Friday night I was a featured artist at the 7th Annual World Arts Expo at Indy’s Global Village. Two pieces on the wall — Black Unicorn and And Then There Was Nothing. Bow tie. Yellow socks. Flags from every country in the diaspora hanging behind me.
They put me on the panel. Asked me how long I’ve been doing art and where the style comes from.
I told them the truth.
Second grade. Donkey Kong. A book fair.
That’s where it started. I bought a How to Draw Donkey Kong book from the school book fair, picked up a pencil, and apparently never put it back down. Twenty-something years later I’m in a suit in front of an international audience explaining a piece called And Then There Was Nothing.
The whole arc lives in that gap.
People want artists to have an origin story that sounds like a museum plaque. Mine is a kid in Detroit at a book fair with a few dollars in his pocket reaching for the thing with the gorilla on the cover. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You pick something up because it speaks to you and you keep going because nobody told you to stop.
On where the work comes from.
I told the panel my main inspiration is pop culture. Whatever I consume, I try to produce. I listen to music, I gotta make music. I watch a movie, I gotta write a script or sketch a scene. I read a book, something’s gonna come out of it. The input and the output don’t separate cleanly for me — they never have.
That’s why the catalog looks the way it does. Music under JHarry. Drawings under my name. Streetwear under WELÇOME®. Comics and worldbuilding under OMAV. Writing right here. It’s not five careers. It’s one consumption-to-creation cycle running on five different formats.
On the piece itself — And Then There Was Nothing.
The reference came from a fashion photography book. I take a lot of references from fashion photo shoots. Detroit School of Arts had stacks of reference books in the classroom, organized by category, and I always went straight to the fashion shelf. Kept a GQ subscription all through high school just to keep my eye sharp.
I built the figure from a reference and then I let the rest tell its own story. The apple. The banana. The treasure chest. People look at the piece and try to figure out what each object means — and that’s the point. I don’t want to tell you. I want the figure to be the focal point and the symbols to do the work figuratively, not literally.
I grew up on stuff that didn’t explain itself. Movies and stories with open endings. The kind of work where you finish it and you’re not sure what just happened, but you’re sure it meant something. That can be nerve-wracking as a viewer. But as a creator, it’s where the power is. The minute I tell you what every object means, I’ve taken your interpretation away from you. And nine times out of ten, what somebody else sees in my work is something I never could’ve come up with on my own.
So I keep the meaning to myself and let the room fill in the rest.
On color.
One thing I told them and meant: no matter what I’m working on, I’m going to blast it with color. That’s just how I see. Build on a reference, then turn the volume up — but try not to overdo it.
That’s a sentence I could say about my whole life right now, honestly.
On the other half of the introduction.
Right after the color answer, the panelist said “and then your background on law…” and the recording cuts. That’s actually the perfect place for it to cut, because that’s the part most people in art rooms don’t expect.
The law and the art aren’t two lives. They’re the same eye looking at two different problems. Both of them are about reading what’s in front of you, finding what isn’t being said, and translating it for somebody who needs to understand it. One I do with words on a page. One I do with markers on paper.
On being in the room.
The Global Village is the right room for this work. International flags, international audience, art from every corner of the world hanging on pegboard walls — and a kid from Detroit’s east side sitting on a folding chair under his own name in 60-point font on the projector.
If you’ve been reading these dispatches for a while, you know that get to the corner isn’t a metaphor for me. It’s a literal address. The corner is where the conversation happens, where the culture moves, where the people who actually carry the city stand. Friday night, the corner was a cultural center on the west side of Indianapolis with my name projected on the wall and a man t asking real questions in the front row.
That’s the work.
The Exposition is up through May 30th.
Two original pieces on the wall. Black Unicorn — Malcolm in colored pencil and marker, dice in flight. And Then There Was Nothing — the figure I just walked you through. Both 9”x12”. Both for sale.
Indy’s Global Village. Pull up while it’s still hanging.
Detroit forever. Indianapolis right now. Still drawing.
— Jaevonn