photography by Nick Sethi
text by Tara Anne Dalbow
The first time I saw Otis Houston Jr., he was standing beneath the Triborough Bridge in Harlem, New York, with half a watermelon balanced atop his head and a paintbrush in his hand. Stuck in the congestion of rush hour traffic, I watched from the back of a cab as he traced short, careful strokes through the air as if he were painting the world before him. More striking than his overalls and melon cap was the expression of absolute calm and contentment on his face as if he were standing beside not a heaving highway but a mountain lake. What I remember is straining in my seat to look back, transfixed by the grace and gravitas of the man painting over the exhaust, the sirens, the crush of cars, with a smile on his face.
It wasn't until years later that I found out who he was and that far from being anonymous, he was something of a legend in Upper Manhattan. Well-known for his impromptu performances, found-object installations, and spray-painted signage, he’s been the unofficial tenant of that marginalized strip of concrete at 122nd Street since 1997. “It’s all about location, location, location,” he told me during our conversation more than a decade after our paths first crossed on FDR Drive.
While some things have changed for the artist since then, he’s now shown his work at Canada and Gordon Robichaux galleries and numerous international art fairs. Other things have stayed the same: he still performs roadside in outlandish outfits with watermelons balanced on his head a few times a week. “FDR Drive is like my freedom,” he explained, having first spotted his future studio and stage from the terrace of the public housing unit where he lived after his release from prison. “It found me, it did.”
Art seemed to have found him, too. He first started creating work while incarcerated, namely, layered collages constructed from magazine clippings and whatever other print media he was allowed. In more ways than one, the pictures he made then prefigured the method and materiality of his art practice now and established his insistence that the artist “use what he’s got.” Along with a passion for artmaking, he also developed a voracious reading habit and earned his high school equivalency diploma while behind bars. “I don’t call it prison; I call it education,” he explained. “You have to read to grow, to evolve. Read, read, read!”
Both the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge are central to Houston Jr.’s practice, as well as his conception of himself as an artist and responsible member of society. This is as much a byproduct of his edifying experience in prison as his grave dissatisfaction with politicians and other people in positions of power who refuse to share what they know with the public. “Few know too much; many know too little,” he told me. Viewing his work through this lens reveals how the multivarious facets of his democratic practice—performance, sculpture, painting, signage, and song—are united by a common goal of reversing the paradigm so that many know much and few know little. As he sees it, with the great power afforded to him by books comes the great responsibility to share his wisdom with others.
That said, Professor Houston Jr.’s teaching methods are about as zany as they come. Perhaps the most straightforward are his signs, and even then … slogans, epigrams, poems, protests, and exhortations are spray-painted across gym towels, old paintings, and banners made from salvaged fabric scraps. Their messages range from “educate yourself” to “man do not destroy man build.” Then, there’s the profusion of fruit that he integrates into his performances to promote healthy eating and encourage the “95% of Americans [that] don’t eat enough fruit” to go home and have an apple. Or his assemblages, constructed entirely from found objects that he salvages from the streets and the office building where he works as a maintenance custodian. All of these works extoll an ethos of reuse and restoration that returns a sense of reverence and delight to once-treasured objects as various as children’s toys, artificial flowers, and broken chairs. Still, he imparts other lessons through example, like lifting weights roadside, greeting everyone he sees with a smile and a wave—because “the closest thing between two people is a smile”—and confidently affirming his identity, experiences, and artistic creations for all to see. As he says, “They see someone that looks like them doin’ it; they know they can do it too.”
His generosity of spirit and talent for infusing mundane moments and objects with levity and laughter also make learning difficult lessons possible by tendering receptivity instead of defensiveness. Alongside celebrations of health, education, kindness, and creative expression are poignant critiques of racism, poverty, and power. Questions like, “Can I live” and observations like, “he ain’t did nothing, but being a negro,” distill complex issues surrounding systemic racism and social injustice and confront unspoken prejudices and acts of violence. “We not in the same boat, but we all in the water,” he tells me in a sing-song voice that tempers the gravity of the subject.
When I asked him how he maintains so much joy and hope in the face of adversity and increasingly unbearable realities, he laughed and told me, “It’s not hard” because he loves himself, he loves people, and he loves making art. In his words: “We are the canvas. Abstract. Original. Breathtaking.” Recalling the first time I saw him, paintbrush in hand, I wonder all over again if he was, in fact, painting over the world, making it a little brighter than it was before.
