best of luck. Be safe and have peace in the very near future.
8-Rock
I was looking at a book of ancient Ethiopian sacred art the other day. Looking at all the beautiful paintings of Black angels and nativity scenes and other Biblical moments got me to thinking about the notion of Black representations of God. I am always interested in depictions of figures from the major religious traditions of the world that challenge and/or expand U.S. and European depctions of divinity and the sacred. And so I decided to add my own work to the mix. Here is my drawing of a Black God, watching over the greatest city on the planet.
8-Rock
Like yesterday’s drawing, this picture is based on the students I passed a couple days ago on my ride home. I took some liberties, as you might have guessed. I aged them all, so that they appear to be old enough in high school or college, and then I gave each of the guys much longer hair than any of the kids I passed in my car. The expressions are pretty much true to life, though none of the students on whom this drawing is based were wearing beards. At 13 or 14, they were probably not quite old enough for facial hair.
8-Rock