Flint, MI — Hubert Massey can recall watching sign painters paint billboards by hand, a gesture that baffled him because he didn’t know such canvases had to be hand-painted.
He eventually became one of the most sought-after artists in the Midwest, with his origins in sign painting.
“I didn’t know down the line I would be one of those sign painters,” Massey said.
Massey has been an integral part of the Midwest public art community for more than 20 years, with a knack for storytelling and a talent for creating large-scale works that fuse art and architecture.
The Flint-born artist recalls attending the Genesee Area Skill Center (now named Genesee Career Institute) and being involved in athletics, from football and track as a child to attending Grand Valley State University on a sports scholarship. It wasn’t until he suffered a knee injury and a professor pointed him toward a fine arts program at the University of London that he considered becoming an artist in the 1980s.
“It really changed my whole trajectory,” Massey recalls.
Despite seeing the success of certain gallery artists, Massey wanted to pursue a different path.
“I wanted to be an artist that really has an impact upon communities and shapes and redefines environments.”
He spoke of seeing Michaelangelo’s fresco paintings at the Sistine Chapel in Europe and learning he had never painted frescoes before being commissioned for the piece, which is now regarded as one of the greatest works of art. Upon seeing this, Massey told himself, “That’s what I want to do.”
After returning from Europe, Massey followed the advice of those who told him to become a sign painter before becoming an artist. Once he graduated from GVSU, he accepted a job offer in Detroit to be closer to home and became a sign painter for 12 years until hand painting was phased out of the art industry.
By this time, Massey had already secured his first major commission for a 30-foot-high mural at the Athenaeum Hotel in Detroit called “Laocoon and Sons.” This was followed by his iconic 72-foot-long terrazzo, “Genealogy,” which decorates the entrance of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, also in Detroit.
In 1995, Massey was tapped to participate in a fresco workshop under former apprentices of legendary Mexican painter Diego Rivera, Stephen Dimitroff, and Lucienne Bloch. Of the twelve artists who participated, Massey was the only one who committed to the technique, becoming the only African American artist commissioned to do fresco painting in the U.S.
The fresco technique requires grinding pigment into water on a thin layer of wet lime mortar or plaster. After some hours, the plaster reacts with the air in a chemical reaction that fixes the pigment to the plaster’s surface, becoming part of the wall itself. It must be done quickly, without mistakes, but the results can last thousands of years.
“It is the oldest form of painting on the planet,” Massey said, citing cave paintings as an example. Also, the hues in each painting get deeper over time.
The Flint Institute of Art houses the largest portable fresco mural in America, “Earth, Wind, and Fire,” by Massey.
While some claim the largest fresco is Diego Rivera’s “Pan American Unity” in San Francisco, consisting of 10 portable panels, he lets us in on the little-known fact: For his “Earth, Wind, and Fire” mural, he used about 20 panels which were transported between his Detroit studio and the museum.
Themes related to the mass migration of African Americans to places like Flint and Detroit during the mid-1900s reoccur in Massey’s work.
“These places were the first places for the Black middle class,” he stated. “We could own a home, own cars, be able to raise a family — we had major income and that was a big thing.”
A few of Massey’s other pieces include the 18-foot high frescoes at the Detroit Athletic Club, his stained glass works at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, the terrazzo at Harmony Park in Detroit, and his Importing and Exporting Knowledge exhibit in the Richard DeVos Building at GVSU.
Massey recently completed a mural in Detroit of late R&B singer-songwriter Aaliyah.
Visit here to view more of Massey’s artwork from over the years.