How Hebru Brantley Blew Up In Fine Art + Created the FLYBOY Universe | IDEA GENERATION

doubt is something that artists I think live with constant that's healthy something that's not met with challenge never really Bears the fruit you wanted to [Music] in 2002 a Chicago native had an idea Brantley was studying film at Clark University in Atlanta but his true passion was in the visual arts of illustration and painting a chance encounter at a campus flea market saw him sell his first painting to none other than friend and classmate DJ Drama overnight Brantley found his calling and traded in his camera for a canvas in the two decades sense he's challenged the art world's conventions with both his work and his attitude secured the respect of his peers and created a Pantheon of characters beloved by a legion of fans that includes notables like LeBron James Chance the Rapper and Michael B Jordan and when he's not elbow deep in a can of paint Brantley still finds time to collaborate with Brands like Adidas and even return to cinema directing a short for Netflix and it all started with one idea how did your parents professional life inform your creative aspirations my father worked for NBC and my mother worked for JPC which you know was ebony jet Mr Johnson she was his secretary basically and I didn't feel like goals were unobtainable my mom nor my father never really were artistic but my mom appreciated it adversely like my father was very much like yo you go to school you get good grades and you get a good job right like this artist [ __ ] that's not real like you want to do art okay we'll be an architect right that has art in it you got a pencil in your hand at some point right but it was the opposite for my mother it was like oh you're like all right okay well let's find this hey you ever heard of Basquiat ever heard of Warhol Warhol paints Superman you ever see this you know it's hey you know it's got Keith Herring so thanks to my mom a lot of these things were put in front of me at an early age when did you start gravitating towards the Arts yourself as a kid the thing that I did most natural was you know want to draw color create I have these phases in my life it's the Ninja Turtle phase and it's the Wu-Tang phase right and so you know it was like as a kid you know you're you're mimicking the things you like the Ninja Turtles and He-Man and you know it's all of that and it's innocent and then Wu-Tang happened and then it was like an Awakening I don't want to be a kid no more these guys are doing a thing within music that like I can visualize I can see and they're taking elements of things that I grew up loving you know cartoons anime uh you know Kung Fu flicks Shaw Brothers [ __ ] and Hip-Hop emerging them all together why can't I do something similar in you know a visual medium Chicago wasn't a huge graffiti City but we had it in pockets and that was my way into doing art on a bigger scale I never was really good at lettering right I was always better with like my character work you know so if it's like a burner I would do the character at the end or the beginning but as the Arts start coming off the streets and into the galleries in that 80s movement that was also sort of a great moment for me in terms of seeing how that works from an application standpoint right like these guys main medium is spray paint right spray paint isn't an easy medium to manipulate right but watching a guy like Dandy both in the streets and in the gallery I thought was really exceptional is this just being on your teenage having fun expressing yourself or are you thinking about where this is going to take you at the time no man I was just like this is fun right because there was no one set sort of archetype or pathway towards this thing right it was like okay you want to be an animator you want to work an animation that's one route right I wasn't good enough for that you want to be a comic book artist wasn't good enough for that my my heroes looked weird as [ __ ] sometimes you know and different angles I had trouble with but I knew that I really enjoyed creating my own stuff my own characters and things like that but there wasn't the North Star to point to again design wasn't designed by then cause right like he wasn't caused in so I was just kind of like this is fun this is what we're doing I think my biggest Advantage as a creative is my upbringing you know the things that I've experienced and being able to sort of work those into the things that I've created as an outsider looking in I can see an aesthetic connective tissue between common Kanye's early stuff chance and your work and all of you guys came out of the south side of Chicago from your Vantage a do you see that connective tissue and B what do you think that that comes from in particular that's a really good question I don't know I think it's just it's the environment you know it's like how they say something in the water right the history in Chicago especially the South Side you know dealing with the nation you know the black Muslims Jesse Jackson you know Fred Hampton um you know Operation Push right we knew about those stories growing up we we understood that history that was a part of our culture when you get to the end of high school did you have a sense that you wanted to pursue art in a professional way yeah but my father he didn't want me to suffer and starve and so one of my other loves and passion has always been film I think a compromise for for the both of us was like I can go to Clark Atlanta they had a film program the undergrad program the spike went through Spike Lee at least I can be on some crew doing something at some level but I'll have a job right I'll I'll be able to to make a way I always wanted to be a director I think because with my ignorance like that was the job or the role on a film set that I understood pretty simple and playing right I didn't know what a cinematographer really did you know I understood it to a degree but like to me if a director sort of oversawed these things and brought the people together put this thing together in a way talk with I like okay I can understand that and where did it where did it go left um Clark's film program wasn't as good as it maybe once was but we'd have like Market Thursdays and Fridays so just set up a table you need a permit or anything right on the Promenade sell whatever drum he had a table selling his mixtapes this is back like you know DJ dramatic hip-hop Love Song mixtapes and then I'd have a table next to him sometimes just selling you know t-shirts jackets trucker hats like hand painted it grew and grew and grew so fast and that it really helped put me through my last kind of two years of school one of my biggest early supporters was always my guy Dj drama you know he was the first one you know put money up and bought a painting for me that meant everything that was you know Supreme validation from a peer that what I'm doing you know resonates and and it's worthwhile what year is this this is like 97.98 it was more towards my like end of my junior year into my senior year when I started working for different production companies and directors you know hip-hop had moved from New York down south and so more opportunity to get work on a crew obviously they found out I could draw so I would be kind of placing that box like doing storyboards doing concept art for things and that was cool but it just got to a point where like there was no real challenge to it and I was about to have my first kid I'm gonna make money right I'm still [ __ ] in school I was working a job at a restaurant and it just so happened that the restaurant was right across the street from the art college in Atlanta so a lot of the art students worked at the restaurant and they found out I could draw so they started inviting me over to the school and dude it like opened my I had never been to Art School proper so it opened my eyes and it was like oh she's like this y'all have access to this 24 7. this is how y'all get down and so I just started going as often as I could like I was living at the school to the point where like the staff the janitorial staff the security let me in buzz me in because they saw me over there all the time they just assumed he goes here you've got kids taking classes that are like you know painting one drawing one and that's not their their Focus right so they don't give a [ __ ] about you know painting supplies or something like that so you know at the end of semester clean out lockers and it's all this this surplus of like half used supplies I you know pulled a car up take paintings you know paint over them like half painted paintings you know art supplies big stacks of you know paper and whatever and that really helped fund my sort of art education you know it wasn't like everything had to be a hit right I could miss I could fail and I didn't feel bad about it because I wasn't paying for it those two years became like my Arts education how do I know when to Pivot I it's a Feeling you as the person you know know instinctively or should know instinctively sort of what feels right to you in that moment [Music] what were sort of the fundamental things that you walked away from that experience that you feel like have informed the decisions you've made since just that I could do this right like that there was something there Beyond just a want to gain confidence in his abilities but he still needed to figure out how to sustain himself as an artist and what the content of his work would be so he moved back to Chicago reintegrated himself within his community and searched for and eventually found his own visual language you get to the end of college you now have a child and real Financial Obligations did you end up taking a nine to five job or did you go straight into being a full-time artist no dude I I was I'm not a good employee but I did for a second basically glorified doorman right and like really expensive Condo building in you know on Peachtree in Atlanta when you think of like a doorman like a certain age you know 40s 50 year old black guy that's the whole crew and then there's me you know this young artist and I was just bad at it like they gave me I had the night shift you know there's cameras everywhere and I would like draw after the first week it was like all right we gotta stop drawing you know you got to do your rounds you got to do this okay I do that to find a camera angle so I draw away from you know the Angles and then these people drive on the lawn of the property I let them go without before the police get there properly filing reports I got fired I hated the job anyway and I just got to a point where it's like as long as I'm creating and making something I'm good and so the next series of things that I did were all sort of in that space you know and then teaching myself Photoshop right Atlanta's 20 parties a week 40 promoters that need flyers all right I can make these little ghetto Flyers put a little hot girl here Photoshop her here with the champagne bottles in the car in the background you know like like No Limit album covers right like one I'm hustling but two this is also keeping me in that space right I'm learning something it's not necessarily the art that I want to do but I'm learning how to do all this stuff creating art takes a certain level of selfishness being a father takes a certain level of selflessness how did you navigate that as you're trying to sort of cut your teeth and get these you know your first sort of like foothold into the game I was coming out of school my son's mom was going back to school and so like I would have him during the days whenever he's got his head to a pillow I'm in the living room painting painting painting painting you know I'm grateful for her because I think that you know she understood my ambition and supported it I never really got [ __ ] from her about that you know again like my mom was in full support right you know and I I didn't really know I'm just kind of I'm just doing a thing you know constantly did he create a sense of urgency oh absolutely yeah I can go another hour you know yeah you know I I I'll pass on that I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna do this and so it absolutely did but it also brought about another motivation which I didn't realize or or another thing where like having him allowed me to go back to being a child in certain aspects like sitting watching SpongeBob and not feeling away about it and then being able to like you know his parents do like you know you you want to hip your kids to like the stuff you grew up on you fall back in love with those things and you know those those moments when you know you were that age and that level of nostalgia and that really helped unlock something for me it was like this is the truest version of me right and what I've been doing up until this point creatively hasn't been the full version I became less afraid to to give that to you know the world so to speak or put that out there what was the path from there to getting your first show even with shows early on I wasn't reliant on a gallery or Gallery owner or you know any sort of institution I would go to galleries I'd go to shows I'd talk with Gallery owners I didn't really like that world right we didn't speak the same language you know some of the [ __ ] that they were talking about I would try to remember keywords and go home like what is this how you know how what's that mean the thing I did understand was the presentation fact it's like have something you want to show put on a show and you show it you open the doors the most intimidating thing for an artist is to come to a blank canvas I'll take a marker I'll take a charcoal pencil and I'll kind of just make some marks and usually what I start out doing is completely opposite of what the end result is in that space of always wanting to grow always wanting to try different things this is sort of what has kind of come come from that one of my oldest friends is an artist named for Hamilton for Hammer was like the first artist I knew that had sort of broken through fahama wasn't the guy to be like yeah I did it hahaha was like man I did it come on let's go he opened the door to bring me into that world in that space and I had spent all this other time you know just bubbling cooking learning you know and so when that opportunity came I was ready he knew how to paint and he knew how to make things but figuring out the what or the why is I think probably the most challenging part for anyone really but a fine artist in particular how did that sort of come into Focus for you at the time you know the perception of black art was like this is some [ __ ] that we're going to talk about you know the slay Fields right the old times before I existed before they existed we're going to do sort of like the jazz club scene 12 into some historical things and just sort of repurpose those memories those moments and that's kind of where things live I came from the woman who worked for Johnson publication the first black publication pulling from that level of iconography that level of black history you know that was my understanding of my style at the time but it didn't feel uniquely my own there was still room for growth and development I've been focused on and thinking about really heavily survival and you know the black body everything that's been happening throughout history but more specifically the past couple of years and what do you do what can you do and I think that the best thing that I can do as a visual artist and somebody with a platform is sort of you know constantly be ever present and talking about those things and those issues in my own way what was that process of unlocking what you really wanted to say again it was like a lot of trial and error you know creating these these certain works right again like you have those ebony style pieces and some of them lean more into like figurative abstraction and then I would have the character based stuff little skewed more towards you know animation and things like that and I'm developing that language you know at the same time and attention from an audience went quickly from that to being intrigued by not fully invested in like oh we love this but like that's pretty dope man that feels like you that feels like something you need to explore and try to unpack how many years did that take third or fourth year out of school is when I really start to lean into the notion of like making something that felt like my own you know and that was also around the same time where like I just moved back to Chicago not having seen a lot of these guys that I grew up with not being around those people anymore and them seeing me seeing what I was up to right letting them in on you know this is these are my ideas these are my thoughts really helped accelerate that growth during this process that takes several years for you to arrive at what the world would ultimately know as Hebrew brantley's style you are still having to provide for yourself for your son how successfully are you making ends meet during that period fairly so at that time I started teaching I was teaching art at this spot on the South Side called Low Black Pearl sort of an after-school thing this was the first time I'm in an environment where like I have free Reign Over a studio I can stay at this building as late as I want to get down right and so it allowed me freedom to stretch out when you're not confined you know and again you can breathe a little bit some dope shit's gonna happen you know going through my classes during the day hanging around later at night and just getting busy not only having that studio as a place to work in but turning that studio into an actual piece of art going into the the cafe like yeah this wall is gross let's paint it go ahead do a mural word okay cool all of these things is like it's just strengthening my my creativity and my understanding of my own voice I felt confident enough from leaving that job to never having a job again right when I finally left the the teaching job and going out on my own and doing my own thing finally getting my first Studio making enough money to just survive off of the art like my mom got sick my mom had breast cancer she beat it went into remission it's fine but it came back aggressive in that process of her going to chemo and getting treatment my stepfather finds out that he has uh pancreatic cancer and so you know that's like that's a death sentence and so what I have going on in my life is not as important right now as what my mom has to deal with and you know I'm I'm waking up early packing lunches taking my brother and sister to school picking him up from school taking her to you know to her treatments and shortly after you know again finding all this out my stepfather passes my mom's health it never came back and so I'm raising my siblings at this point and it became harder to paint right around that time I had an opportunity to do my first solo show in Chicago so I'm working at night every night painting my ass off I'm literally dude I'm down to like just a few shekels now in the bank account because I've already left the job but this thing happened right after that and I'm putting everything I got into this work the day of the show my mom's never been to an art show because I'd had all my shows in Atlanta at the time right she has my brother and sister she didn't he wasn't able to fly you know to come to an art show like I'm I'm man it's everything to me my dad's coming my mom's coming and dude I'm driving my mom back from treatment and she literally I can't make a [ __ ] up she goes blind and it's like temporary thing that happens sometimes with with chemo she loses sight for a couple hours and terrified me and it's put me in this you know it's a place of panic you know soon thereafter she passed away so throughout my life my mom never got to see me have an art show I found myself in a crazy position of raising my own son and then now having full custody of my brother and sister as a visual artist right like I don't have a secure gig you know there were bills I had to focus on keeping us alive thriving surviving the whole thing I didn't have time to really grieve it was just I had to go [Music] saddled with grief and new caretaking responsibilities Hebrew had no other choice but to continue to create and try to monetize his efforts luckily his work resonated and on the strength of his talent and his unique proprietary characters like the iconic flyboy he managed to build an audience and become one of the more Buzzy names in the Chicago Art scene but his aspirations didn't stop there bent on bringing flyboy to the big screen Hebrew decided to set the table for this eventuality by returning to the world of film and directing his first short e-rax for Netflix [Music] I had to think of ways creatively to to take what I had to make something else you know I'm I'm pestering folks I'm doing whatever I can to just stay away from having to take a [ __ ] shitty nine to five to help us live and six months seven months eight months a year it's actually starting to work damn I got this opportunity y'all gonna pay me how much to do what oh hell yeah I'll do that three times over for that once I kind of got into the flow it just became the norm again man being lucky right like meeting certain people that are like man I believe in what you're doing here's a studio space I don't want nothing from you give me a painting every now and then but here's a space luck is the supporting character in my story I honestly you know just from being able to you know be born a creative and not necessarily just being able to do a thing but have a vision when did you paint your first pieces with the characters who I think we all most closely identify with you fly boy the Frog guys like all that the early 2000s I don't really even remember what the absolute definitive First painting was I can remember the first series of Works where like there was enough to call it a series that to me was sort of always imagined as a one and done proposition you know hell some of the Flyboys are the characters at the time they weren't black you know they were just they were you know whatever color I had at the time you know what I mean someone with Grace We're portrait toned you know Peach or whatever but like watching how people respond the next show had nothing to do with that stuff but there was an expectation to see that stuff and so you know as an artist I mean again I don't know everybody's different but for me that was amazing that means I did something that connected with more than just one or two people it connected with you know a broader audience and people were expecting to see you know a familiar face so to speak and so that was just you know light bulb obviously moment of like I got something here and I want to explore it further take me through that process I get bored really easily no matter if the idea is good if I'm if I'm saying certain things that are really you know I'm passionate about [ __ ] just gets boring as repetition it's like uh you know so finding new ways to bring this thing to life and so getting into sculpture really early on in my career and like going to YouTube and watching tutorials on like how do I do sculpture failing miserably at it right but then you know trying to find those people that know how to do it and can help guide me and so I started making like these 3D heads these like wall mounted heads right with flyboy and a few of the characters the audience engages with them differently and so I kind of I got into sculpture and then I got hooked on that and just wanted to do more and more and then it was from the heads it was flying flyboard a few years into the game working painting um not really having sort of an established Visual Voice yet I had kind of landed on this book uh you know about it's like world history World War II Tuskegee Airmen I just thought there was a real power behind that right there was a real uh you know a real story there that like it just it connected with me and so I took it a step further and um just started to think about like you know the the Canon of characters that already exist the Batmans the Superman's The Bugs Bunnies the SpongeBobs and like there was none that existed that were you know based off anybody of color right really within that space so I kind of did a mock show where like I presupposed that there was one right there was something that sort of time forgot about that something that was unreleased and so you know that's that's kind of how I arrived it you know this guy right here my my second son [Music] at what point did you feel like you had arrived in that virtuous cycle where one thing is leading to the next and you no longer have that fear of looking down I think when I'm at a position where I'm having dinner with the mayor of Chicago and he knows exactly who I am what I do feeling like I'm invited into you know another Circle how was the work evolving as you are becoming more successful it's I imagine creating a bit of a feedback loop where you're receiving praise scrutiny for certain things criticism how is that changing what you're making um I think I'm just more aware of like the audience because there's a real audience it's not just people coming to look at Art but it's people investing in your art right people living with your art I think seeing what sells listening to how people speak about this versus this um again just watching engagement you approach things a bit smarter you know with a bit more experience and a bit more confidence each time because of those things I think I have a lot of creative goals I I would like to you know create a few things in in different mediums that stand the test of time and be a benchmark for the time in which you know I existed being a pop artist and a commercial Artist as well as a fine artist it takes planning and strategy and thought about how you are cultivating your brand when did you start thinking about that thinking not just about an individual painting or or a collection of paintings but a larger Hebrew Brantley has a name and as a brand very early on I mean it kind of goes back to like the days of me selling T-shirts on campus like Basquiat right I think a lot of young black artists especially find Basquiat his work becomes sort of a jumping off point to an understanding of Fine Art and now the world is starting to like understand who this guy is now there's t-shirts there's mugs and it's like this dude never got to see a check for any of that participate in any of that have any input in any of that I want to be able to take something from here and put it on a coffee mug right and somebody that can't afford that can afford that and they can live with my art in their home and this is the again the contradictory [ __ ] the nature of the [ __ ] art world right we're going to tell you that commercial art is not the way to go that you shouldn't do that but we're going to exploit dead artists and license their [ __ ] up the Wazoo to sell you puzzles postcards books t-shirts Etc through our Museum gift shop and it's okay to do it there but if you do it in any other Arena oh no it's pop it's bad and you're not supposed to do that [ __ ] that I'm a [ __ ] Creator I'm gonna create I'm gonna make the [ __ ] I want to make and I'm gonna put it out how I want to put it out I'm not saying every idea I have is great every at-bat is a home run but I get to control it right I get to control my [ __ ] the way I want to within my lifetime I can't control how it's gonna come out when I'm dead and gone but for right now these are the things I think are cool these are the things I want to participate in and so I do I'm not caught up in this idea of like how that's going to be perceived in the Fine Art world because a lot of it is [ __ ] and I know this is not favorable and it's not something I should probably say publicly but I just think it is our audience can be real fickle you know and like not necessarily allow for change so for me just trying to do it in a way where you know I can slowly walk you along into another room you know before you know oh I'm in another room this is actually cool too I get this I understand this there was one moment where I had the studio there's these um Chinese artists that live in Chicago obviously from China the Zhao Brothers they had created a studio space for artists on the South Side in Bridgeport I was like man I have to I have to work in here this environment is crazy it's great and so I got my first real Studio like there wasn't associated with work that's where my studio space was on the first floor they had a gallery huge Gallery but it was a gallery for Masters you know they would invite you know a master marvelous that you know did these incredible Marvel statues and that's what they would show it was a complete disconnect with obviously the other tenants in the building but you know it brought in the folks they sold work etc and so I kept bugging them like man you need some young blood in here I was like no no no it's a rule I'm like who's rule it's like it's our rule it's like well rules can be broken right like and so over the course of like six months seven months eight months they started seeing like we would have open studios and they started seeing that like when it's time for everybody to leave everybody's still back in my studio looking at my stuff talking to you know it's it's a it's a whole it's a movement it's it's the energy is there it's undeniable and so I convinced him to give me a show and they did my first big solo show in a real gallery that was like the first big Fly Boy show you know it was like Publications write-ups you know the show was supposed to go for a month it went for two you know the work sold the [ __ ] out but with that show I not only just did the show but actually through my gift shop I got t-shirts you know I've got little collectible figurines I've got hats hoodies stickers posters prints all of that and like I sunk everything I had into that show and it proved to be a success at what point did Hollywood start coming and knocking on your door on potential adaptations of these characters I'd say within like the past five six years right where Michael B Jordan had come to Chicago working on some film but saw my art connected with it and just hit me on Instagram and we started talking and you know at this time his stock is rising I think he's about to do Creed and you know it's like he's becoming you know Michael B him having the connections here started to like throw my names around in meetings it just allowed me to see that like I have something that can live beyond this space and potentially in another space so people are kicking the tires on you to see what's up with your characters but ironically your first foray into Hollywood ends up being a live action short that you direct for Netflix yeah how did that happen it was during the pandemic you know I shot a few music videos for some friends and you know sort of got the bug back and really wanted to do more and um I was gonna just shoot a a little short film at the house you know something I wanted to do with my daughter I just introduced her to Gremlins it was eye-opening for her she's seven I got a call from my agent that Netflix was doing this emerging filmmaker program they wanted me to pitch a few ideas and so I did and one of them happened to be the idea that I was going to do with my daughter which was called erax they they loved it they wanted to do it and you know made it happen will we see flyboy on the big screen anytime soon we will I don't know how soon but I know it's coming you know it's something that I've been working towards for a long time now and I think that like opportunities are there and obviously growing it's just about sort of aligning with the right one is it difficult to pursue opportunities like that and retain ownership of the IP for the characters it's extremely difficult because you know obviously for Studios they want to own everything outright you know unless you're like JK Rowling where it's like you have a successful Mega successful book series and then you know you have leverage there and for me having had success in a space selling merch and and Things based around this IP definitely helps when having the conversation of how percentages work and and things of that nature I would imagine just dealing with the administration of Hebrew Brantley as a brand is a full-time job and on top of that you are still in the studio painting works by hand every day while you are meeting with agents and talking to Studio execs and talking to collectors and doing all of that stuff and developing your IP into new extensions how do you sort of navigate managing your schedule and prioritizing you know how you spend your time the main thing is I have a really strong team you know of people around me that like are able to help with that the creative still falls on me but you know I'm I'm a very ambitious person always have been and I think that like wow you know the pendulum still swings in my favor I want to try to jump at those opportunities and sort of you know seize the moment we are in a real moment right now for black creatives you look at Hollywood right the dominant stories that are being told are from our perspective in the Fine Art world I don't know what happened but you know The Gatekeepers finally figured out that black is dope like black is the New Black it's a real moment that hopefully will continue but while we're in it I want to be able to participate so what is the bucket list obviously continuing painting that'll never stop bigger shows more experiential exhibitions not just White Walls and paintings but like you're going into an experience and then on the other side is to you know exploring animation you know from shows to Features live action films directing some producing some you know all of these things are slowly being set up I like to tell stories you know so be able to tell stories here you know in a two-dimensional sort of space to you know actually with with live actors or you know in an animated space I think is it's all different pieces of a whole as the visibility goes up and the stakes go up does it get easier no it's never easy you just get more accustomed to the chaotic nature of it all you know what I mean it's like I know what I do isn't suited for a lot of people or how I do certain things but this is the only way I know how to do it [Music] all right

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Length: 37min 45sec (2265 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022