We meet Marcus Blake, a artist who lives here in Little Haiti and now his philosophy is,
his art should be exactly where he is.
And he's making every day buildings come alive with color, like this one. He takes us on
a tour of some little pockets of the
neighborhood that don't always get a ton of exposure. Let's go meet the artist.
[Jumaane] Tell us a little bit about yourself.
[Marcus] Marcus Blake, I'm an artist in Miami. In many mediums. Right now I'm leaning more
into just you know physical paint at the
moment and I do street art also.
Alright, what's the difference between a street art and your paintings?
I never went in to it to be a street artist, you know, it's like just my experimentation's
exterior. I was always doing these styles
but interior, on canvas, and just decided to take it public.
[Lolo] Yeah now, and now driving around this neighborhood, your art is instantly recognizable
and it's everywhere.
I think that's weird you know, there's a lot of math in it to me. You know, certain things
can only go certain places. It's like
nature, nature has a particular code to build that palm tree, and it's gonna go up and it's
gonna split, split, split, split, you
know, it's like.
Fractals and.
Yeah it's the same thing. So it's like if you apply that into art, you know you're gonna
get these patterns.
[Jumaane] So as you're puttin your work up on the walls, the street art, the murals,
how do you think it affected the neighborhood?
Doing this as long as I've been doing it now, I now understand the power of art, color,
changing a gray wall to a wall full of
color, that somebody passes by every day. You know, who would walk past that gray wall
and just because it's full of something, it's
just like, I think that's my moment right now where they can walk by and then stop.
It might be just a whole bunch of swirls but to
stop and think about something else, that's powerful stuff. Or to give this ora of comfort,
it's like we can live in a black and
white world or we can live in a
Colorful world.
Yeah man, look at her shirt, look at look, this also I think the core of it, growin up
in Miami, you know like, it's literally in
the DNA to be colorful.
[Lolo] It's like one of the patterns of the neighborhood.
[Marcus] Right, it's literally, it's yeah it's part of the neighborhood. And they're
not my buildings in the first place, you know.
And you know, it's public street art but from an outside point of view where people who
live in the environment and they're like, oh
I saw your art, you know, and it's next to my house, you know, it's their art now. The
one on the end of the building down there
where there's like a little tax office, a botanical, and the barber shop, you know,
they're all done in technology style, but it
really feels like it belongs to the barber shop, it's red and white and like even with
the lines, how a barber shop would be. And
then the botanical has this, did a background in blue and it's all like very tropical and
now it's like, you know, it's theirs.
So we're really excited to be able to share some of your work that we see all the time
Yeah.
With everybody else.
Aight, let's rock brother.
Yup.
[Marcus] With things like this, like this gate
[Jumaane] So what could you do to it?
[Marcus] Just color it, I mean like my gate. If my gate needs a bar,
Alright
It's colored. I got a lot like this on this building man, like or,
[Lolo] This one on the corner here?
[Marcus] Just the backside there.
[Lolo] You know what it's gonna be or what it is?
[Marcus] No, she's just sittin on it. She doesn't even know what it's gonna be.
[Lolo] Just waiting to see if she wants to sell it or not kinda thing?
She some, has started construction, I think she got into some city things and they tagged
it up and just, it's too much.
So this is the one you were talking about?
Yeah, this is one of them. Yeah, the barber shop, the tax, and the botanical. I kinda
think this blues here added this blue. But
that's how I get in machine mode and I come and recreate the whole thing. It feels, you
know, like Little Haiti. Or Haitian
celebration, you know like the pinks and the dark blue and the same, that was the one I
was talkin about. It looks, it's really the
Haitian flag. Just drive by, it's the feeling of like, it needs something.
[Lolo] Yeah definitely.
[Marcus] I just, I show up Sunday morning and I, I think it took me two days to bang
it out.
Here's an important question. What's your favorite kind of tape, for Tapenology?
So when I first started it was, I started with this green concrete tape and it was like,
I was like, oh it's good, and it was too
good.
Oh it was sticky?
My god, it was ripping everything off. So I went to a place, it's just like regular
masking tape.
[Jumaane] Do you spray or use a brush?
[Marcus] Spray. I mean there's different methods, you know but at this point just reverse so
you can put the colors down first and
start taping, let the math tell me what's gonna happen. To be out here, in my hoodie,
sittin on a sidewall, covered in dirt and mess
and paint and then be inconspicuous like, just be in an environment of, to listen, to
be here, just to sit in front of her botanical
and see the flow of what really happens in the environment. I like that part too, you
know like, just to be invisible. Visibly
invisible. So this, this might be the one that I would say like started all of it, like,
this wall taught me a lot. This was like
late December, I think 2015, my son was gonna be born and every single day I was here and
I would work like this, like put the tape
down and, I had literally no fingertips, no fingertips, I had massive balls of tape but
you know, dedication to keep going, you have
to finish it. I think it's broken into three sections, and each section is completely symmetrical
to the next section, so this whole
wall is like one image is one image, is
Really?
Yeah, man.
Do you ever use a tape measure?
No.
No, that's amazing.
You don't have a tape measure makin this straight line?
As I taped it, every night I would leave it, every day and I was like please don't take
off my tape. If it rained I was patting down
keepin it dry and there's days that it rained, you know, and it's all crumbled up and you
know, you gotta replace certain pieces. It
taught me a lot. This one wall taught me so much, man. Patience, dedication. Feels cold
at winter. We're all here on this planet to
be here, but it's how do you pass the time being here? So, you know, I pass my time by
creating.
Besides driving around the streets of Little Haiti, where online can people find your art?
My work is documented on Instagram at M D O T B L A K E, M dot Blake, for now.
M dot Blake.
Yeah, but, yeah M dot Blake is where you find me.