Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Silly Genius. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Silly, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

It’s summer of 2019. I had collaborated with my crew on 3 murals back to back that was starting to raise my profile outside of our immediate circle of artist friends and peers. My email was slowly filling with inquiries about murals and potential creative gigs.

But I had a full-time job.

A full-time manual labor job where I worked between 60-80 hours a week, often not knowing what time we’d go home after clocking in. It was a warehouse that primarily filled orders for contractors building homes and apartment buildings. One order would be a toilet, a bathtub, and some pipe fittings. The next order might be for 10 showers and 300 ft of copper pipe. A single order would be the price of my yearly salary, and it only took me 30 mins to gather it. It was demoralizing. We started each day at 8:30AM and we’d work until each order was loaded on to trucks for the drivers to deliver first thing the next morning. Sometimes that would mean wrapping up 6PM. Sometimes 10PM. On the worst occasion, we clocked out 16 hours later at 12:30AM, still having to come back at 8:30AM to do it all over again.
So in the midst of this all-consuming, physically taxing job, my art career is finally starting to take off due to those 3 murals. And my job isn’t willing to give me time off to pursue these opportunities to further my artistic endeavors. So I quietly decide that it’s time for me to take the leap into full-time art. I work the remainder of that summer, begrudgingly going along with all the demands for overtime, and stashing away the earnings to provide myself a cushion for the impending departure. The last straw was being contacted for a televised interview by one of the local news stations and being told that I couldn’t even take a long lunch to do the interview.

“There’s too much work to be done and we don’t have time for that.”

I put my resignation in that week. I actually didn’t even complete the entire 2 weeks. I maybe made it 2 days before I just stopped showing up for work. Succeed or fail, I couldn’t give another minute to a job that so callously stood in the way of my goals outside of that place.
So there I was, a full-time artist in September 2019. Things were looking great… and then the pandemic happened. No need to get into all of that, we were all there. It worked out though. I’ve been a full-time artist for 5 years now. I’ve been places and done things that would’ve never been available to me had I played it safe and stayed at that hellhole of a job. The risk was worth it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is SillyGenius. Illustrator, muralist/street artist. Sometimes graphic designer. Sometimes photographer. A general jack of all artistic trades. I started out drawing, a kid watching cartoons and doodling. That quickly became a love for comic books, graffiti and music videos. By high school, I thought Jim Lee was Jesus with a Micron pen and working at Marvel Comics was my ultimate goal in life. It didn’t quite work out as I thought but wasn’t deterred. I caught the graphic design bug and taught myself to use Adobe. I put that knowledge to use doing freelance design, making flyers, album covers and designing tees for local fashion brands. Around 2010, Richmond took an interest in public art and started a mural festival. That early childhood love for graffiti presented a new opportunity for me to establish myself as an artist and I worked my way into the public art scene as the founding member of the collective All City Art Club. Now I draw upon all of my inspirations, from movies to anime to comics, as a street artist, using these cultural references to make work in service of underserved communities.

Outside of my public art, I still create works for sale. Drawings, paintings, and other merchandise. I still have fun with the art I make and I try to create things that I hope others will find the same enjoyment in.

I think the thing that sets me apart is my ability to bring together disparate ideas, concepts, and styles to communicate an idea. I am just as much a fan of Caravaggio as I am KAWS. I love Beat Street and Swan Lake. And I will pull from all these seemingly unrelated things to create something fun that everyone can understand.

I am the most proudest of creating All City Art Club and the impact its had on our community. Richmond is well known for its art & culture but very little of that art lives in Southside Richmond. Our decision to focus on Southside with our mural work brought attention to a long present issue of divestment for the area and I hope it continues to attract people of all ages to art as a practice and a tool of healing.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Honestly, by not giving our money to these giant faceless corporations and being more openly and intentionally supportive of artists & creatives. Art is so omnipresent and available, that society has taken it for granted. Every aspect of our lives is touched by a creative in some way. An artist designed the sheets we sleep on, the clothes we put on in the morning, the dishes we eat & drink from, and so on and so on. Just go down the list of things we engage with on a daily basis. Somewhere in there was a creative responsible for the creation for (insert thing). We have to get back to supporting these artists directly and create a sustainable ecosystem where they can lead fulfilling careers. There are far too many billion dollar corporations siphoning away the talents and ideas from our best & brightest creative minds, while they struggle to make ends meet.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Ultimately, I want create a space for creative freedom. Be it just a warehouse, a town, or even a state. I want to create a place that can’t be taken away by a greedy developer or a some rapacious finance guy turned creative director looking to exploit artists. A place where artists can maintain ownership of the things they create and be compensated for their work bringing these things to life. I have ideas of what this could look like but its admittedly a lofty goal. I think there’s strength in numbers though and it would seem there are many artists out there that have the same desire to be free of exploitation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://silly-genius.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sillygenius
• Other: https://allcityartclub.com

Image Credits

All images taken by my self.