We’ve all had the experience of hearing a song that gets stuck in your head for hours. Well, the same thing sometimes happens with the things you see. You catch a glimpse of something interesting or unusual–or even something you see every day, but that somehow catches your attention in an unusual way–and you continue to notice the same kinds of people or places or objects wherever you go. One example of this took place after I read the first Harry Potter novel. Once I finished the book, it seemed, all of a sudden, that everywhere I looked there were little boys in round glasses and little girls with bushy, brown Hermione Granger hair.

Last week I watched a DVD of one of my oldest friends performing in a recent flute recital. She played several solo pieces and two duets, one with her older son on violin and the other with her younger son on piano. At the time of the recital her younger son was sporting a remarkably large afro, reminiscent of my grammar school years in the 1970s.

Ever since I saw that DVD I have been noticing Black men and boys with lots of hair. I guess you can say that brothers with big, bushy, afros or long, luxurious deadlocks are on heavy rotation in the part of my brain that governs what catches my eye. The man in this drawing is the best of both worlds. The size of his cap says nothing if not that he has some very long deadlocks, but they’re piled up onto his head and tucked under his cap in the shape of a big, bushy afro.

Ajuan Mance

I recently made a trip to Malvern, Arkansas (pop. 10, 318), as part of a public history project on which I have been working for the last three years. I grew up in the New York metropolitan area and–despite regular visits to see family in Laurel, Delaware (pop. 3, 708) and Darlington, South Carolina (pop. 6, 289)–I have developed some not-so-fair assumptions about small-town Black, southern communities. During my weekend in Malvern, the graduates of that city’s segregated high schools (the district integrated in 1968) were having their triennial all-class reunion. These reunions draw graduates from the local area as well as from all across the country, and everything I saw about the local area graduates and their children and grandchildren upended every stereotype I’d previous held about small-town Black folks. The young people were sophisticated and stylish, but also very welcoming and kind to those of us who were visiting from outside. In addition, the adults in attendance–the aging men and women who graduated from high school when the “colored” schools were quite separate from the white schools in the city–were enthusiastic ambassadors for their community. While many might believe that Black people remain in small towns only when they have no other opportunities, the segregation-era graduates who have remained in Malvern have done so by choice.

The young man in this drawing, a grandson  of a 1950s-era graduate of the city’s “colored” high school, impressed me with his thoughtful analysis of what made Malvern great. Here’s what he said:

This is where your roots are deep–deep in terms of family, in terms of friendships, in terms of your church family. There are families who are living a house where their great-grandparents once had their first house, going to the same church the great-grandparents went to, and making friends with the sons and daughters of the people who were their grandparents’ and parents’ friends. You move away, you lose all of that. And that’s who you are. Why would anyone want to lose whose they are?

Ajuan Mance

PS: The shadow in this drawing contains a partial map of the city of Malvern.

Ajuan Mance

With this drawing, my 2012 Comic-Con sketchbook comes to a close. I might create and post a few more monsters in the future (I really enjoyed doing drawing #365), but the next drawing will reflect some of my other recent travels–around California and to some other points farther away. One of the highlights of the conference is the number of people of all ages, races, and abilities dressed as their favorite film, novel, tv, and comic book characters. For this year’s Comic-Con drawings, I focused on a small subset of the cosplayer demographic. Farewell costumed attendees. I’ll just might see you in 2013!

Ajuan Mance

The Comic-Con sketchbook continues. Since so many news stories portray Black men as monstrous I decided to take some inspiration from Comic-Con and draw a real African American monster, the Black werewolf. For those who have trouble distinguishing the monstrous from the human, the drawing above is a monster. The brother you see walking down the street is not.

Ajuan Mance

The 2012 Comic-Con sketchbook continues…

Ajuan Mance

…another drawing from my 2012 Comic-Con sketchbook. If I had to give it a title, it would probably be “Cosplay Sees No Color”…

Ajuan Mance

At the Hollywood production designers panel–which, incidentally, including the man who was the production designer for the original Planet of the Apes, The Towering Inferno, and the Poseidon Adventure–almost all of the audience questions were from artists and designers hoping to move up in this field. This guy in this picture almost didn’t get a chance to ask his question (about how he can get a foot in the door in the production design business) because the man in front of him took up a lot of time with the one question that wasn’t about how to break into the field. He was looking for advice on the appropriate response to an incident involving his employer and his union. The incident was quite detailed and it took him a long time to recount it for the panelists, none of whom seemed to know what to say in response.

When the man in my drawing finally got to ask about the best way to get work in the field, the panelists gave an answer that I’d also heard from the presenters at the costume design panel and at a previous year’s Black panel. They advised aspiring production designers to start out by working for free. For several of the production and costume designers I  heard speaking on this year’s panels, working for free was how they first attracted paying jobs. I have to say that I am always intrigued by this answer, no matter how many times I hear it. Something about this response feels wonderfully subversive in that it suggests alternative forms of remuneration…like experience, word-of-mouth street cred, and visibility. Very cool!

Ajuan Mance

I am happy to announce that I exhibiting some of my recent work at this years SF Zine Fest. I’ll have prints, postcards, and copies of my 1001 Black Men ‘zine.

This year the Festival will take place on Labor Day Weekend, September 1 + 2, 2012 at the San Francisco County Fair Building, in Golden Gate Park.

If you’re in the Bay Area, please drop by and say hello. Look for me at 8-Rock press!

For more information on this event, follow THIS LINK.

Hope to see you there!

Ajuan Mance

At first glance, this guy looked like Wolverine from the X-Men comic book series. He was leaning over a wall overlooking the escalator, and as I got closer I realized that he was not dressed as that comic book hero. He had, however, grown a superhero-worthy pair of sideburns. Thus he became the second drawing in my 2012 Comic-Con sketchbook.

Ajuan Mance