While speaking with artist James Thigpen Jr. over the phone, you can sense his laid-back, yet confident demeanor. He comes across as a person who is self-assured with his art, identity, and path.
Born in 1986, he grew up in Flint and pays homage to its residents and the culture for shaping him and his art into what it is today, pointing to their hard work and integrity.
“I had a great childhood,” he began. “I think that Flint influenced my work because there’s a level of rawness in the story that I’ve been telling. I think that I really want to bring the trueness of black culture to the art world. I feel like Flint is that culture.”
As a young teen, he attended Genesee Area Skill Center and enrolled in classes that exposed him to different techniques early on. He credits his former art teacher, Eddie Watkins, for much of his art and career, saying that he pulled him aside and told him he saw promise for him within the realm of graphic design.
This, alongside influences like Kara Walker, who also does a lot of work in Black, white, and grays, helped him to form his identity as an artist.
“[She uses] shapes that give off a certain amount of information,” he explained. “I think that her influencing me helped me to find my voice, […] I’ve definitely created other pieces that depend on color but for me, I think that’s where I found something that felt natural, felt right to me. That’s not to say that won’t change later or evolve to color.”
Having a background in design, Thigpen put emphasis on how he breaks things down to the essentials. Simplification, as he puts it.
“Typically, I remove a lot of information so you can focus on the subject, the atmosphere, and everything like that. I really enjoy [creating] pieces that tell a story, or create a conversation.”
Moving forward, his time away from home at school, and his five years in Brooklyn proved to be an integral part of his creative journey. While in the city, he would do a show every year, his first one dedicated to paintings.
“If you came in you wouldn’t even think it’s the same person that made all the art. Total opposite of what you’ll see now. It was me getting dirty, but I was actually in a studio every day.”
Upon his arrival and not having any contacts, the young artist decided to take the initiative of going to events every day, meeting people, making connections, and solidifying himself as a member of the East Coast artist community.
“It was like this Siddhartha-esque type story where this dude is on a journey and along the way you meet characters, they help you, and over time you build your life. It’s like The Alchemist, even — that book. I met a friend that would allow me to do a show in Williamsburg in their space and that was the first one.”
Thigpan’s final New York show was in 2016. The pieces he chose to display back then are more in line with his current, developed style, and likewise hosted at Microsoft on 5th Avenue. A man ahead of his time and accurate in his predictions, he decided to lean into the digital route even before the COVID-19 shift.
“They accepted me to do a show there because I told them that my work was all digital and my idea was to use screens. I felt like eventually, with the changes in technology, where we are and the things that were going down at that time, it was inevitable that we would stop doing this traditional form of art all the time and that galleries could now go digital,” he said, citing how it would save on clean-up and other tedious aspects of setting up for an exhibit.
An absolute favorite piece of his is immortalized in a Brooklyn gallery called Layer Studio, owned by friend and photojournalist Lawrence Sumulong. The artwork is also on display in his hometown, in a mural on the corner of Martin Luther King and Pierson Rd. — a seed sown in both communities he has lived and laid groundwork in. This particular composition is a reimagined version of a Varnett P. Honeywood piece that his grandmother kept in her home.
Getting the green light for the Flint Town mural was a two-year process, even though the cost would be out of his pocket. He recalled how a friend of his doubted his efforts, telling him he wouldn’t be able to follow through on the project.
“That’s my hood and I hated the mural that was up for so long. I’m like, this mural is blight at this point–it’s horrible–and it was a big dream [of mine]. […] I still get mad thinking about it and I’m not a wag-of-the-finger, nanana boo-boo type dude, but he sees that mural up now, you know what I’m saying?”
“Everything I’ve tried to do comes to fruition and everything I speak comes to fruition. God is going to always honor your legs moving, not your mouth talking. And I do the work.”
Speaking on the criticism he has received in the past, he advises young artists to “filter” themselves by taking what you need and leaving the rest when it comes to unsolicited advice from friends, family, and acquaintances.
“Put your head up, talk your shit. Believe in yourself because that’s the work; it’s being a fan of what God is pulling out of you and trusting that. Not allowing people to talk you out of that belief.”
A deep-rooted sense of spirituality is apparent in his speech as if it is inseparable from his art and selfhood. Every move he makes is guided and informed by this Spirit. Upon asking about this, Thigpen simply replied: “I’m Black. Why I say that is because it’s something that’s just deep-rooted in us, I believe.”
“I feel like at the end of the night when everything fails that we only know to talk to something that we can’t see. To have faith in a higher power, whatever that is to you. So I think that’s just ingrained in our spirit, in our culture.”
When it comes to creating, he elaborates on his process, saying, “I feel like when my spirit man is fed and I’m clear, I create. The concept is in my head and I have to get it out. Me feeling empty is when it’s done.”
Besides being a father, his biggest personal achievement would be, in his eyes, serving people and his community.
“Creating culture, man. Uplifting people. Seeing something develop into something people can believe and stand on without pointing the finger back to me. I think that’s been something.”
He touched on not only doing that with his company and clothing brand, “Eight One Zero,” but in his other creative ventures as well. When people buy his art, being able to hear things like ‘this is my sister,’ or ‘this reminds me of my mother,’ is a worthwhile accomplishment.
Upon asking how people could support him, he insisted that he doesn’t want people to support him in a traditional sense. He maintains that, rather, he wants people to “really desire what it is that [he has] created.”
“I wouldn’t want someone to come up and say, ‘I’m going to support you because you’re a black artist.’ No, I want you to actually love what it is we just produced. So, I would say I don’t desire for you to support me–and that’s not me being an asshole, that’s always been my truth. You have longevity if people really love what you do.”
When asked if there was anything he’d like to let people know that we hadn’t touched on to conclude the interview, he said it was very important to him for his audience to know that he has a father who has been with him every step of the way.
“I told him I was going to start talking about him in interviews because people think that black dudes don’t have their daddy in their life,” he stated.
“I heard myself giving my mom all these flowers and I’m like, my daddy was there the whole time. Now that I’m a father I’m more conscious of that. As funny as that may sound, this is very important to me to shout him out.”
Support his work
James Thigpen’s work has been featured in gallery shows throughout New York and at Mott Community College during an exhibit in 2019. His work is set to be on display in The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from Feb. 17th through the end of March.
You can also visit jamesthigpenjr.com to find out more about Thigpen or to purchase his work. Check out his brand Eight One Zero on their website here.