If it were up to him, Darius Emerson would be an artist full time.
The Ben Hill and Douglasville native is an illustrator, painter and tattooist. Five years ago, he graduated from the University of West Georgia with a degree in fine arts. At the end of a workday for a trading company, Emerson works on building his brand, ArtbyDme. His art features colorful depictions of Black culture using comic book-style character designs. He said the Black experience, community and social justice is his work’s biggest muses, which can make the goal of having an exhibition in major local arts institution hard.
“It’s challenging for us to get mainstream. I do have goals and dreams of getting in galleries,” he said. “It’s hard to get in those spaces, because a lot of people don’t want to see the Black message.”
Credit: Courtesy of Darius Emerson
Credit: Courtesy of Darius Emerson
For a second time, Emerson is taking part in “A Marvelous Black Boy Art Show.” The one-day event at Westside Cultural Arts Center on Nov. 5 spotlights more than 80 Black male creatives from Atlanta and the country showcasing their work. The goal of the traveling exhibition is offering Black artists a chance to grow their audience, network, and, of course, make money. Visitors and collectors can also discover new or overlooked Black talent.
Credit: Courtesy of A Marvelous Black Boy Art Show
Credit: Courtesy of A Marvelous Black Boy Art Show
“A Marvelous Black Boy Art Show” is the younger sibling to “A Spectacular Black Girl Arts Show.” The exhibition founder and curator, Joshua Love, said the idea first came out of a need to celebrate Black women artists who he saw as disproportionately underrepresented in Atlanta galleries. The first show in 2019 featured almost 20 Black women. Love, a veteran curator, said it was one of the largest turnouts for any of his events.
Credit: Bosa LaNova
Credit: Bosa LaNova
After doing a second “Black Girl Art Show,” local artists told Emerson there needed to be a version for Black men. He was skeptical, so he took a month to think about it.
Others had their doubts.
“I had friends tell me, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to work the same for the men’,” he said. “‘I don’t know if there’s enough black male artists that feel vulnerable enough to express themselves in a group way like this.”
Love moved to the city from Philadelphia over a decade ago because he fell in love with its Black culture, and spaces centered around art and music. With that in mind, he set out to prove his detractors — and doubters of Black men — wrong.
Credit: Courtesy of Black Boy Art LLC
Credit: Courtesy of Black Boy Art LLC
The first “Black Boy Art Show” took place in Atlanta. Almost 30 artists joined the inaugural show, the largest at the time. After a few successful shows it clicked. “If there’s a need for it and if there’s a taste for it here in Atlanta, it’s a window for the rest of the country.’”
Together “Black Boy Art Show” and “Black Girl A
rt Show” have generated over $5 million in revenue for Black artists nationwide. In that time, nearly 7,000 artists and over 20,000 attendees took part.
Today, Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are the three cities where the exhibitions happen twice a year. Attendance hovers between 500 to 1,000, with anywhere from 30 to 40 vendors. That number can double in bigger markets.
That network is too good to pass up for a first timer like Derrick Whitfield. Whitfield is a Navy veteran who started his graphic design business, Whitfield Designs Company, in 2015. The Duluth resident’s client portfolio includes BET, “Soul Train” and the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, but it’s his artistic projects — which he dubs “Afrodelic art” pieces — that stick out. Graphic design is an industry lacking in representation with Black designers making up less than 4% of the workforce.
Whitfield said he moved to Atlanta from San Diego five years ago to find more opportunities and clients open to Black expression. “You hear things like, ‘all your work is too ethnic’,” he said, adding that since leaving the west coast, his business has picked up. “I think I do pretty well within the Black community, but I had to move from California to here to make it.”
Credit: Bosa LaNova
Credit: Bosa LaNova
At the show, Whitfield wants to sell prints and hopefully walk away with a few new clients. It’s a strategy others have seen play out well.
“I try to tell people to do these art shows,” Emerson said. “If you don’t make the money back, you may have gained like, 50 followers, which is 50 new potential clients.”
Love said that the math is mathing.
“These artists, they are in isolation. They are focused on their canvas, focused on their art, focused on being inspired. They don’t have enough time to build community …” he said. “A lot of times these artists are unaware of resources out there that support their art journey.”
He hopes more Black artists in Atlanta will take note.
“There are a lot of creative opportunities. There are not a lot of spaces that specifically spotlight black artists,” Love said. “There are not a lot of explicit and bold spaces that say, ‘this is specifically for us’.”
EVENT PREVIEW
“A Marvelous Black Boy Art Show”
3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5. $30-$40. Westside Cultural Arts Center, 760 10th St. NW, Atlanta. blackboyartshow.com.
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