02/25/2022
Black History In The Making: A Near Future #2: Tara
Tara S. grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, downtown in an Asian/Black lower-middle-class household. She recounted many tough memories of her childhood: contending with unstable family life. Tara struggled with academics all her life, however, she was gifted with keen observation which she noticed when she learned how to draw and create her own toys from her mother who did so for her as a child. Art was a refuge from Tara's family life and isolation due to her shyness. It was her source of happiness and soon in school, she was known as the class artist.
As she got older, Tara longed for friends who shared her love of art, and with two friends from a Jamaican cosplay group she helped run, she created the JA Art Community. It was here that she made an online space for Jamaican artists of all kinds to gather, interact and participate in weekly art challenges, in creating their own art albums, and in, the still popular, Original Character Tournament ( aka OCT, a comic book fighting contest where members vote for the winner.)
Years after the group's creation, Tara moved to New York City where she got her Associate's Degree in Art & Design and now works as a freelance illustrator and concept artist. She dreams of opening a physical location for the JA Art Community to provide young at-risk artists a safe place to go and create, away from the dangers of lower-class neighborhoods like that one she grew up in. She also wishes to open an animal shelter with her art earnings as an outlet for her love of animals and her other childhood dream of being a vet.
In this illustration of Tara in the near future, I wished to portray her gentle kindness and willingness to fight for a family that she has created with her own hands. With her strength, even when attacked with deceptions of her senses and the outside world, she will be able to accomplish her goals with help from the very artists she provided a home.
"If you're going to make a statement, make it with conviction. To have conviction in being vulnerable is what makes art beautiful"
(Tara S. 2022)
