When I saw the man in this drawing in the Barney’s restaurant on College Avenue, it got me to thinking about the relationship between race, ancestry, and color. The thing that I love about drawing people of African descent is the way that it highlights how unimportant color really is when it comes to questions of race and ethnicity. Few of the figures in this series of pictures (of African American men) are depicted as having brown skin, and yet their race/ethnicity is apparent through other features like their hair, their noses and their eyes. For most Black people today, our ancestry is written on our bodies in ways that are far more complex than the simple color of our skin, and yet even our features and our hair only amount to a minor suggestion of the richness of our identities; and for some, the common association of certain characteristics with the identity that we call Blackness feels more like erasure than affirmation.

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Hooray for my 150th drawing!

Here’s the backstory: A little warmth and sun seems to bring everyone outdoors. I spotted the subject of this drawing on Piedmont Avenue where he was stopped right outside the windows of Gaylord’s cafe. He was chatting with some friends who were seated at the sidewalk tables. Though they aren’t visible in the drawing, his hands are resting on his bicycle, a nice vintage Cannondale, made back in the years when that company still built its bikes one-at-a-time. I was seated inside doing some database research, but it was nice to be able to look out the window and enjoy the warmer weather vicariously, though the bikers and strollers and outdoor table sitters whose comings and goings made it feel like spring just might be on the way.

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Bay Area drivers sometimes seem to be operating according to what amounts to an unwritten handbook of how to drive poorly. The agreed-upon rules seem quite simple:

• 4-way stop signs are just a suggestion.
• Turn signals are optional.
• Cellphones should be used only when you are driving.
• Text messaging should be done only when you are driving in rush hour traffic.
• Please drive 5-10 miles below the speed limit, but only when you are in the passing lane.
• Passing should only be done on the right.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that these unwritten rules have made crossing the streets a nightmare for pedestrians. The man in this drawing was nearly run down by a minivan while he was attempting to use a crosswalk on San Pablo, near Stanford Ave.The driver of the minivan was talking animatedly on her cellphone and did not seem to notice the man who was making his way across the road. You’ll notice that the left arm in this drawing (his left arm) is extended, but the hand is off the page. That was the hand with which he responded to this near miss, with a vulgar gesture that the driver did notice, and to which she responded with a vulgar gesture of her own. With one hand making a gesture and the other one holding her cellphone, I’m not sure what she was using to steer!

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The high top fade is back. At first, I thought it was just a fluke. Back in August, I saw a kid on Clay street rocking a Gumby. Then, around Christmas week, I saw a middle school-aged boy with a sharp-as-a-tack 3-inch flattop. Since then, it’s seemed as though the ’90s have exploded in all the Black barbershops of Oakland. Not a week goes by when I don’t see someone–never over the age of 20, it seems–with a haircut that takes me right back to the decade of Bel Biv Devoe and Boyz II Men. I saw the young brother in this drawing a couple days ago, as I was driving down Broadway during the Oakland Tech lunch rush, that time of day when the entire population of the school exits the building and small groups of teens head toward the nearby fast food establishments. He was sporting a uniquely modified fade of loose twists cut into a Gumby slant. When I spotted him, it was still the month of February, and it seems appropriate that I close out Black history month with this reminder of the ways that the history of Black style is kept alive in the personal grooming and style habits of each new generation of African American youth.

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I was in San Francisco yesterday, picking up several of my paintings from a downtown art venue. I had to pull into the loading dock and then wait for the curator of the show to come down with my work. As I waited I watched the financial district lunch crowd filling the streets, everyone on their way to get something to eat. The man in this drawing stepped part of the way out of the door of the building across the street from where I was sitting. The hand that you don’t see in this drawing is holding open a large glass door. The man looked up and down at the crowd as if evaluating whether or not it was worth his while to join their ranks for the noontime rush. Apparently it was not. He slipped back inside and did not re-emerge, or at least not for another 15 minutes, after which time the curator emerged with my art piled onto a hand truck. I packed up my work and drove back to the East Bay.

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Whenever I’m at the cafe I always spend some time looking at the other people with their laptops. Sometimes I make a little game out of trying to figure who is actually doing paid work, who is doing school work, who is involved in less productive activities (like facebook, World of Warcraft, or Match.com). In addition, I always take note of the people who, despite their work materials and computers, are simply staring off into the distance. Maybe I’m so amused by the daydreamers and cloud gazers because they remind me of myself. Whenever I’m working on a writing project I eventually find myself staring out the window, at nothing in particular. When I catch myself I always wonder what I must have looked like staring at the wall or the clouds or the back of the empty chair at the next table over. I’ve seen this man at the cafe many times. We even chatted briefly in line, during which he explained that he originally moved to the U.S. to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. When I responded that I’d gone to grad school at the University of Michigan he smiled, and our bond as friendly Big-Ten rivals was cemented.

I hope that when I’m procrastinating, I look as placed and relaxed as he does.

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Now that this year’s art fair is over, my work schedule is getting back to normal. Normal means joining the army of telecommuters that packs East Bay cafes at the beginning of every day. Today I tried somewhere new, the Urban Blend cafe in Jack London Square. At the time that I arrived, there were only a handful of people inside, all with laptops. The man in this drawing was seated a couple tables away from me. I was into his vintage vest and skinny tie look, but it’s his hair that really caught my attention. His long and lush ‘fro took me back to the early 2000s when I was sporting a similar style. This guy’s hairdo, however, was as stylish and well-coiffed as mine was disheveled. My ‘fro was not unlike the hairstyle Erykah Badu was referring to when she sang, “Pick your afro Daddy, because it’s flat on one side.” Whenver I see a brother with a cool natural ‘do, I think back to the days when I sported an afro, and I feel a pang of longing for the style that might have been.

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Another drawing from the past weekend’s art show: The young man in this picture caught my eye for a number of reasons. For one thing, he looked to be about 14 years old, but he had a lot more facial hair than I would usually associate with that age group. His  over-sized suit made him look like he might have been playing dress-up in his father’s closet, but his comportment — like his facial hair — suggested that he was far beyond the age when kids stop playing such games. He wore a very serious expression, and he examined the paintings and prints  at each table with the manner of an experienced collector. When he passed by my table he stopped to examine the cards I’d made based this series. He bought two of them and gestured to his mom to come over. She smiled in my direction, but never quite made it to my area . There were so many great artists and so much great art that not everyone had the time to see everything…which, when it comes to art fairs, is as it should be. If you run out of things to look at, then we haven’t done our job as artists.

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One of the best things about attending art fairs and open studios events is how much you learn about the artists who produce the work that you see. It’s one of the advantages that these types of exhibitions have over traditional museum exhibits and gallery shows. I really enjoy the one-on-one conversations with artists, and I always come away with new insights i to how artists think about the work they produce.

Today, though, I had the opportunity to be on the other side of the table, as a participant in the The Art of Living Black Open Studios Weekend at Mills College. I had a lot of great conversations with interesting and thoughtful people, several of whom were artists themselves. Indeed, one of the greatest things about the day was how much I learned about art lovers. I got some great and unexpected insights into who loves art and why. In particular, I had some fascinating discussion about what fans and collectors of Black American art want and expect from today’s artists of African descent.

The man in this picture was a pleasure to speak with. He was very interested in discussing what it meant to make a collection of drawings that focus on African American men. He was both curious about and skeptical of my motives, and though I explained my interest in the subject matter as clearly as I could, he seemed neither convinced of or comfortable with my rationale.

Still, he seemed to like the images I presented. This highlighted for me one of the wonderful contradictions of art — that you can truly love and appreciate a work of art, even if it makes you angry or uncomfortable.

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Tucked away near the dressing room of almost every women’s section in nearly every department store in the United States, there’s a comfortable chair or sofa that almost always seems to be occupied by a husband or boyfriend waiting for his female companion to try on some clothing. Some people truly enjoy helping their partners pick out new clothes. This gentleman in this drawing, however, seemed more impatient than engaged. In fact, I noticed him and his female companion because of his body language. His jaw was set, his arms were crossed, and his brow was furrowed in a way that suggested disgruntlement. There were two other men in the seating area near that day, and he was the only one who seemed to be in a bad mood, probably because he was also the only one who hadn’t brought something to read.

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