'Justice or Just Us' on display at the Arts Council
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on October 7, 2014 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
"The Deconstruction of Bubba" by Clayton Harris Jr. is one of the many pieces of art in the "Justice or Just Us" exhibit at the Arts Council of Wayne County.
A new exhibit at the Arts Council of Wayne County may get visitors talking with its controversial pieces.
"Justice or Just Us" by Atlanta painter Clayton Harris Jr. runs through Oct. 31 in the TALoving Gallery.
Harris does mainly acrylic paintings, but uses mixed media in some of his artwork.
The retired Air Force major always has a religious reference in his works because he believes his art is a gift from God.
He also paints issues.
"Clayton has a message that will speak to everybody," said gallery director Traycee Williams.
"It has a political maybe environmental message about some problems we're having in our nation.
"He's neither black nor white in his creations. He says he's free to be whatever he wants wherever his is at that particular point in time creatively. His subject matter spans across any race. It's a problem we all have with violence, finances, economics, things like that."
Take his "Deconstruction of Bubba" painting. It has a central figure made up of parts of different kinds of people. There's a lapel suit, a leg in a military uniform with a part missing and more.
"The artwork is kind of collage of different types of people," Ms. Williams said.
"The body is being taken part, with one arm on a crane. He's painted all these ethnic groups into this one figure. It even as new America with dreds and tattoos. There is also representation of gay and lesbian references, new society.
"And down in the very right hand corner is this white man in a hospital gown who's got a blindfold on and is doing dishes and doesn't even realize that this deconstruction is going on."
Ms. Williams said the painting represents old ideas going out the window.
Then there's a memorial piece for Trayvon Martin, the teen who was shot and killed in Florida, called "Remember Trayvon Martin."
"There was a controversy whether he was killed justly or not," Ms. Williams said.
"Was it justice or just us because none of us really knows what really happened. Is this justice or is it just our old ideas? It's more than just this boy was shot. It's a whole big public opinion of what surrounded it."
Ms. Williams said the Arts Council first heard of Harris on one of his trips to Goldsboro to visit a friend.
"He came into the art gallery and put a couple of pieces in our art market," she said.
"He started talking about his controversial subject matter that he likes to paint. We decided to give him a show."
Ms. Williams said art is about sending a message out to people and that, if the artist can convey a message to the viewer without words, then he's accomplished what he was trying to do.
"And that's why Clayton is trying to do, leave his legacy with us without words. I find his work to be intellectually stimulating because it makes you look really hard at the pieces. It will get people thinking about different issues. In his pieces, he's saying that we do have choices because we are individuals."
Harris said he wants his art to be "didactic, emotional, descriptive and reflective in nature. I use bold colors, soft tones, provoking images with deliberate brush strokes to achieve the emotions of love, sorrow, pain, anger, injustice, racism, indifference, genocide and forgiveness.
"Art gives me the freedom to be free. Free to be me with no rules or laws to govern me even though I create within the boundaries and rules of the art world to achieve balance and order in my works."
Gallery hours are Monday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 2 to 7 p.m.