Okay, so it's 1963 and a black man and his wife have a reservation at a Holiday Inn in Shreveport, Louisiana.

But regardless of that reservation, the hotel staff refuses to let them stay there, because it's the South in the 60s, and they're black tail as old as time.

This dude does not go gentle into that good night.

He demands his rights and argues with the staff, which does not get him the results he's hoping for.

In fact, it gets worse.

They actually call the cops and he gets arrested for disturbing the peace.

This humiliates him for this black man, this is the last straw in a long list of discriminatory straws.

He's hurt pissed, and he's got something to say about it, so he sits down and writes this song.

I was born by the river in a little tent.

Oh, and just like the river I've been running ever since this man, of course, is Sam Cook, an American singer songwriter whose heart wrenching lyrics and warm vocal stylings would later earn him the nickname The King of soul, the song a change is going to come.

Captured the black American struggle perfectly, but even more so, it captured black American hope, and that hope turned into action.

It gave protesters shared identity, morale and a sense of connection so strong that their activism fueled the shape of laws, laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 68 and there are more examples of this, of art changing the shape of our country, of our laws, of our mindset and perspectives.

Photojournalism dramatically shifted public opinion during the Vietnam War, during the protest of the Arab Spring, graffiti and street art spread revolutionary messages faster than regular media did.

Walls near Tahir square turned into open political galleries, and that was just in 2011 it's wild, the power of a picture, the significance of a song, the bravery of a book, what art has done, what art can do, and these days, well, it's hard not to ask ourselves, if history is being repeated.

A 2025 poll found that 40% of Americans think that a civil war is very likely within the next decade, racial hate crimes have increased by 87% compared to a decade ago.

And when you look at the current state of civil rights debates over immigration, the dismantling of dei programs and new claims of anti Christian bias, you can't help but imagine Dr Martin Luther King somewhere asking what exactly happened.

Some historians have even described this moment as the most significant rollback of civil rights protections since Reconstruction.

So I'm looking at you art.

What are you up to right now?

Have you reached your last straw?

Are you off somewhere enjoying your freedom from responsibility, or are you in the gym doing push ups, getting ready to step back into the fight?

Because the question I really want to ask is, Will art save us all?

From Vermont public this is home goings, a show that invites you to eavesdrop on candid conversations with people who will challenge what you think.

You know, I'm Myra Flynn, and today I'll speak with three artists in vastly different mediums who will help me answer this massive question that's been burning in my belly for a while now, about art its responsibility to itself and to our times.

We'll hear from Afro surrealism, visual artist, educator and muralist will Kasso Condry first time painting a large scale, and that's when I fell in love.

And I'm like, yo, this is what I want to do, hip hop or singer, Babatunde akin Boye ado, oh, and debate coach slash hip hop artist Edwin Owusu, I leave it up to churches teach belief.

Some people out there really need relief.

Will art save us all?

That's the question on the canvas in today's episode of Home goings.

We're a proud member of the NPR Network.

Welcome home.

Edwin.

Yeah, will art save us all?

Maybe?

I think the answer is, maybe okay.

I think art has the potential and always has to be subversive or be the fodder for conversation, but whether or not it has the political force to save us in the larger, proverbial sense, of all of the things that we are dealing with in the present moment, is a bit much.

And I think is the playful side of artist and of artistry that would push back on that and say, maybe, maybe, oh my gosh.

All right.

Well, take us to the top of your your art like, when has art saved you?

Let's start with, let's start with Yes.

For instance, let's start with a yes moment, name a time where art has saved you.

Because I know I have my times as an artist where it's pulled me out of something so Okay, I think that when I decided to name my latest music series, art and depression, that that was a stark moment for me.

I think a lot of the music had always had moments or pieces of mental health discussion or something about trauma or depression, anxiety, etc.

But this last series, or the first iteration of the series, I think, came together in the mid to 2024 middle of 2024 and I think once I landed on that concept that it would be called Art and depression, I was like, oh, that's that's literally who I am as an artist.

I mean, to that point, I had yet to go to therapy, but the music was that for me and my baby, Amina, was vitally important to where I am now, and I credit my mental health journey to her birth.

And I think there's a song that I had recorded at the time that was dedicated to her, that was a bit of my own coming of age as a man who was about to raise a black girl to become a black woman living in this world, having to reflect on my own path to how I had become and matured as a man.

And so for me, I think that that that project, and because that that that that specific track was a part of that the creation of something new is a stark moment.

I swinging for the fences every time they allow streets drain with the blood because the beef allowed making mamas feel sick.

We making them proud.

Used to believe in something.

She atheist.

I think it's a really common feeling, just so we're aware whether we have a new baby coming or not, right to not react well to being out of control.

And then I think about 2026, and I think about the word disorienting comes to mind, like it's like, it's things are out of control, but also like, there's no, like, through line, there's no life raft, there's nobody coming to save, you know, and it's and so I have just been feeling this feeling, right and back to that question, like, Will art save us all?

I'm thinking about as the great Nina Simone has said it is the artist's responsibility to reflect our times.

Do you think there's any responsibility that art has, or the artist has?

Yes, and I think that is mostly to stay true to self, so not reflect our times.

I think Nina Simone is correct, because the instrument that is through all artists is that there is something about the reflection of the world we see that is incorrect or improper, and we need to translate that somehow, whether it's something that's deeply personal that's happened to us or something we see.

And so we just need to translate and communicate that oftentimes that that thread does have a through line that can be political, but there are artists like Bob Ross who paint nature scenes.

And maybe Bob Ross went to a protest, Bob Ross right now, and maybe Bob Ross went to some protests, right?

Yeah.

Maybe he was an avid arborist and went to tons of protests, but maybe Bob didn't, but decided that he would share his time painting with us every week, and that was enough of what he gave to us, right?

So I think for me, is it the artist's responsibility only in the sense that it is inevitable that the artist's soul will represent what is improper about the world that they are in and how they think it exists.

Because that is, I think the where artists start is, what is it about this world that seems off to me, and how do I communicate that?

Because clearly, the rest of my lived experience I'm not.

Able to do that.

I'm a hip hop artist while I teach public speaking, because I think that having a conversation is different from allowing myself to express on instruments, right, and thinking about live pieces, etc.

And so it becomes about how you sort of deploy the thing.

And I don't think art has a responsibility to be political, but it often, often is because those who have something to share and something to translate to the world about what they see that isn't that is a miss, often find that it is not just deeply personal or something that is held by them, but that other people feel it too, right?

Yeah, there is history of music in particular, moving the needle.

I think that that's true, but I think that folks can decide for themselves what is the level of harm that they think would come their way before they decide if the moment demands enough of them that they should step to right?

Is it worth it?

Is it worth it?

Is it so?

I think it's a culmination of, is it worth it?

Are other folks that being up enough?

Would this happen?

Would things progress without me?

Right?

Let's bring it to me.

I don't ever say to myself, Man, I don't love my art so much that I won't speak on something, and I don't ever say to myself, Man, I'm so in danger that I won't make art.

But I think that it is right and proper to make all the considerations and so, does art have a responsibility to save us?

No, do artists have a responsibility to always speak in the political, no, because the political can be misinterpreted, right?

And sometimes an artist just wants to make something that is beautiful, and we need to hold space for that, and especially because art is so up to interpretation, it almost is always the case that the art that has been political has usually pulled the artist in in some way, whether they want it to be or not, pulled them into the discussion about the thing.

So it's, it's almost never just about the art.

And if that art is, let's say, telling us that we need to resist or that we need to do X, Y and Z, the art is the foundation for the conversation.

But because of human connection and curiosity, we almost always bring the artists back into it as well.

And that may not be something all artists want or can do, can do to do it, or it's efficient, yeah, all of the things, right?

Like, maybe someone just doesn't have the capacity.

They are not able to be the at the forefront of the moon, all of the things.

And so we have to hold space for them as an or at least, I want to hold space for them as an artist.

First, if I consider myself an artist, I think in my mind, at a certain point, if you're talking about the Grammys, where there was no ice pins, no ice, dresses, no ice speeches, right at a certain point, you're you're still an artist, but you're a machine, and you're a machine, you're a very expensive machine, you're a very expensive idol.

You're, some might say, overpaid and and truly, you have a platform.

And so some might say the responsibility that lies within people like that is beyond the artistic responsibility, right?

It's, I mean, like you're a brand.

I agree.

Yeah.

I do think that so.

But then you have the pushback, right of folks who are like, don't put that on me, right?

You know, they're folks who've pushed back.

I want to say maybe Chappelle Ron, or someone who's just like, I think y'all want, y'all want role models that fit this thing of what you believe artists are supposed to be, but don't put that on me.

I think it's like, what if the act of care that Jay Z and Beyonce are doing right now, literally, is like every week they build a new tree house with their kids in their backyard.

But that is therapy for them.

For us, though we're saying we need you to be on the front lines.

We need to hear your voice.

You need to be on Good Morning America, telling the world that this is not okay, that might be their act of self, self care.

That's all I'm saying.

I feel like it's controversial.

I can't wait to see the comments, the comment section on this one, I want to hear what you do.

Do you have anything?

Something from art and depression, something that you might share with us so we can hear some of your magic.

Okay, let's do this one.

I wrote this rhyme on the very last page in my book.

I'm from a place where they say is infested with crooks, plenty kings who stay protected by rooks.

And so I speak to give the silence, the voice and those without a face, a look.

I've seen the phoniness all Transformers The flow egregious, but yet they're still pompous.

Any competition, best plan will conquer we've been plotting since Krist dropped the South Bronx and shocked us.

I leave it up to churches teach belief.

Some people out there really need relief.

You hear nothing when these so called rappers speak, they should be renamed dine.

Deaf, dumb in Mute.

MCs, I'm out for excellence to represent me, but I'm no dummy.

I speak more heat than they can bear, but not the gummy strength in numbers bound to be a Vermont staple.

These words are world famous, like the Vermont maple, peace.

Tunde, you know, I have this huge question that's been burning in my belly since I was a little kid.

Really watching my mother is a singer and my father as an opera singer, which we can get into later, if you'd like, in rural Vermont and just wondering, because it certainly felt like it did save me at times.

But the big question for for the whole world right now and for you is, do you think that art will save us all?

Yes, why I do?

And why?

Because it always has at our hardest, most difficult points throughout history, we've we've turned to art.

I one of my favorite things, one of the positive things that happened during the pandemic is so many of us turn to art in the heart, like so many of us were creating for the first time, or returning back to our artistic passion, whether that was painting, recording, videos, music or even baking.

For some people, that was their art, but we found a way to to create, and that's, I think, in our darkest times, in the hardest times, that's where we've gone to, because it has always worked whatever we needed, whether it's like mental, conscious validation or permission or just strength and healing on the inside, something to keep us going a little further.

I think art has always helped us, and we keep turning back to it, because it always does.

I love this answer, and it makes me think about our people deeply and all of the music that's come out of hard times.

I'm going to circle back to that.

I want to talk about you.

What is it that you would say you do?

We?

I am a performer.

I'm a storyteller.

If you came to see me, you would be seeing an opera singer, fully trained opera singer, performing hip hop music with the operatic vocalisms.

It's a new concept for a lot of people, but for me, it's been in my bones my entire life, taking opera, this art form that was elite, like white, the white supremacy machine, their favorite art form, highest, like, the pinnacle for them, like this is, this is high art.

You're taking this culture where, essentially, if you didn't come from wealth and luxury in a certain kind of elite background, participating in this art form, you're almost seen as a as an outsider.

So I'm almost not really, not really authentically you.

And then there's hip hop, where, for some people, if you didn't come from struggle, if you didn't get it out the mud, if you didn't come from the gutter, like, you're not really a part of this, like, and that's how we see these two art forms.

And I've taken them and combined them, and what is what?

I think the result is that this white art form is being infused and given new life.

And I love it.

I love I love that hip hop was created in by African Americans, like Africans, who are completely stripped of their culture, had to start from scratch.

Created a different culture, a new culture, that has taken the world by storm, and it's depending on whose perspective you're acting or you're asking, is infecting this pure white supremacist art form, and now it's once again, based on my experience with my audiences and social media, it's become desirable to the general public in a way that it wasn't before, and so I very much like that this art form that has been very exclusionary and elitist is being saved by its by the very thing that would upset the gatekeepers of the art form, that is my kind of protest.

Talk to me about that feeling about art as a savior, both in classical music and in hip hop.

How are these two genres saving us?

Where those two kind of intersect, for me, happens around the time of the transatlantic slave trade.

For me, that's kind of where that intersection happens.

While I was studying in opera, we came across negro spirituals and singing them in the classical form, and we got stuck.

That place of, you know, the like, Wade in the water.

Are we saying?

Do water or the water?

And we understood that, like the people who the composers of this music, were enslaved Africans, and so they had their accents and dialects.

So and then West Africa, they're not really using a TH sound, so duh is the proper way to do it.

And so to this day, when I hear rappers like the baby or like the brat or and so on and so forth, hang on to that.

Duh.

I'm like, it's, it's heritage that's that's survived up to this point.

So at that same time, the the music that was available to them or allowed for the these same people was European style, classical style, arrangements of stuff.

And so I see that for me, at least in the US, that was the beginning of our relationship with classical music and hip hop, if you will.

And so I feel like, especially as black people, we found this way of hanging on to both and incorporating it very much into our music, our dance.

I talk about often about how, you know, they say trauma stays in the body, and how common it was, especially world, for black people throughout the times to dance very expressively.

In hard times, there's music, there's a moment of getting it out of our body, because we know that it saves us whenever humans have felt like whenever the primal like human animal has felt in dangers or unsafe or needed healing in some way, shape or form, it's turned to art.

And so the art that we go to is, I think, is going to be the result of what we've been exposed to, what where we grew up, what our parents thought we should be listening to, or what they should be around, and so on and so forth.

So just like when we're hungry, we eat the food that's around us.

When we need saving and safety and healing, we turn to the art that that is around us.

So whether it's hip hop or opera, if you grew up in an opera or hip hop space, that's going to be the food you want, and it's going to work if you didn't grow up around it, if you're not used to it, but you need, you need the art.

There's going to be something, there's going to be something in there for you and it's going to nourish you.

So yeah, art in opera and hip hop, I think can and does save us in different ways, for different reasons.

I love that.

I mean, I'm going to push back just a little because there's something I'm a little confused about.

And one of those things is that those those two different genres, stem from two totally different histories, two versions of nostalgia, two different cultures, right?

And like one of them, you could argue hip hop has a long history of being the space that people would gather and fight it out in a safe way, without having to fight it out in a physical way, a place where people from the streets could rap about what they were doing in a way where they wouldn't be penalized for it, it was something to aspire towards to get you out of your circumstance, right?

Because you wanted to be a hip hop star.

When I think about classical music, it also has this history, although it's like reverential music that we have all considered to be pretty elitist.

I think we would be doing a disservice not to talk about that.

But when it comes to this question of, will art save us all, classical music is a bit of a conundrum for me.

How is that offering the same things as hip hop?

I agree.

Well, so I think classical music has done a ton of harm, 100% and still does to this day.

And honestly, because there there's so much effort to maintain such an old European like culture in this day and age.

I think it can be as they succeed in maintaining that.

I think the harm just continues to increase as the time goes on, so that so I, I'm definitely acknowledging that.

That being said, Baby and bath water.

In all fairness, hip hop hasn't had the most squeaky clean reputation as far as its effect on its community as well.

Granted, it's, it's also two, Shay, I'll give you this.

Okay.

Now we're talking in fairness, and I, and this is hard for me, because I'm a big I love hip hop the way it is, and I it's, it's hard for me to be this.

Well, no, that's not, that's not fair.

I think when you be critical of it, you mean, I was gonna say that, but that's, that's not true, because I've been doing that to opera for years.

Whereas I say, I tell people often, if you love something that's not reaching its full potential, you know you're going to be drawn to say something to try and help it get along.

So you're going to be critical about it.

So I think there is damage available in both genres and.

And there's healing available in both genres.

What is it?

What is it about art?

Why art?

Why not math?

Why not sports?

Why?

Why does Art Reach us when we're most troubled?

I don't know.

Yeah, and honestly, I'm not gonna say I don't care.

It's one of those unanswered mysteries of the universe that I think is, I love that we haven't found an answer for it.

Because I think there's a little part of me in the world that feels like if we, if we understood it, we'll misuse it in some way, shape or form.

We'll we'll make it something it's not to be so because we can understand it wholly as it is, we just accept it, and we don't know why.

You know, like the two people on the opposite spectrums of the political place will come to the same art for nourishment, we don't know, but I'm glad that as humans, we figured it out.

Like, I think of wounded animals when they come, like waddling up or like swimming up to creatures that they're normally terrified of, but they know, like there's something here, like, if I come here, I might be better.

And I think the human animal does the same thing to art.

Why?

Who knows?

I don't think it's any more complicated than the animal knows that that's what it needs, just like, you know, the sea turtles that are hatching head straight to the ocean.

How do they know that?

They just do but it's the right answer.

That Wait.

Hold up.

If y'all speak Italian, I'm saying that y'all cute and all, but y'all gotta stop whiling and that's coming from me.

We often talk about art saving us in past tense.

It always has been.

It's always.

It's always done this.

It's 2026, the world is looking similar in some ways, to these times that we are referencing.

And some might argue worse.

So where do you feel art is sitting right now in all of this mercurial and complicated and scary mess that we're navigating so people are feeling passionate in different parts of the world for different reasons, and one of the things you're seeing a lot more of is protests.

And in a protest, it's very common for there to be a chant, some chant, someone saying the same thing.

We're all together in chorus, expressing this thing, because it gives for different reasons for the people chanting it.

It feels that sense of unity, like we're on the same page.

I am now no longer alone, which I think is an extremely important part of being human, I think we're we're her, Oh, I don't wanna say her, but tribal creatures, like we thrive in groups.

And so knowing that we belong to our group, because they're all saying the same thing that we feel very strongly is, is, is binding and healing.

And what's the word fortifying, in a way, in a time where people are feeling weak and powerless, knowing that we're connected in this way does that for us.

And so having a major artist, someone that we revere for their art, saying similar things and knowing that their following feels the same way, I think, is one example of how today, art, art is necessary, and honestly, and that works on both sides of the spectrum.

You know, both ends of the people protesting have their art that makes them feel right for what they think, what was stable before is not, and it feels scary.

And so returning for the thing that that helps so in this way, in this case, art is letting us know that we're not alone.

Art is helping us connect to other people and feel that.

And I think that that, that, for me, is the simplest, most apparent way that today, why we need art so much.

And I think also art is telling the truth, because something about song always allows us, always gives we feel a little more courage to express our opinions through art, whether that's a painting or a song or some other medium.

It's why when we ever we have to say something uncomfortable, we may sing it in a certain way, or turn it into some sort of presentation.

I don't really know what you mean exactly, and so I think, I think in this moment, it's also helping us to tell the story of how crazy everything feel.

Is for everyone.

Yeah, I mean to dig in, though.

I mean the negro spiritual is literally born out of people being enslaved, raped, separated from their families, bought and sold, abused again and again, and out of that came song right now in 2026 people are being disappeared.

People are out of work just because of the color of their skin.

People are frightened for their lives.

They're scared to protest because they're worried about what might happen to them in the streets.

I mean, these are some interviews I've had.

And so can you speak to what, what art can do for us right now?

I mean, I get the sense of togetherness that is so wonderful.

But also, you know, we've, we've done a whole series called Black people aren't marching right now.

What are we doing instead?

And a lot of folks are kind of talking into themselves, because they're afraid to be out there.

So I wonder, does art have the same function?

You know?

So using negro, negro spirituals was, I think that was a very apropos comparison.

So it did a number of things.

It gave it gave them.

It gave them that ability to that unity, that ability to express artistically, and we used it in protest, there was, there were a lot of Negro spirituals were the word choices.

Were codes that were shared among other enslaved Africans for instructions, we found a way with that art to fight back or to find safety or to help each other.

So not just emotionally feeling, but actual actions.

Art became a way of of of actually affecting change and removing ourselves from an from a place that was unsafe into a safer place in times like this or I guess I like to use an earthquake as an analogy earthquakes.

People react to earthquakes very differently across the board.

I'm notorious amongst my friends where if there's an earthquake, I'll usually hop on the top.

Is the highest surface that it can sustain my weight and put my arms out like I'm surfing and try not to fall.

I'm always really excited about earthquakes.

They don't scare me as much.

It's just such a powerful display of the Earth's power.

I think I like it.

And you know, whatever happens will happen at the end of that, but that while you know it's already, it's already out of our power.

And so I'm like, Marvel in his strengths, whereas some people feel fear, some people go into work, into safety mode, like tell everyone what to do, what do.

And I think in times like this, where artists are, you know, the floor shaking on their all of us, it's important for us to lean into who we are in that space and what feels true for us.

I know that some people, you know, for one end of the spectrum, there's some people who sees everything goes crazy, and they just fold their arms and put their head in the you know, they find safety.

And then other people, they become like they are out there violently protesting and doing things that might not be the right way to handle it, depending on but right that's for themselves, right?

That's the spectrum of things, but I think it's important for how the person is called to act for them, to stay true to that and go in.

Tunde, can you perform something that might just save us all?

Uh, yeah, you know what?

I'll start from.

Save this all.

I guess in a way, it kind of saved me, like that was the first inkling of where I need to go when I heard Carmen, the opera Carmen, because it had those melodies that that still are exciting today, and at least for me and for a lot of people and so, but I can, but in there, you can hear that it just wants a little more So.

So when I Sing along, oh, God, I word of God, what the hell is that that's amazing.

Will, your art is stupid good.

Thank you.

It's like all the chaos of color and Afro centric musings and dreaming as well as like presence and just like beautiful representation that you have healed my lonely Vermont girl heart.

Over the years, just seeing you do your thing.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you for those kind words.

I appreciate that.

Over the years, I've seen you pop up in our local weekly news rag seven days I've seen your work.

I've seen you wearing your art.

Pretty much every time I see you.

You have, like, the bucket hat you were wearing the other night.

That's your artwork?

Those for sale?

Yes, they are.

I'm buying one.

Okay, it's based on the old oil painting I did.

It was actually Jennifer, my wife's idea to turn it into merchandise.

Yes, you all can't see Jennifer, but she's already getting credited with being your stylist.

And so much more.

That's sweet.

Jennifer's reason I'm in Vermont.

So I made that no secret.

People assume that I came here for other things, but I'm like, it all starts with Jennifer.

So it all started with love.

That's nice.

That's a nice reason.

Now that there's like 20 feet of snow, and many years later, it's all about who you stuck in Vermont with?

Yeah?

Well, it's clear you put your whole life, your whole foot and your whole life into your artwork, right?

This is who you are, yeah.

So you seem like the perfect person to ask.

You know what I'm gonna ask?

Oh, yeah, will art save us all?

Yes, but we have to be patient.

I think patience is key in the answer, yeah.

What do you mean by that?

Well, let's take it back to pandemic right now.

Remember, I had all these lectures, art shows set up, and everything's, you know, one by one, just either was postponed or just flat out cancel.

And, you know, I make my living as an artist.

I have been for over 20 years, so it was scary, you know, and I'm like, Well, anytime in the past where things have gotten beyond my control, I just pull out a sketchbook, I just start drawing or writing, you know, random thoughts, whatever the case may be.

And so I did the same thing.

I was like, I just got to start where I'm at.

The one thing I do Hoard is art supplies.

I have a ton of art supplies.

If the world was to end tomorrow, I can paint my way through that.

You've got the bunker.

Might not have food, but because I'm a firm believer, as long as I'm doing something and working in my purpose with my hands, I will be okay.

That's been my mindset for a very long time.

So it's like, okay, I got to find a gift in all this.

So I just drew and Drew and drew finished paintings that I had tucked away for years.

And I just did that literally every day, I was cranking out new pieces every month during quarantine, and when the world slowly started opening back up, I realized I had an entirely new body of work.

That body of work, I produced a show called PPE patient pandemic enlightenment, and that show opened me up to a whole new network out here.

And when I told people the story about how those pieces were created, they were in awe.

They was like, You did all this during the first year of the pandemic?

I'm like, Yeah, what else am I supposed to do, worry?

Like that was, well, yeah, like, that's what most people were capable of doing.

But if anyone knows about worry, it destroys your body, you know.

So my whole thing is, like, if I'm dealing with all this stuff in my head, I got to figure out a way to get it out.

We have to lean into something creative to deal with the unnatural things we have to deal with in this world.

You for me, an illustration could take a month or more to finish, but during that month, I'm doing other things, but you know it, you know when it's done.

It's a feeling.

It's a sense of completion that overcomes you, no different than brushing your teeth in the morning.

You know when you're Done.

And everybody has a different way of doing things, but you have to give it time, because you have to build it up in layers, you know.

And I think that's the part we have.

We have a hard time struggling with, because as a society, we become more impatient.

We want everything quick.

Everybody's attention span is three minutes.

You can't, you know?

So once you strip all that away, it's like, no, we're gonna take our time.

It's like the human body.

You got to start with the skeleton, and then layer, Layer, Layer, until you get the finished piece.

In the gray area between projects is when.

I just kind of just work on my own stuff.

We had just got off a major mural project, and I just needed just to exercise on something that had no agenda other than just the sake of creating.

You know, I'm known for the mural work, and I've always been the political nature of it, but when I'm doing my own work is really introspective.

You know, when you're doing when so much of your life is built around the public perception, it's it can be difficult to just get back to yourself.

So I don't just use these the time between murals, just to create new work just for the sake of it was very theraputic.

How does the patience that it takes to create art work translate into your own patients for the world, especially when things are hard?

So the one thing I try to do, and my family tries to do when we go into schools or we're just having conversations like this, is like, everyone at the end of the day, is an artist.

Everyone has a warrior spirit.

Everyone has a creative spirit.

But society tells us that isn't worth anything, right?

You got to kind of follow the status quo.

But we all see where the status quo is leading us.

It's leading us to this place of massive confusion, right?

So take that confusion and find your canvas within it, you know.

So it's not easy.

Being patient is not easy.

You know what they suppose, what you say with the saying, patience is a virtue.

It truly is, because it's something that you have to apply and practice.

And most of us don't want to spend the time doing that, because you're not going to see a quick result.

Most black Americans, most of them don't know past their grandparents, if they even know that, right?

Once you start doing your digging on your own lineage, you realize, like, wait a minute, this has been this is not just a straight line.

This goes all over the place, right?

And once you start digging and realizing that the reason we're all here was through a series of trials and errors and ups and downs, good, bad and ugly.

And then we moving into now, we're dealing with this country, we're dealing with ice, we're dealing with all these issues that are always seem to keep circling back around.

So we got to become more radical right and radical in just our production.

As artists, I believe artists have a responsibility to tell the truth.

And many artists.

There are many artists out there that don't they just promote the status quo, or I'm just going to do whatever it is.

I can get some money.

Hey, everybody got to do what they got to do.

But if you want to be true to yourself, you have a responsibility to tell the truth as a creative person, as an artist, and that's dangerous.

You.

In a lot of ways, just being black and making art is some sort of like statement for race, you know.

And I don't know if that's the case everywhere, honestly, like I live in LA now, I hang out with my black friends.

We're not talking about race.

We're like, what did you do today?

How are your children?

You know, but you come to Vermont, we do often.

I'm like, how I talk to my black friends?

I'm like, how's it going?

They're like, fighting for justice over here and it's like, wow, that is like, so top of mind all the time.

And so I guess I just wonder, also, because maybe it is pretty radical and revolutionary for black people to not have that activist responsibility.

Do you think that art should just be art sometimes, and you shouldn't have to go out there and try to change and organize?

I think every artist becomes an artist because they enjoy it.

It starts off at a young age.

Every person that I know who's been doing this for a career, it started off because, hey, I just love the way it makes me feel.

I didn't start my career off trying to be an activist at all.

When I started my art career, I was an airbrush artist.

I was making T shirts, jeans, sneakers, hats.

You know, I was the guy you came to to get Tweety Bird and Sponge Bob on your jacket.

Oh my gosh, you were that guy.

Thank you for your service, sir.

I've seen a lot of votes, yeah.

And I was young.

I was 2425 you know?

And I just, you know, I was a young father, so I'm like, I gotta figure out how to make some money.

You know, it ain't always a feel good feeling it's a job, right, right?

I think that at the end of the day, if you're going to produce public work, you have a responsibility to tell the truth in that.

And as a black artist who then seen some of the who has lived and witnessed some of the worst possible conditions humanity can that you can live in, in these, some of these neighborhoods I've worked in and lived in.

For me, it's not, it's a no brainer.

You know, I'm painting black kids on walls.

I'm painting black people, and I'm showing us in the most elite manner possible.

And I have a responsibility in that.

And we've had people come up to us and.

Ask what some of the kids on our walls did?

Yeah, because you only see, you typically only see black people when they're dead on a mural.

And I was like, Nah, all these kids are alive and thriving, you know, and the fact that they these kids see a black person doing it, one of the first murals we did out in Vermont was for Ben and Jerry's on their scoop shop in Burlington, as I was outlining his mural, this guy comes up to me, we're just, you know, talking about all kinds of stuff.

And he was like, Hey, man, you know, no offense, but you know, you don't typically see black people do what you do out here, especially in Vermont.

And I was like, Hey, man, my my role, my responsibility, is to add more color to the state in more ways than one, you know?

And he just looked at me, and I was like, Look, I don't take offense to it.

I get this everywhere, because being a black muralist is rare.

It's not a lot of us, right?

Even in the graffiti movement, this is a movement that was started by black and brown youth, and I'm a minority in a movement that is still gaining awareness in the art world, right?

So I've always been behind the eight ball, you know.

But for me, it's a challenge.

I love when people assume that I can't do something, you know.

So it's like, Yeah, watch me, and then watch how we organize around that.

Do you feel?

Do you think that you've been successful in making change?

Yeah, yeah.

I was a little modest about that in the beginning, because I knew that, you know, art is just one ingredient.

It's a gumbo.

It takes a mini this takes a whole bunch of different things to make it work, you know.

But art is a main ingredient, you know, because how we see ourselves matter.

If you're growing up in a neighborhood and everything is bombed out, destroyed windows, broken, hot, boarded up windows, broken homes, that's going to have an effect on you.

It's either going to make you better or break you, right?

So for me, it was like, Well, yeah, but what if you slap a coat of paint on some of them bandit boarded up buildings, you know, and these kids gotta it always started with the kids for me, so as they grown up, seeing it, if around them looks better, then you tend to do better, you know, I'm saying.

So if you seeing people you know at their worst every day, that's going to have a negative effect on your psyche, and you don't.

Sometimes you just need that glimmer of hope, yeah, and I've had that for me growing up.

And so if I can be that for someone else, great.

I don't have this.

I have to save them all mentality, you know?

It's like, I follow the rule of one if I can get through one person, I did my job.

All of this is well and good if you can make your art.

Yeah.

We are also seeing a time right now that is unprecedented, right?

Art and the funding for arts has been cut.

And I don't need, I don't even just mean at schools, because that's old news, right?

Like, art's been cut for schools, like, bit by bit for a long time, from schools bit by bit for a long time.

But the administration, you know, going after, you know, woke agenda to artists, the Smithsonian being under attack and asked to remove artwork from their spaces that don't represent history, the history of America and the way that certain people would like it to be depicted, right down to African American History and murals being defaced, taken down, removed quietly, without a ton of press, because it actually is the status quo, watching the Black Lives Matter mural be slowly peeled and painted over on, you know, the street of Minnesota.

I'm an artist.

Remember when the challenge was, can I figure out how to get paid?

Yeah, right.

This is, like, straight up censorship, right?

How do you keep your wits about you as an artist?

And in talking to young people again, back to those tools, do art because it feels good.

It makes you feel good in your body and blah, blah, blah, but like, what if nobody's gonna see it?

What if you're going to be labeled as something that you're not?

What if the thing that you aspire towards doesn't exist anymore?

What if you get nervous about painting your own people?

I believe now that when things like this happen, if we have the power we have to say something, we have to right, we can't be afraid of what may happen, because you may get a story out of that.

What may happen to help someone else.

So that's how I live my life perfect.

You know, I was like, I don't want to live forever physically, but I want to be remembered.

So I think we have to remind ourselves of that too.

Like ask yourself, How do you want to be remembered?

Thank you so much for joining us.

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