 And it is now my great honor and my great pleasure to introduce you to your 22nd annual Effie Lee Morris Lecture special guest speaker, Mr. Shane W. Evans. Someone asked me if I'm a musician and I'm like, I guess, because everybody is a musician in my mind and everybody is an artist in my mind. But then everyone is always like, I can't do this thing. You know, I'm like, no, I can't do that. I'm like, terrible at drawing lines. I'm like, well, you just get a ruler and you can draw a line. There's no, there's no like mystery around that experience. But to just create is really just to kind of let go in a way you just got to kind of go there. You know, it's like whatever you're feeling on that day, I inspire you or like I say to you, just do something. All right, even if it's a scribble, I don't often draw straight lines. Just get it out. That's a really good way of clearing your mind, your field of energy perhaps. And especially like what we were talking about with everything going on. It's just very, it's vital almost to make sure you get it out. So I'm just starting, starting with that thought. Can you, can you see this up there? Can you read this? Hello to you all as well. Thank you so much. Is there, can you think of another way of saying this in a different language? Perhaps. Hola, Niha, I heard. Bonjour, I heard, yes. What was what? There's always one I had to have. What is it, where? Where? I see there's always one that I haven't learned before. Say it again. Serbian, oh, see? That's new for me. Anybody else? What? Wait, what is this? Mahaba. Arabic, that's a good one. Rolls off nice. What is it? That's a beautiful one. Where is that one from? Lovely. Anyone else? No spots here. You can just say it. It could just feel natural. One last one, come on. Hit me. Konnichiwa is a good one. From the back. How about from the hand, how would you do this with your hand? These days, this even change. I'm careful with my hands. Cause sometimes I'll be like this, but this means piss off in another language. It does. So you know, you might need to turn it some places but maybe with your hands, you might throw up a fist. I don't know. Like throw up the peace sign. Wave your hand. I'm not sure you might bow. Like there's so many different ways to express this idea. It's so simple it seems, but it could be very complex, but it also can open up doors. 41 days at a time. I'm going to talk about a variation. Since I'm talking about the idea of dreams, I want to make sure I get through these slides the best I can. I do this head for seven years, I had kept this journal called the 41st Day. It actually was based on a song lyric. For 41 days I would set an intention, seven days in between, and then I would go again. And this is just an example. I did 41 days of going out into my community and interviewing 41 people that, some of them I knew prior, but the questions gave me a different perspective. And I thought interestingly that it would be more challenging to go to people that I didn't know, but I felt that the challenge actually was to go to people with questions like who are you to the people that you love the most? It's interesting that you don't ask them these types of questions. So the 41 days kind of led into this other idea that I'm currently working on called MM2000, which even again talking about our current state of being in 2000 that was the change of a century and we're at the beginning of it right now. And I remember learning in the 19th century all these shifts and changes were happening, but we don't really talk about it that way. So we're 18 years into this new experience. If you have an idea or a dream and we'll talk about that, I think it's important to like cover it from all aspects. Maybe there's an aspect of it where you might wanna raise some awareness, you might wanna raise some capital perhaps. So I started this idea of MM2000 as a musical inspired by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the idea, there's this photograph of them shaking hands, it always intrigued me as a young person how that moment took place and then I would learn about them and it felt like they were in opposition all the time whenever I would learn about them. But I didn't feel that way personally so that shaking of the hand piece and then these angels and I started to draw these portraits of them and that's a part of the idea of a musical. So on the side, so to speak, I think you should always have a side project going. You should, you should have like work and then you gotta have a side project. Even if you spend like 10 minutes on the side project, gotta get the side projects going. And then it turns into this like incredible, like at first the side project is like, oh, you're just working on it little by little. Then I thought I was gonna do only a hundred and then I committed to keep going. So I'm at like 270 of these portraits and what's beautiful about them is some of them are just humans that I've come across. Some of them are humans that I've been inspired by over the years. This is my grandmother who I did not get the honor to meet but I get to honor her through this artwork. This is me and J.Lo that particular moment was very nice for me. Just all these beautiful people that have really affected and inspired all of our lives and the idea of like there's a song in the musical called Black Angels. It's not about like this physical color on the outside that someone has named us as. It's more of like the whole person, you know? So that's just an idea. That's the side project. This is, I'm gonna talk about the face because I think if you have a parent or a grandparent or auntie or uncle who has ever told you to like straighten your face out, like get your face, yes. Someone can relate. These questions about what the face says is very important. Like what does the face tell us? And I'm gonna talk about those too. This is another project that I've been working on about the face. Like the human face is so complex. There's all these muscles and whatnot in there. You know, yeah, you can smile and frown but what other expressions can you make with the human face? Who are we? As it relates to dreams, I think we are the ultimate dreamers. You know, I'm sure. I see my dogs actually when they're asleep and they're chasing stuff. So I know that they have dreams. And I think as humans we have these dreams that can manifest, woman-affest, into these incredible experiences. So we're like in so many ways we are the ultimate dreamers. And I've been inspired by so many dreamers. My family, you know, through King's work really, through other illustrators is really even the reason why I create. What is your story? It's our connection in so many ways we are on this human journey together. And the people that you meet and the people that you pass in the street, you'd be surprised the connections if you just reached out to somebody and took a little time and started to ask who they were. You'd be surprised that there would be a connection to you somehow and somewhere. So, and then, you know, I like to include these ideas, these simple basic ideas that are in many ways the basics of what it is that I do as an illustrator. I take these shapes and I stack them, I color them, I twist them, I blend them, you know, and then you kind of come to like a full spectrum of what these basic ideas can do, that they can change the perception of something. So I'm very aware of that and I think that all of us who create are aware of that. And also in the combination of the children's books, and I get approached a lot, which is amazing to me. Every time I share, oh, this is what I do, someone has an idea, invariably, they're like, I've been working on this children's book for a while. I'm like, yeah? And then we kind of get into the breakdown and everyone is at a different stage of that too, always fine. It could be that you're in the very beginning thought process, it could be something that's been on your mind forever. And then again, back to the idea of like what it takes to get it done. I say these basic shapes, colors, words, these love, respect, honor, these kind of shape the premise of what it is to put a children's book together. I'm trying to like boil it down to its essence really. Of course, there's like a lot more involved in the whole process, but at base, at core, this is kind of where it starts. Oh, the dream. This character, which I, when I'm signing books, usually I sign this character is the dream character. It's based on a book called Olu's Dream. And so I have a studio in Kansas City that I opened some years back. And really I did, I took an old, I'm gonna walk through this space, I'll show a photograph. The idea of a dream has set me kind of into a pace, into a motion, where for a number of years I was going back to what I call the motherland. All these different places I had gone to, Lesotho, which is a small country inside of South Africa. And like spreading or moving your dream and your idea around is really intriguing, because you can go from Kansas City to Lesotho, literally overnight, and through inspiration and through things that I've already been touched by, like the Dr. Seusses and the Jack Ezra Keats and the pink, these who have actually spoken on this stage, I think, for this particular event. It shows you that you really can utilize your dream in a way and expand it. The reason people are asking me why I was in Kansas City, Hallmark greeting cards is built there and established. It's over a hundred years old, this company, amazingly. Talking about sentiments of all things, how much you love your father or happy birthday and all the variations of how and the way that you can shape these very simple ideas brought me out to Kansas City. So it was an incredible, I call it an extended learning after college that I went to that place. Then while I was there, I call it almost like Hallmark University, while I was there, I started to extend my work. For all the young people, you got all these projects to do and a lot of times you'll be like, why am I doing all this? You got homework, you got tests coming up, you got practices all the time. It seems to all converge at some point, you know that if you can expand, keep expanding your dialogue that it will find a place. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden I started to find my place and my voice inside the world of publishing. I did a book with Shaquille O'Neal, these are the first. This book right here, Shack and the Beanstalk, another very tall tales. Oseola memories of a sharecropper's daughter. This woman was at the time, she was in her late to mid-90s and Alan Governor was sharing her story. And then down the winding road, one, two, three. Like all at the same time, I started that process and then it just kind of just grew from there. And there was also a point where I just, I just was not saying no to anything either, which is kind of a unique experience. But Olu is based, that drawing is based on this book, Olu's Dream, which is actually my first written and illustrated piece. And I have a family member, my brother, I call him my brother, his name is Olu. So our lives parallel are experiences in some ways. So fortunately I get to tell the story of my life and the life of other family members in these works. Yet somehow it relates, I would have it relate to other people's lives as well. So 10 years it took me to put this work together called Olu's Dream. For whatever reason, you know, projects sometimes they could take six months, this one took 10 years unbelievably and working of course on other projects at the same time. And I'm jumping into this work process too, which is very important. I think the finished product is something, but there's something about the process that's important and looking at how it's done from the literal, like, you know, I keep it very simple. I just sketch with a pen so I don't mess around and try to erase so much that the idea of a mistake is foreign to this idea because you're just like, even all these scribbles behind the neck, that's not really a mistake. I just, you know, I'm feeling in energy. Sometimes I can look at it that way. But the idea of like forming this story came through this model of, you know, sketching in what some people call thumbnails. These are probably really tiny drawings. But the basic premise, Olu does not wanna go to sleep. Dad's got this commentary about it. Mom and dad, they're like, yo, you have to go to sleep. The child's like, no way. And eventually Olu falls asleep, wakes up in a dream. There's a nightmare, runs out of the nightmare page into the dream part where there's food. You had these dreams where like switches every five seconds and it's not even time. It's just switching while you're in it. So you get into this refrigerator, favorite food, eats and eats and eats until belly is so big, busts through the floor, lands on a whale. Right? And then there's other action adventures and things that happen. But then it's time to go out into the day. And if you've ever had one of those dreams where you're like holding on to something, it could be some money or some food. And you swear that when you like, you even know you're asleep and you're gonna wake up and like, this is gonna be with me when I come back. And it's not. So then you're like, you're feeling like this face instead, where you prior to going to sleep were fussing about doing it. Now you're fussing that you wanna go back into sleep. And dad is like, well, let me inspire you and tell you that that feeling in your heart you can take outside and use it when you play every day. So don't get discouraged. I mean, I'm not saying that one should be daydreaming all the time, but you should hold on to that idea throughout the day. It'll truly like help you get through it in some instances. So this building, and I think this is where community comes in. And I've been out in the bay, traveling out this way for a while and I've watched this community. And I've again, watched this community in Kansas City. I was fortunate to come across this building. And I did, I just took this wall and I did something that I thought was very regular. I skim-coated it with some concrete and we painted it very simple. And then one day I started to recognize that all these people started coming to the side of the building. I'd be like working or something, I'd come out. What are they doing? And it took me a couple months before finally just the rhythm worked out or I was outside in the back. I was like, what's going on? What are you talking? What is everybody doing here? And they were like, oh, you don't know? Like this is claim. They claimed it as that Casey Starwall. So people were just hashtagging and coming and filming on the side of this building. And a community that I didn't, yeah, it would have been challenging to convince certain members of certain other parts of community to come to this area as perceived as like not the best area. Although for me, it was like the best thing ever. So our perception of what we were creating there because there's other beautiful community members right there as a church right across the street that feeds people and there's people to live around the corner. So I think just something as simple as this wall seemed to kind of open up a dialogue around possibility in some ways. Oh, and then the funny thing is like literally within, I don't know if I could throw a stone as far as this, but it's like maybe about two blocks down from where my studio is, is where Disney started his quest of creation. So this right here is the Laughagram Studio. So I'm on 31st, 7-Eleven. He was at 11-27. So you just never know like who, I'm sure he stepped into my building because I went down to this building. There's Olu. I started doing these sketches every day. And I call them Oluisms. So he goes, this is my, I am going to change the world through art face. It's a sentence structure. It's like a smiling face, but it's a little bit more intense. We might need a bigger crayon. This is the voice of reason and the voice of jokestrism and all this other stuff that Brindle is the sidekick character. This is my brother Olu and this is his lovely wife, Misty Copeland, the dancer. And so Olu kicked off the whole Olu's dream thing and the Oluisms. And so then I got really inspired because I kept hearing from people how short Black History Month was and that there wasn't enough material, things like that. So I think if you feel that way about something, you gotta do something about it. So I started this series called Oluisms and then the Black History Series. And if you go onto the website, it's Oluisms.com. There's four series of 28 days in it. So this is the, I have a dream face. This is my, I will help thousands to freedom face, the Harriet Tubman face. Instead of like Superman and Spider-Man, which I really enjoy, I wanted to set Olu on this path of chasing heroes and heroes that exist and have existed. This is my, I have discovered 300 uses for this peanut, including peanut butter face. And imagine like if you were to just think about your face expressing how you feel on the inside a little bit more intricate. This is my, the modern way to fly face, the Alvin Ailey face, the Maya Angelou face. And boy or whether boy or girl, man or woman, I think you can have these characters that you exemplify or, you know, create in characterization, you know, from your perspective, you know, that's what the idea is. The second, I kind of kept going with the series and I was, this is my, I will tame the most ferocious beast face. I opened the idea to everyone. So if you want to be an animal trainer, this is the face you're going to need to, you know, start working on. If you want to be an architect, you know, you got to start working on your face. Like what avenues and ideas do you need to incorporate into your experience to like make that face? Like, yeah, I know how to create an angle. I know how to make love as a lead. Like imagine this is a job. This is my, I will pray to love face, the love leader. Imagine that it's just a job. It's like, not in a mundane way. You know, it's like something happened to this young man who was from the Cosby show. He got outed and I don't know if you saw this. He's like working at Trader Joe's. But he was on this hit show many years back. But all of some people make the assumption that your life is always revolving around that one fraction in time. No, you're always changing and evolving. I took it to the last, the last set of 28. I kind of went into a series of imagination and history study that I just hadn't tapped into myself going into the pharaohs and the kings and the queens of Africa and all the diaspora of the world. Like we all come from this place in a way. Whether you think it or not or know it or not, like where your ancestors were directed, we come from that land mass. So I wanted to take on the responsibility for myself actually to like expand the dialogue of where this character could exist. Yes, the African experience, the African American experience, but beyond. And then this is where the mystisms, like the characters all kind of tie in and connect with one another. So this color of life series through Misty, this is my life is about dance and dance is about life, face and grace and beauty and elegance and poise and charm and shine and on and on and on. So her sidekick is Copeland Bear. And the whole series is just like kind of poking fun a little bit at how challenging it is to be a dancer in many ways. I've watched from the sidelines, this incredible dancer formulate her body into this craft in a way that allowed her to see the entire globe. And this idea that this character is just changing colors as part of that idea. This is my power, break the chains that bind face. Go Super Olu, don't let anything hold you back, not even those paper chain links. It's amazing that certain things can hold us back that are not very easily or that are actually easy to expand and break around. This is the, and I'm jumping through all these different places, but this is getting into a little bit of the books. Tay and I have been, I say, blessed to be involved in working on these projects. And I kicked off the, we had done Chocolate Me when we were in college of all places here in this poem. And I held on to the idea for so long and then when I was in the world of publishing I just made the suggestion really, I was like, why don't we take this and see if we can get it published. It took a little while actually, but eventually we locked it in. So this right here, I love you more than is coming out in, this is September. It's coming out in a couple weeks. So it's exciting to see the third project unfold. These are some other great projects that I've had the opportunity. I work with Charles Smith, who's an incredible writer on this Blackjack book. This book right here is really one of my favorites in so many ways. One of the ways is I had not known about Clementine Hunter. And she started painting when she was 50, you know? She, for whatever reason, she had this passion and she made the decision she was gonna get her hands on some material. So I'd say it's never too late. She lived to be a hundred, you know? So think about that. The idea of like being able to pick up material. And then at the time, you know, she would have these gallery shows and wasn't able to enter into that, at that time was not able to enter into the front door for her own exhibit. This book, this Coretta Scott King winning book, which kind of floored me when it happened. It really does. When you win something that you've been seeking, I've been looking at that emblem on books for all my days since I was a kid. So to see it put on this project was really an honor. And then for me in some ways, it went from underground to we march. It was this jump from one huge experience, but in a way it is the continuation, the continuation of the idea of what it is to be free and what it is to press forward towards freedom. This also is a book that I'm really happy with. Holly Robinson Pete, Ryan Pete, at the time she was around 13, has a twin brother with autism. And I hadn't really known too much about autism. And I'm expressing how like the arts can give you an opportunity to learn about things that you didn't formally know about. In a way that truly inspires, this is the book that was granted the NAACP Image Award, which is another incredible, just I mean, I say it like this for a book. I was on the same stage as Prince that night. So saying something about the power of literacy, Tay, he gets mad when I show this picture. I don't know why, because it's real. But this is us in our former little people lives, which are incredible in terms of how it is that we got to be where we are today. Oh, I think this is gonna play something. This is not a celebrity book. This is two friends coming together to tell a story of their childhood. This is a real, real life story. We did this 21-minute choclementary that I didn't even know it was happening. I was just whenever we would go someplace, I would always be filming. And a couple times I had some people help film as well. Time, I know what the time frame is. This is supposed to conclude at seven, yes? I don't know what the time I'm gonna be. Seven, because it's almost seven. So I wanna make sure, what's the time, who runs this? Yes? I'm gonna take these few minutes and we can get through this. It's not that many slides. I wanna run through this chocolate me tale. This is really the true life story of Tay's experience. There was a moment in his life where he felt, I don't know, he felt outside of the group maybe. And so when I took the poem, I had the poem from college and the context that I had it in was very different. But I felt that it was something that impacted me as a person. And I thought that it could impact other people as well. No matter about color or race, that wasn't really our objective. Although we were talking about it from the perspective, but we all know chocolate is variant. It's not just about the light brown of milk chocolate. It comes in all. And children get it when I ask these questions. And I guess why chocolate is, blueberry chocolate is everything. So then once you put it in a different context, in some ways, I mean, I talked to an editor about this one time, the idea of black and white and that description of us as humanity. It's not very good, a description. So if you're gonna say that I'm chocolate me, what flavored chocolate are you feeling today? Not everybody loves chocolate. My upset people's stomach, but for the most part we all enjoy it. And so there's something about that moment. Even in this image, it's like this is the image of the mother. Speaking to the child and lifting that spirit up. If you're a mother or a parent or a father, somebody who's around children, you gotta lift them up sometimes. You don't know what they're going through. So that idea makes me, that was the jump. Us as parents, in some ways, expressing and experiencing what it is to have. In some ways, I don't care what. If the two people look exactly alike, there's still a huge mix somewhere. There's a cultural mix. But then when we have these more obvious things, the children have to go out into the world and constantly are explaining. This is who I am, who I am. They don't have to. And I think in some ways, this is why we put this book together. And this Mike character runs this show in this book and all the different blended experiences that are happening all over and around us. The idea of like, you can't touch me just because you think that you can. That moment when we put that out there in the world. And these are tools for parents in so many ways to help them get forward. So I'm jumping to this kind of like, almost towards the end here. But this series that Tay and I have been able to put together has expanded into the, I Love You More Than Book. And then worked its way to this, that fourth book is gonna come soon. Alright, let's see. I think this is it. If I can get this last piece of music in, this would be awesome. And then this was such a great group in terms of musicality. That I just want to utilize the group again. You want to stay awake and have big fun. Trust me when I say you'll have a good time tonight. And you might come across some monsters in there, but don't get excited. You just grab your friend bear and no one's gonna tell you just what to dream because you set the pace for the race. That part. Something to say. I feel like we should put a poet on the stage. I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot except that I am. I feel like someone over there might want to just, you could just say anything. Anyone is, it could be any part of the room. It's an extra mic right here. Anybody on this side of the room? You can even just come up and say my name. Your name, not my name. Too scared. This is the opportunity. See they're willing to. If you're willing in your heart, you did it. Good. Thank you so much.