Home Is Where the Art Is
On hanging my history up on the walls of my home
When I was growing up we didn’t have art in the house. I mean that in the sorta physical sense of beautiful paintings and artistic photographs. We had it in other mediums consistently, music from my dad’s very specific setup, and movies and TV were always on because of my mom, but never really any art on our walls—except for one piece.
The first house I knew as home was only given that label for the first ten years of my life. I remember a lot but a large chunk of the memories made there were told to me second-hand, jogged through photos, or are incredibly clear but not ones that I care to recall.
The second home we had was the one I truly grew up in. It was my home through high school, when I returned after graduating college, and my parents stayed there up until about 3 years ago. After spending decades in the place they were born and raised, they retired and traded frigid Detroit winters for sunny Boca beachy ones.
In that home, there were your standard Black American style things gracing the walls. A Serenity Prayer framed in the living room, a light-up portrait of Jesus at The Last Supper, and some sporadic family photos.
At Christmas, my mom would tape all the Christmas cards we’d gotten over the years to the walls. It was this sort of chaotic but beautiful temporary wallpaper. Some of them played tunes, and I remember testing them throughout the years to see if they still did. I don’t know, maybe they don’t make batteries like they did because I swear they still played up until like 6 years ago.
When I think about art and home through a Black television lens, Good Times comes to mind. The Ernie Barnes painting, The Sugar Shack, was the first piece of art that I vividly remember. Watching reruns of the series—created by Mike Evans and Eric Monte—with my mom not only burned the theme song into my brain but just like many other Black folks, I would later be able to recognize that painting anywhere.
As I write this, it’s kind of funny that the first piece of art I remember was on a series that took place in the city I would later move to. A city where I would find the apartment that I would eventually call my first adulthood home.
In that second childhood home, amongst the religious art and revolving school photos, we had a bonus—a piece of art with five Black women dancing. I remember it hanging on the wall forever. I learned its origin story only when my mother was getting rid of it while preparing for their retirement move. I don’t know what I expected to hear, maybe that they picked it out together on a date or that it was another surprise thing my dad brought home but it was nothing like that—It was a gift from a friend for their housewarming.
If you grew up in a certain kind of area, then this is familiar to you, maybe not exactly the same but you’ll get it:
It’s a summer day driving around with your mother likely asking for something you didn’t really need while on errands. You stop at a red light to plead your case and on the corner is what looks like a mini flea market. Giant rugs tossed over the chain link fence with African patterns or a stitched MLK, sets of white towels still wrapped in hard plastic, cups of incense with a smell that makes its way through the open car windows—and random paintings and prints lining the lower half of the fence wrapping around the corner so you can see them no matter what way you’re turning.
It was this awesome display of culture that I didn’t recognize or appreciate until I’d long left the neighborhood I grew up in.
I saw it constantly. At the corner of 6 Mile and Schaefer, in between offerings of Bean Pies and religious pamphlets, I remember my father pulling over and bartering with the vendors of these, well, I don’t know what else to call them other than Pop-Up Flea Markets / Art Curators. Laughing when they strike a deal on a bag of socks while I sit in the front seat bored and impatient, desperate to get back in front of my book, TV, or computer.
These types of stop-light stores are where my mom’s friend got their housewarming gift. It’s there where she purchased a last-minute present on the way to the function that would become a core memory of my life.
It hung in the dining room and I’d stare at it during our weekly family meetings, it was in the background of big holiday dinners, it sat in the silence with us as we realized my abortion and assault had all actually happened, it was there when my father took a photo with all his siblings for the first time in his life, I stood next to it while my mom blew out candles on birthday cakes and posed right after—it’s always been there.
There were only two things I wanted when my parents told me they were moving—an ORIGINAL gold branch floor lamp from the early 90s that is in PRISTINE condition….And this piece of art.
My mom laughed at me because one thing my father was never going to let go and the other thing she saw no value in.
I had to take what I could get and I had them bring the piece down during a visit to Chicago. It looked exactly the same as I’d remembered, I don’t know why I thought it might not. You know how when you’re a child everything in the world seems so large, and when you see that same thing as an adult it’s smaller than expected? This was different because it felt the same.
I had my dad install a shelf that I’d lean the painting on, so you could see it right when you walked into my place. I was so proud of it when I’d come home, then, eventually, just as it did when I was growing up, it became something that was in the background.
I did a bit of research on it, to see if I could learn more about it and it came back with a few hits. I’m not completely sold on it BUT it could be a print from the African-American artist Ed ‘Halessie’ Hale. I found a few pieces of his work and it is quite similar to the one I have.
If it is him then the Chicago connection runs deep because before settling in Greensboro, Halessie was a native of Chicago. It would be SO COOL if this piece of art that has followed me throughout most of my life, ended up in the very city where the artist was from. It would just give me another reason to believe in the universe and the plan it has for me.
Just like anything does with age, the piece changed. The faux gold plastic trim needs to be taken off and the glass that holds it needs to be changed. I plan on matting it and putting it in a new frame, but the memories of it will still be with it and me. As it moves around my home with style changes, and comes with me to the next ones I’m excited to see what new memories grow around it. Excited to set it, forget it, and watch it fade into the background in a way of domestic bliss and beauty.
Etc.
One of my best friends got me this book I think last year, it’s a beautiful coffee table book called AphroChic and it’s a book “celebrating the legacy of the Black family home.” It’s a gorgeous book and it really helps you dream of the home you want
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