Strongest Ever

I love to read but I hated school. At the time, I also hated order, supervision, and being told what to do. I found more joy in leaving school because I already had my career path as a brick mason laid out. I loved working with my hands and my family and friends. It was a steady routine. Bricks and mortar come on a pallet. Break them down. Use them, then toss the pallet to the side. Repeat the process. There’s freedom in a job like that. You know what to do, no need for supervision. You are left alone all day, but there are just as many restrictions to that drone mentality. You realize you work in a plantation-style setting, where the people you work for will never acknowledge you – even while in close range – and the very idea of you using any of their facilities will be unheard of. It’s never more evident than the day the owner of one house you’re working on looks your way and says “Honey, come on in here! You know its too hot for you out there.”

Honey comes running to the door. Honey is a dog.

You know your place, but you love working with your friends and family. Doing just that was my plan for the rest of my life until that was interrupted by Sarcoidosis. Cheap beer became my best friend and I couldn’t work. Art, then a hobby, became the only other thing I I had.

Harrell (2 of 1)

PREVIOUSLY CENSORED WORK BY CHARVIS HARRELL

In February 2008, I was asked to do a show for The Contemporary Arts Exchange. People don’t realize that if you have to try to find a black artist, that means your organization lacks black artists. It follows that if you seek them out for February, that means you’re not particularly interested in showing black art any other month. That is the way Macon functions. I decided to present an art show about current, relevant issues instead of recycling the same heroes to celebrate: MLK, Malcolm, Mike Jackson, Jordan, and various rappers. My centerpiece was a bold interpretation of my favorite poem at the time, from Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni. The poem is entitled “Blacksburg Under Siege: 21 August 2006”. Nikki was the terrorists’ teacher and I recognized something off in him in his writings. I used a cardboard box from my former girlfriend’s daughter’s big wheel as a surface, a crude childlike image playing a video game and a television screen filled with the carnage such game would expose one to, along with a few other pieces that dealt with the vulgarities we unknowingly expose children to. It was a strong piece that was relevant and original and so thought the curator, but a day before the show it was taken down, along with everything that wasn’t on canvas. I didn’t fight. I didn’t explain.

Work (11 of 1)

PREVIOUSLY CENSORED WORK BY CHARVIS HARRELL

I remember thinking I have a G.E.D. and they have degrees from universities that say they know art. I’m ignorant. I’m out here showing my feelings and emotions. I remember your art from that chapter we read in world history, with its beautiful paintings and statues of marble. I will leave with my work and you can stop looking at me like that man on the back of that truck.

I tried to show my art at a few more places, but I was turned away an tried to stay drunh and break walls down like the Shlitz bull.