[Music] if you're seeking inspiration to address contemporary challenges then look no further our next guest is an artist and muralist who transforms walls into powerful messages and canvases into a platform for change here to share how her work resonates with the pulse of our times we have artist and muralist Oliver James welcome to the show thank you for having me of course so start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and how your journey into the world of Art and activism began I go
t into the world of activism first and I grew up going going to school in Boulder colado my mom also worked at Native Americans rights fund which was a nonprofit organization that helped um Native people fight for their rights and their land so just out of the gate in the beginning I had that exposure to activism at a very young age because my mother so thanks to her um but then you have being in school I was never really paying attention to what was going on but I loved art so for me those two
things have always just been something that that have always been there so um yeah that's how I got start started but then in 2018 I quit my job um around everything that was going on around the world then and then in 2021 I think or 2020 I was asked to help do a miral of Bri Taylor so that really got me you know professionally into the world of using my art as activism yeah and I mean we were watching some footage of the artwork of you creating it can you talk about the style of art you do and
the medium that you work in yeah um so yeah it's just mostly activism but um I use I would say a lot of influence comes from street art so um I like to use different things like stencil um stencil making or using stencils to make my art and um so we follow a lot of that style but a lot put a lot of words in there but just a a lot of different contemporary art that I like to use and I mean we're looking at some of the great artwork that you've done reflecting on the past years what projects down
stand out as your favorite I think the ones that are my favorites are the ones that I've grown the most or that I've surprised myself that didn't think that I could do um like that one right there um but I think one of my favorites were the one that I did of Angela Davis um just because of the afro yes um I like being able able to challenge myself and do that with spray paint so that was great um and then I think um one I did that's titled black boy Joy was very important and a one that's coming
up in the same vein it's called Alpha and it's for a um solo exhibit show that I have um but just those ones of showing black people in a different light um and showing how powerful and loving and caring B is um something that's very important yeah we're looking again at just at your amazing artwork and you really do feel the black boy Joy like you mentioned you feel that light what are you currently working on so I'm working on like three different projects at once actually um one of them is t
hat I'm do constructing a lot of uh flag from um different countries America Haiti Panama Jamaica Guyana um I'm re putting them together reconstructing them with African um tribal prints and different types of fabrics patterns so um that one's really important to me and it's just trying to show the contribution that Africans across the diaspora have had um on the Dias uh across the diaspora on the Western World art often has the power to spark conversations and bring about change how do you see
your murals contributing to social dialogue and activism in the local community yes I always want people to be able to look at my art and just stand there and and talk about what they might think it means but also what they think it might mean to the current time um so I I hope that they all spark a conversation within people um but you know something that you know like you Dy or Shephard fairy um and I think all you know you'll see those art and they're very big conversational pieces so I just
hope that that my art can bring about conversation oh well I think it definitely does thank you so much for telling us about your artwork and for being an activist in everything that you do if you're interested in the artist Oliver James work visit the artist Oliver james.com
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