Be Inspired!

Marley Billie D has come to a fork in the road and instead of choosing one path, she's decided to take them all. The Midwesterner-by-heart visual artist is packing up her camera, paintbrushes, pens and pencils and setting out to make the world her canvas. The 21-year-old awakes to Chicago skylines each morning--her home away from home--but her native town of St. Louis will forever live in heart. Matter of fact, it was in her hometown that she started hitchhiking her way to masterpieces, becoming inspired by her mentors Kevin McCoy and Byron Rogers. It is also in St. Louis where Marley had the opportunity to travel to Ghana as a young girl, which sparked her evolving interest in African art. Her traveling shoes most recently led her to New York City where she worked for Natasha Morgan NYC and under the direction of Michael Solis at Sandbox Studio. She's a backpacking, thrift-shopping, camera-shooting, Photoshopping junkie who just wants to produce good art. As she continually strikes her canvas time and time again, Marley is setting out to make a global masterpiece of her journey traveled. Join her if you'd dare, but make sure you wear comfortable shoes because her journey is never, EVER ending. 

Written by Rikki Byrd (Sculpt Magazine) 

Modern-day Minstrel

You often find yourself playing a role. Fitting into some stereotypical box that someone has put you into. Never defining who it is you are outside of the context that has been provided. Or worse, you put on a show to entertain the likes of others. You rather appeal to the expectations of others and hide behind the mask of shame. You are a modern day minstrel.

The mask itself is appealing, in some ways beautiful, but it is a cover up for humiliation.

Minstrel shows began in America as whites performing in blackface imitating stereotypes of black people, soon after black began to take on the blackface paint and perform these minstrel shows as well. Entertaining their white audience while bringing degradation to the black race.

In modern day life the minstrel show has re-produced itself. Same game with a different face, playing into the expectations of those around us while reiterating the same stereotypes that have plagued the black community since the ending of slavery.

Who are we? Now in the century we have been given a chance to redefine what it means to be black. Yet we have limited ourselves to what others say that we can be. At 16 most young men can only dream of being an athlete or a rapper, and with the implementation of reality TV all our young women care about being are basketball wives. We are still being spoon fed who to be, and falling right in line.

Minstrel shows most commonly presented black people as lazy and dumb, and dehumanized them by the creation of a character used for many as a defining representation of the black race.

I have created a project that has added a modern twist to the traditional black face. My goal is to accent the broad definition of a minstrel show and illustrate how they are still very much prevalent today. African Americans are still the number one entertainers for white audiences, but now for us as well.

I'm trying to give a wake up call to not only our people but to White America as well. I find it very interesting that Willie Lynch wrote a speech 300 years ago about how to keep your slave in order, but 2012 marks 300 year after that Willie Lynch wrote his speech and yet we still live in that mentality. You would think now we would finally free ourselves but instead our community has become money driven. The hunger for money has exceeded to the point many do not realize the same institution is still in place, and we are still slaves.

I'm capturing the world’s perspective on personal minstrel shows they may take part in their lives and so forth.