For years, artist Nikkolas Smith has celebrated and mourned Black lives in his work. 'A lot of my pieces are unfinished. I feel like that, kind of, is a parallel to these people's lives,' he says. 'They did not get a chance to really finish their life.'
A lot of my pieces are unfinished. I feel like that kind of is a parallel to these people's lives because they did not get a chance to really finish their life like they should have."Typically, I like to create something a little bit more joyful, even if it's a tragic situation," Smith says. For his portrait of Ahmaud Arbery,"I said, 'you know what? I have to draw just the tragedy, that terror and the pain that I'm sure was on his face.
That sentiment impresses MacArthur Fellow and UCLA professor Peter Sellars, who teaches courses called Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action."The beauty of Nikkolas Smith's unfinished portraits for unfinished lives is haunting, and also resists the old kind of empire, you know, casting somebody in bronze and marble and granite and just says, no, no, this is human flesh. This is something that's so provisional and fragile.
Sellars says Smith's portraits are crucial for the current social justice movement."It's keeping memory alive, and memory is frequently what gives you a level of courage. That's more than you think you have because in fact, you're not alone." As the youngest of six children, Smith grew up in Spring, Texas, outside of Houston. He says after attending schools that were mostly white, he studied at Hampton University in Virginia, a historically Black college. He earned his masters' degree in architecture, then moved to Los Angeles to work as a Walt Disney"imagineer," designing architectural concepts and 3-D modeling for Disney theme parks around the world.
"The message was to say, why does why does he look like a thug now? Because I put a hoodie on him?" Smith says."It was supposed to, you know, convey the message of Dr. King's dream of not wanting anybody to be judged for their outward appearance."While he was still at Disney, Smith began turning some of his ideas into children's books.
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