- Mississippi born and Memphis trained, Michael Roy is a street artist and muralist known as Birdcap.

His career has spanned continents, but his work is a love letter to the region he calls home and a challenge to its problems.

I'm Chris McCoy, and this is A Conversation with Birdcap.

[chill music] So we are here in Crosstown Arts amidst "Iliumpta", the blockbuster new show by Michael Roy who's sitting next to me.

Michael, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

- Yeah, I appreciate y'all having me.

- So, where are you from?

- From Escatawpa, Mississippi.

- And why and how did you become an artist?

- I don't know.

[Chris laughs] - Good answer.

[claps] - There's a Pablo Picasso quote that says, "Everyone starts as an artist, and then the promise is to keep being one."

So I don't think I came up with a more clever idea in high school.

And so it ended up being a lifelong career.

- So you went to a performing arts or a visual arts high school?

- Yeah, it was called the Mississippi School of Arts.

It was actually the first year it was opened, and so everyone who applied got in.

So that's how I got in.

[Chris laughs] - And then MCA after that, right?

- Memphis College of Arts, yes, sir.

- Yeah, how was your experience there?

- It was great.

You know, coming from Escatawpa, Memphis was a huge city to me.

So it felt like I had like made it out of the country.

It was an exciting time, met a lot of lifelong friends there.

- So I think a lot of people, you know, when I introduced you, I introduced you as a street artist, right?

I mean, I guess you got your start that way, right?

- Absolutely, I started, you know, I was working in high school and college, but I think I got a voice through street art.

I started working as an illustrator for a couple magazines when I was working in South Korea.

And I was working on such fast deadlines that I was starting to like si mplify my illustration style.

And I noticed that if I did it consciously, it would kind of look cohesive.

And so, around that time I found graffiti in Seoul and started meeting those artists, and that's kind of where Birdcap started.

- I think when a lot of people hear street art, they think, you know, like graffiti and crime and that kind of thing.

- Right.

- Actually, it's been a huge source of new talent and new styles for a long time now for the serious art world or for the... - Yeah, I think so.

I mean, there's a lot of illegal work.

It's indebted to illegal work.

I think street art came as a term of respect originally in trying to designate people who did figurative or more like abstract work without wanting to like step on the toes of the people who came before who are the le tter and calligraphy artists.

But, yeah, it's indebted to illegal work, I think.

Street art is so democratizing for people who don't get to go to art schools, who don't feel like they're allowed in certain spaces and galleries.

So, I think it's been a huge creative boom, and now it's a massive industry so.

- Mm-hmm, I people who know your work, and so you're definitely one of the better known artists in Memphis because you do a lot of murals, right?

Can you tell me how you got into murals?

- It goes back to South Korea.

I was hanging.

I was living in Seoul working as an illustrator and I kept seeing these fantastic like figurative pieces of graffiti all around town.

Guph Smells Good was a name, JFlo, Artime Joe, but there was this woman named JunkHouse who was doing this incredible work, and I messaged her on Facebook at the time in like my most formal Korean.

She responded back in perfect English, invited me for soup, and taught me how to spray paint.

- Well, but that was sort of like an... Was that an introduction to street art, or was that an introduction to like murals, or what's the difference, I guess?

- Both, I mean, it's all semantics.

I think murals, when you hear that it's a paid wall.

Street art, it can be sort of designated as both, but usually it's illegal.

All these words have become like misused and overused to the point they have no meaning now though, so.

- Yeah.

[Chris chuckles] So, where did the name Birdcap come from?

- I've told so many half truths about that.

- Well, tell another one now.

- It came from a series of paintings I did in college where in the painting a man's trying to describe art to a bird, and by the end, he loses his own identity and kind of becomes this abstracted bird, and I called that series "Birdcaps".

And then the first time I was painting in Korea, I was painting with JunkHouse, and we went to sign it and I had no name.

And her name was JunkHouse, and that word popped in.

I was like that kind of matches JunkHouse's name.

And I wanted something that paid homage to her as the person who kind of brought me into the scene.

So that kind of became my name, but it didn't really have any strong meaning.

It became advantageous, though, 'cause social media didn't have people writing Birdcap.

So it was an open field in that way.

- Yeah, so if you Google Birdcap, you get you.

- It was like an empty glass I could fill.

- Yeah, and so when you collaborate with another artist on a mural, for example, because most people would think, you know, painting like this is a very solitary pursuit, you know, can you tell me, can you walk me through the process of collaborating with another artist like that?

- Yeah, I mean, to me murals are receipts to social interactions.

Like there's very few murals I've ever done where to the left and right of me hasn't been other murals actively going on.

So it's an extremely social lifestyle.

Painting with people is great because you get to talk in a way that you don't usually get to talk.

It's a visual language, and it's a call and response.

And spray paint's so quick that you can override and enhance and erase.

And so you just keep modulating until you're happy with the form.

You also get to, you know, talk narratives out together that you wouldn't arrive at by yourself.

I prefer painting with people than painting alone, for sure.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Do you sit down into like here's the plan that we're gonna do?

Do you do sketches, or do you like talk about general philosophy and then let it fly?

- It depends on the artist.

I usually try to like mirror the general vibe that the other artist has.

Some people are very tight and like to have a really rendered sketch, and we'll go back and forth online for a while before they even come.

And someone like Rich, he refuses to do sketches, so it's all freestyle, and he doesn't really freestyle wi thout a few beers in him.

So it's just kind of like playing jazz as much as you can and fitting in and trying to make it work together.

- So you've shown your work around the world, you've created murals around the world, and, you know, what do people say?

What are their response when a kid from Mississippi and Memphis comes to paint walls in their city?

What's the response to you?

[Birdcap laughs] - What is the response to me?

I think in general, I've been surprised by how many people think I have a cowboy hat and ride an alligator.

[Chris laughs] Like it's a lot more general than I thought it would be.

- You know, you would be cooler if you rode an alligator.

- Absolutely.

[Chris laughs] But they usually ask me if it's like, "Can you get there from New York by train?"

And I was like, "Not really."

And they're like, "Okay, well we have no idea where it's at," but the farther I am, the wider the berth I give my birthplace.

So when I was in Japan, I would just say New Orleans, and they'd be like, "Oh, Andrew Jackson."

I was like, "Okay."

- Oh yeah.

- That's a relationship.

But, yeah, everyone has been super kind.

I don't think people usually know where we're at, but I always try to invite the artists back.

That's part of why I did The Moonpie Project is to repay the kindness of people I travel with.

So like when I met Kenji, he's from Malaysia, he came to Memphis and painted with me over in Cooper-Young, and the mural outside is with RichT from Bristol, England.

And we've had Taj from Jamaica come through.

And so usually people don't know where I'm from, but I try really hard to get 'em to come visit.

- So when did you come back to Memphis?

- I don't know, [both laugh] about 10 years ago.

- 10 years ago?

- Yeah.

- How did you get into the sort of the Memphis thing?

Was there somebody that helped you bring you back in?

- Yeah, I came back to Memphis just because I knew a few people, and then within a week of being here, an artist named Nosey42 reached out, and we went and painted some abandoned buildings out in Orange Mound.

And he kind of was the big connector for me for the graffiti scene here and helped pave the way to me being comfortable in town.

- And so, yeah, I think a lot of people have seen your pieces.

We are here in Crosstown Arts, like I said, and there's a big mural in the main atrium that... Well, you said this was the second one of those that you've painted.

- Right.

- So I think, you know, if nothing else, if you've been to Crosstown Concourse, you've probably seen Michael Roy's work, you know, in a big way, but this show is the first solo gallery show you've had in Memphis, right?

- It is, yeah.

- Well, what took you so long?

- I was afraid of throwing a birthday party for myself that no one was going to attend.

[Chris laughs] And there were the other factors.

It's expensive to build a solo show.

And for the most part, a lot of my income, my commissions come from outta town.

And so I didn't want to host a big show and put that weight all on Memphians to like support and buy the work.

Probably never would've done it, but Crosstown is just such a good collaboration, and space felt right.

And they don't take a cut.

They're like a nonprofit, so just felt like the time was right to try it out.

- But you'd had solo shows in other cities, right?

- Chicago a few times and LA.

- Can you tell us about this body of work?

- This body of work is a retelling of Homer's "Iliad" kind of taking place in the southernmost bayous of Mississippi where I grew up, and it all started as a way of like kind of comparing heroic slash toxic masculinity and the people I grew up with and the heroes of ancient Greece.

- Well, I mean, where did you see the connection there?

- Just how misplaced the heroism was.

So much of it was like it was the idea that something clever was not as brave.

So like if there was problem coming, to withstand the problem was somehow more heroic than to avoid it altogether.

And it reminded me of like growing up with hurricane parties where like, of course, we weren't gonna leave the coast.

We were going to get drunk, and that was somehow the right thing to do, and misplaced pride in it, I think.

But also, I love the characters in Troy, and I love the characters in my childhood.

So like these complicated, well-meaning, but ultimately like sort of like lost men had a connection with me and myself, for sure.

- Well, you seem to have branched out in this show into, you know, other media besides just painting, you know, obviously you know, but one of those is mosaics, which, you know, talk about a classical influence.

I mean, it doesn't get more classical than that, right?

- I think I'm a Luddite at heart.

So when like AI came out, I had a really like bad reaction to it, and I was like, "I'm gonna do something even older and more like caveman."

So I went with mosaics.

I liked it because you don't have to put signifiers into the imagery to make it feel old or to get to the point of it being like a relationship to Greece.

So it just opened up new avenues.

It was also a fun way to change it up 'cause if you paint every day, painting becomes work.

And then if you do mosaics every day, mosaics become work.

But if you have a few different tables in your studio, it keeps it alive, makes it feel fun.

- Well, one thing that I love about your work and I've always loved about your work is that you seem to be able to evoke such deep and complex emotions with just a few lines.

Your faces, when you make a face, you know they're not complex compared to some, you know, more realistic artists, but I always feel what your character is supposed to feel in that moment when like I look at your pieces and I know exactly how I'm supposed to feel about it, you know?

And I think there's a lot of artists can't do that.

I mean, how did you end up in that space, I mean?

- I don't know if I'm successful at that or not.

I appreciate that.

[Chris laughs] I think in general, my style was based on this idea behind Bruegel's "Icarus" where like I like the idea of something really dramatic happening.

The content's dramatic, but then like life is going on.

So I like the idea of this like aesthetic that's very friendly and colorful and welcoming.

And then because of that, you can talk about kind of overly dramatic things in the work without it being to o hard hitting over the head.

So, that's kind of the basis for this.

So much of my work is diary-based, and some of it's political, and a lot of it's dramatic, but hopefully the work feels welcoming because of the aesthetic.

- It seems like mosaics then would be a natural for you because you don't need a lot of detail.

- Right.

I think the one good thing about having a style that's pretty honed in at a certain point is you can change mediums, and that can be the place for experimentation because you kind of know which direction you're going with your drawing.

- And speaking of new mediums and experimentation, you got a blow-up.

[laughs] - An inflatable.

- What's the technical, an inflatable figure?

- Blow-up sounds more personal.

- Yeah, it's taller than I am.

I mean, it's like eight feet tall or something like that.

- Ten feet tall.

- Yeah, ten feet tall?

Yeah.

[laughs] I mean, so that's not something a you see every day, you know, in an art gallery.

And, you know, I look at that and I'm like, "How did that get made?"

How did you make that?

- I got really lucky.

I was at a mural festival in Pompeii, Italy, and I met this artist named Kenji Chai, and we were talking about the show.

And he brought up that he had a friend in China who could make large scale inflatables.

So he gave me her number, and she was a real dream to work with and had it sent in time.

And so, it became kind of like the keystone for the show to work around.

- And the name of that piece is the "Suicide of Ajax", right?

- Yep.

- And it's a, you know, giant pretty friendly looking figure with a giant sword stuck through its belly.

Why did you pick that specific moment from "The Iliad"?

- So much of the show revolves around the failing of like what we think it means to be a hero, and Ajax hit home where he couldn't bear his own embarrassment, his shame.

And I've lost a lot of people to suicide.

I have people who've struggled with that thought, and some of it is based in this like masculinity that doesn't allow you to like admit you're wrong and like kind of accepts hard times.

So I wanted that to be a big piece for the show, and I wanted that to kind of set the mood where it's like it's upbeat, it's colorful, it's inviting, but hopefully there's underscores of real tragedy and like a hopelessness with like the way being a male is in the South right now.

- Mm-hmm, yeah, well, I mean I think you mentioned that earlier is that there's this tension between, you know, these cartoonish, pardon me for using that term, but cartoonish figures that you do and like the actual emotion that they're, you know, expressing.

And there's a one piece that you mentioned to me earlier, which three figures in a boat that is about the beginning of the war.

- Right.

- Right.

Can you tell me about that?

- Yeah, so there's a dove of peace in the show twice, and one is the beginning of the war and it's shot by Achilles in this like Evinrude Outboard Motor Alumacraft.

And then it- - Yeah, it looks like a bass boat to me, just... - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then it returns when Achilles dies in the first painting over here.

But yeah, I just wanted to capstone the show with these actions take peace away from something that could be peaceful.

- Sort of the irreversibility of the first insult in a war kind of.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, like it's gotta play out until it plays out, you know, - Right.

- At that point.

I think the other big striking...

I mean, honestly everything is striking in here, and we'll get to that later, but you have a big, I guess it's a vinyl or plastic sculpture.

What is that made of?

- It's made of Aqua-Resin, so kind of like fiberglass.

- Oh, okay.

And what's the name of that piece?

- It is "The Memorial for Achilles".

- And I mean, I don't know, it looks like it could be goofy fun, but then also the actual expression on the face is not goofy fun, is it?

[laughs] - Well, yeah, he had an option to live a long life with a happy family, and he'd rather be famous.

So I wanted him to not look super jazzed about his decision afterwards.

- Yeah.

[both laugh] - So, is this the first time that you have done pieces based on classical mythology?

- No, I've based a lot of work in Greek myths throughout my career.

- What's attractive to you about that?

- I just feel like every story has been told, which is a cliché, but there's something satisfying knowing that like the reference I'm making is evergreen.

It's one thing to like do something that's like cool for the moment, but then like musicians change and TV references change, and then a generation later, no one really like knows what the hell you're referencing.

And so I really like that if you're interested in knowing the reference, Ancient Greece is always there, and I don't see it leaving anytime soon.

So it's just a safe place to kind of park your car at.

- So we are here on a Tuesday.

Friday night was your opening here.

- It was, yeah.

- And when I say blockbuster show, I don't say that about everybody, but it was wall to wall people in here that night.

It was huge.

And I go to shows.

I go to art shows in Memphis, and that was definitely one of the biggest openings I've ever ever seen.

- That's awesome.

- So yeah, you said that, you know, of course you'd worked with Crosstown Arts before.

- Yeah, they've been longtime friends.

I sponsor a...

I curate a mural project here.

So any of the small paintings you see up on the walls when you walk throughout the Concourse is a project that I run.

And before that, when they were building the building, they let me live here for a couple years when they were still like fitting out the artist in residency space and just had a close relationship with them since the inception, and they were nice enough to provide the space for this show.

- Well and they provided the space, but you're the person who brought the people in, right?

And I mean, you're definitely one of the better known and more popular visual artists, you know, in Memphis right now.

I mean, how did you connect with that audience?

- Internet.

- All right, thank you, internet.

We're done.

[laughs] - I don't know, I feel like it helped that my work was in public and that you didn't need to feel granted access to see it.

I think that like that paid dividends when it came to the show 'cause a lot of people told me when they came out it was their first time coming to an art show, and that meant a whole lot to me that we got a diverse crowd 'cause I don't go to many art shows, but when I do, I see the same 40 people.

Like it's a small group of us that really go to art shows a lot.

And so it was fun being able to break that sort of habit and have new audience members come to the show and get to meet the space and feel welcome in the space.

And I was really thankful for that.

- I think there's definitely something to that because when I came to the show, I was parking, and this person, these two people parked next to us and got outta the car and this guy was like 20 or so and had a very...

He had an accent, and he was like, "I've never been here before.

Where's the Birdcap thing?"

- Hell yeah.

- And he's like he'd never been to Crosstown before, not just he'd never like been to an art show before.

Like he'd never been here before, and he came out for that.

So I was like, "Yeah, follow us, it's over here."

[laughs] - That's wonderful, man.

Yeah, I was really humbled by the amount of people who came out, the amount of photos I got asked to take.

And, man, it was a fun time.

I was really worried I was gonna be alone eating soup in the middle of the gallery, so it worked out.

[Chris laughs] - Well, at least you have your soup.

- I had soup, yeah.

[Chris laughs] - Well, but one thing that was really cool that you did was sell stuffed animals of "The Suicide of Achilles", right?

- Ajax.

- Ajax, sorry, I did it again.

- Yeah, we sold I think 120 in 40 minutes.

It was cool.

I was just blown away.

People came to support and were willing to like give up hard-earned money to take something home with them.

- And I think it's a good idea too because you've got like, you know, these big paintings that are thousands of dollars and big pieces, but then this is something that anybody can take with them, you know, and it's gonna have like an honored place in your house or whatever with your stuffed animals, you know?

- Right, it was important to me not to... You wanna raise your prices the older you get 'cause you have more bills, and you have more like things you have to take care of, but you don't want to alienate your fan base who's been supporting you in like non-financial ways forever.

Like I wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for an online following and people who show up to events.

And so it meant a lot to me to be able to provide something that was within a reasonable price range to let people take something home, and really glad people wanted it, man.

I was nervous.

[Chris laughs] - Well, I think people are... You mentioned earlier that, you know, sometimes people are intimidated to go into art spaces, you know, because they feel exclusionary and academic, and they're like, "Oh, maybe I don't understand what's going on here," but even though, you know, people were coming out to this, even though it is...

I mean, it's as high concept as it gets.

You're trying to tell two parallel stories at once, and one of them is classical Greek mythology, you know, but people felt like that they could relate to that and that they wanted to see that, you know?

- Yeah, I hope so, man.

I think a lot of those stories are relatable.

and the problem is the frame we put 'em in half the time.

It's like we are so self-satisfied with our relationship to referencing like ancient material that I think sometimes we don't try to make it welcoming to new viewers and newcomers.

And so hopefully people came in and were able to enjoy the work on some level, whether they cared about it being referential to "The Iliad" or not, I hope they saw something in themselves in the piece.

- Hmm, well, I mean, what's next for you?

- I'm getting back on the mural circuit for a little bit.

I'm painting in Miami, Minneapolis, and Denver in the next couple months, and then trying to figure out what's next.

I wanna do another large scale project, but we got to make it new and make it interesting.

- And I think you mentioned that this is not the only inflatable.

- Yeah, so I'm making three more inflatables.

They just got shipped, and they'll be on display at Reggae Rise Up in St. Petersburg, Florida coming up in March.

So I'm excited about that.

- Oh, nice.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, are you hoping to see one day, you know, for Christmas, Birdcap inflatables in people's lawns, maybe Birdcap Santas or something?

- Oh no, no.

I think there's already too much of me in public, so I'm fine-- - I don't know about that.

- With them having them just on Instagram.

It's fine.

- Well, Birdcap, thank you.

Michael, [laughs] thank you very much for joining us today and telling us about your art.

And, you know, this has been A Conversation with Michael Roy, AKA Birdcap.

[chill music] [chill music continues] [acoustic guitar chords]