We were lucky to catch up with Samarr Collins recently and have shared our conversation below.

Samarr, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

When i was seven or eight years old, I got bullied all the time that on top of getting phone calls home from a my teacher and getting the usual “you need to do better” ”don’t talk back just listen” “ just be obedient”i did not realize the education system wasn’t built for people like me, And not too long after learning how to draw stick figures and making papier-mâché hats in class I discovered YouTube in its golden era I spent hours stealing copy paper from the copy machine at my grandmothers house and drawing with YouTube tutorials after school, after getting better with my craft I went back to the same school that told me I wasn’t good enough and showed my peers and my teachers what I could do then and only then they finally saw my potential they saw the world the way I did! art saved me in more ways than one, the girls who would pick on me were begging me to draw them and the teachers who were convinced I was another statistic asked me to draw the topics we were discussing on the whiteboards. I was seen you for what I was and not what I couldn’t do.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ got into the art world through YouTube because it was accessible at that time and I didn’t have anybody breathing down my neck telling me this is not the right way to do it, I just did it showed my mom and my grandma and they were impressed they told my mother’s father who Drew horses on this big glass table with an absurd amount of paper he saw my interest in art and bought me a whole bunch of oil paints and a easel and my journey got started there then on my grandmother side of the family I met my cousin Deborah Goldsby she introduced me to the Breakfast club she showed me that there are were way more avenues to get into the art world than just social media which of the time she introduced me to the breakfast club they were changing a lot of things about posting art and the early stages of AI.

It became harder and harder to get my are out there in the sea of millions of artist

The thing I provide now more than ever is allowing everyone to see the liberation within art, art in itself, is political, the ability to Express freely, is liberation.
I believe one of the problems I solve with my craft is accessibility I don’t sell Prints (yet) and i sell locally in my community we talk a lot about generational wealth but we’re not providing our people with that wealth by giving them a laminated sheet of paper
I want every person who comes across me to be able to have all of my pieces big or small to have something they can pass down not resell or boast about having, something that’s a family heirloom something that carries our story.

The artist Thee mbz isnt a brand, nor is it a character i want sell to people its my story
It’s for other little black girls and boys to see its more to this life than followers and making aesthetically pleasing art for the algorithm. Breaking barriers for those little girls and boys it’s not just about art it’s about showing them you can do it to without the fancy paperwork, without having to going in debt for college classes. You can do it too

Eventually, once I have a funding to not have to work multiple 9 to 5s I will start the “coven of Z” go to just be a boys and girls program where we provide free food, gardening classes and a safe place for emerging artist to have access to all sorts of paint and paper utensils ect, to help my community tell their story. I grew up on the east side of Detroit right outside of Brenda Scott high school and Osbourne and I hope to go back to that place and give those kids opportunity to see beyond the police officers sitting outside of their schools metal detectors and fighting.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The wretched of the Earth by frantz Fannon and Angela Y Davis women race and class and so many other books.

Especially considering these books are banned now as of writing this.

Learning about colonialism and the erasure of my people, culture, and history, the language barriers, the understanding of how the arts can allow all of us to travel through time truth and only the truth will set us free.
My truth, our truth whether it’s on a canvas, in a song, through dance, even in medicine will help us get through moments where they want to silence us And that goes for everything and everyone.

These books and many others helped me understand why I felt so misunderstood why I felt like and still feel like i need to change myself into something im not to get the places i want to get to

but I’m already there
seeing the children in my family get excited to see me with 1000 pencils in my purse and copy paper Excited to learn how to draw is where I want to be at.
Seeing the kids walk past my house with all the paintings in the windows screaming “mommy mommy look that looks like you mommy” fills my heart with joy that money cannot bring

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Use creativity like it’s therapy, if you’re a poet talk about your story. Don’t try to talk about everybody else’s,, if you’re a writer don’t write something you think I want to hear write some thing I need to hear, and the words of Deontay (grits and eggs, podcast ) “take a deep and serious pride in what you do, I don’t care if you’re a dishwasher or a janitor take pride in that”

Something that I think a lot of people don’t understand about my art is the way I see it I have explained my pieces to dozens of people and they’re “like no that is not what I see” and truthfully, that’s kind of the point I don’t want you to just look at things because of the way I look at it make your own opinion ,form your own thoughts, like yes, please argue let’s talk about something deeper than sexyred, or gender wars, things that are algorithmically targeted to make you stay in place of attacking one another when the things that we are supposed to be attacking are the people who gave sexyred gender wars and killing each other a platform

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marsbarzart?igsh=OXF6OW9wczBzeW1y&utm_source=qr
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