I was a child of the 70s and this was a time#when music, dance, art, creative thought, all these things were exploding onto the scene.

And my mother was very much a person who sought new and interesting ways to expand her mind.

And we as little kids benefited from that.

We went to the school in a big Victorian house.

It#was called the Rainbow School.

The school was, I guess, an experiment.

There were classrooms,# a reading room, math room, art room, music room, and the children could wander at will to#the rooms that they felt like being in.

If it rained that day, the lesson of the day might be going outside to splash in the mud.

And so I spent all my days in the#art room and it's incredible how much Rainbow School has influenced me later in my life.

My mother was from New Orleans, grew up in#Morocco, so she was into fashion completely.

I haven't seen this one either.

This is based off of# a Gordon.

But my father was a Catholic school boy from Ghana who was a college administrator and was#very much like school is not a fashion show.

Did I know she was an artist?

I really didn't.

And most# of her work she used to hide them under her bed.

I had no clue.

And I really didn't know she was into# until she was a sophomore in college.

And then she called me, you know, dad, I'm switching from# architecture to art.

And I said, "Oh my god, that poor girl is going to starve to death."

At Howard# University, I thought, "I want to be an artist, so I should paint."

But it didn't mean that# painting really spoke to me.

But my professors talked to us a lot about using color to express#emotion.

The dean of fine arts was Jeff Donaldson, who is very well known as the founder in the#60s of an artistic movement called AfriCOBRA.

Their idea was, how can we create an#African-American aesthetic for the arts?

So, they came up with a color palette based on what# people were wearing and fashions on the streets, the pattern bell bottoms and the dashikis and the Kool-Aid colors.

And so, a lot of times when you look at my artwork, you'll see#those Kool-Aid colors still.

And those are also the colors that are in African fabric itself.# They tend to be very bright and very intense.

When she finished college, she became an art#teacher.

And then when she told me she wanted to be a full-time artist, I said, "You're#going to give up a secure job."

And she said, "I got to do it now.

I just feel it#in my spirit and I got to do it."

So we felt that there was a real resonance between sort of the South Carolina family portrait and then... This survey at Smithsonian# American Art Museum will be the first time that even I am seeing works from my#earliest pieces from 2001 until now.

Just goes to show you sometimes, you know, as parents, you know, we have certain ideas and dreams for our kids, but at the end of#the day, they have to follow their dreams.