jetsonorama

From doctor to street artist: A journey of expression

When I started wheat pasting in 2009 the question I was asked most frequently was “how did a black doctor in his 50s working on the Navajo Nation start doing street art?” Fair enough, but in retrospect, it was only natural for this evolution to occur.

I started working in a small community between the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley called Inscription House in 1987. I’d always been drawn to photography and built a darkroom shortly after my arrival on the Navajo Nation. My passion photographically is shooting black and white in a documentary style inspired by people like Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards, Joseph Koudelka and others. By going out and spending time with people in their homes and family camps, I got to know them as friends. Interestingly, these home visits enhanced my doctor/patient relationship by helping me be a more empathetic health care practitioner and to literally walk in other’s shoes.

I’ve always been drawn to street art, graffiti and old school hip-hop. I was attracted to the energy of the culture in the 80s and though I was miles away in West Virginia from the epicenter, a friend and I thought of ourselves as  charter members of the Zulu Nation. I’d travel to New York City to see graffiti on trains, on buildings and in galleries. I did some tagging in the 80s before coming to the Navajo Nation and participated with a major billboard “correction” on Diné Bikéyah shortly after my arrival. (See below.)

 

It used to read “Welcome to Pepsi Country.”

 

My early interventions on the street were largely text based saying things like “Thank you Dr. King. I too am a dreamer” and “Smash Apartheid”.

In 2009 I took a 3-month sabbatical to Brasil which coincided with a difficult period in my life. Though I wasn’t looking for an epiphany, I was fortunate to stumble upon a passionate group of artists working on the street who befriended me. It was during this time that I appreciated how photography could be a street art form.  Inspired by Diego Rivera and Keith Haring, I’d become disinterested in showing my photographs in galleries isolated from the people I was photographing and wanted to pursue a more immediate relationship with my community reflecting back to them some of the beauty they’ve shared with me.  And in truth, I loved the feeling I got being with the artists in Salvador do Bahia and wanting to find a way to keep that vibe going, I started pasting images along the roadside in June 2009.