![]() ![]() It was like living in a house with brothers and sisters. It’s not even like I gravitated towards it. Well, the thing is, I’m 61 years old, and so if you know anything about the origins of hip hop, I am growing up right as it’s being born. So, in having these two passions, what did you gravitate to first – hip hop or art? We said, “We’re going to do our own thing and make them come to us.” We didn’t ask for permission to be a part of mainstream music. We started our own club, and that’s the same thing that hip hop did. We did not ask for permission to join their club. We did things on our own terms, and the only critics that we had were each other, and it was something, looking back, that was really revolutionary about what we were doing. So, we had to make our own way.Īnd that’s the beauty of graffiti. But it was to try to figure out how to be professional, that was something that was certainly challenging, because you had all of this preexisting hierarchy that said, “Okay, these people can participate, but not these people,” and being young and a person of color in New York, the art world elite wasn’t quick to open the doors up to my friends and I. The trick was to figure out how to earn a living being an artist. I figured out very early on that I was an artist. Anything that had a surface that you could put a mark on, I painted. And I painted on every surface imaginable, whether it was clothes, walls, I did murals in people’s apartments and homes, and just all kinds of things. I did a lot of grunt work and I did all kinds of things to make a buck. But that said, it wasn’t right out the box, like I had a formula for becoming an overnight success. So, to look at that, I just knew right away that this was something that I could participate in and something that just spoke to me. And like I said, I got a front row view of watching it form. You have to understand, growing up in New York City, hip hop started in the early ’70s. When did you see your art as more than a hobby, like, “Hey, I can actually make money from this”? But oftentimes, it challenges me to find clever ways to communicate my message creatively.įor a lot of artists, they art as a hobby and a love first, and then it kind of manifests into a career. And then in some cases, like with my friends, I brought a panel to them and I said, “You guys start it and I’ll finish it.”īut sometimes people don’t really understand and they put their mark right in the center and they fill up the whole thing, and then it sort of leaves me to find a way to dance around the perimeter, which is sort of what I get for giving somebody the option of starting the conversation. Would you be interested in doing a collaboration on that, since it’s unfinished anyway and you have to work on it?” They would work on it and then they would give it to me and leave me a little bit of real estate and then I would do my thing. I went into their studios and I saw something and I thought, “Oh, I really liked that painting. For example, I did physical art collaborations with several different artists. Speaking about your friendship with Janette and Martha Cooper – when you’re collaborating with other artists, is it difficult sometimes bringing your vision and their vision together to create one piece of art? And so it really spans, like I said, a long period of time and it’s combining all these different elements and time periods and people, and so I thought that the title, Combinations, was a perfect way to describe all of that. It’s at times graffiti and street art and graphic design and collage. The other thing is my work is a combination of a lot of different things. But the idea was to be able to put on an exhibition that features me, but it also introduces people to a lot of other talented visual artists that might not have the platform on their own, and really celebrate everybody all at once. And then I’ve known Janette for over 30 years, or something like that, and then I have a newer artist that I’ve recently met. I go back with Martha to the early ’80s, so that’s over 40 years all by itself. So, for example, my friend Martha Cooper is in the exhibition along with me. So, I came up with this idea and I called the show Combinations as a way of celebrating the past and the present. This is an exhibition that spans more than 40 years, and the idea for the exhibition was, “Okay, how can I make an exhibition of my work and do something to honor my friends as well?” Because I’ve been curating a lot over the last handful of years, and so I always like to do things where I can pull my friends in as well. ![]() ESSENCE: Names and titles are very important, and the title of your exhibition, Combinations, what led you to land on that title and what does it mean?Ĭey Adams: Well, Combinations, as the name entails, are a lot of different things. ![]()
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