(light music) - Do you think this Sharpie is too big?

- [Bill] December 2021 signing day for Jonathan Harris.

- [Jonathan] So how should I do it?

- [Bill] It's for one of his paintings on display but not for sale.

These art collectors at Noni's Sherwood Grille in Detroit want their own numbered and autographed print.

- You don't have enough room for framing if you sign it right here.

- Oh, no, no, no, the framer can come in here.

That's why I said don't sign in the white area, sign here.

- It was done this year earlier in 2021.

The name of this painting is CRT.

This is a limited edition print, CRT standing for critical race theory, a topic of discussion that has permeated through our culture and our community.

I think the importance of a painting like this during this time can't even be verbally expressed.

- [Bill] Harris, a young emerging artist now in the national spotlight, arts journals, newspapers, cable TV.

He'd started painting seriously just a couple years ago.

- I had been drawing and painting my whole life.

I never had really taken it serious.

I went to school for graphic design.

And I was just looking for another outlet to express myself so I started to paint.

I started painting celebrities and different people I could just Google online.

- [Bill] Someone told Harris celebrity paintings might not be the best path to success for an artist.

- That's how I got into painting My Story are things I see and was also passionate about.

This is at the far left, Hear No Evil, the middle, See No Evil and the right, Speak No Evil.

It's basically just telling a story about how I feel in America.

- [Bill] One Detroit last talked to Harris in November for its exhibition at Detroit's Irwin House Gallery.

- We had been speaking with Jonathan about doing a solo exhibition of his work and he felt that he wasn't ready to do that.

I believe he was ready to do that.

So he saw this as an opportunity not just for himself but to also bring in two other emerging artists that he had met whose work he felt passionate about.

- [Bill] Opening night in the hallway off the main room, there was Critical Race Theory.

It sold immediately.

Who else knew it would go over so big at the time?

- And so we are here to witness the signing of these prints by Jonathan and to further encourage him to continue exploring social political issues in his artwork.

He's an artist who I feel is very, very skilled in exploring this aspects of our society.

- I'm happy to be an owner of the first copy of this print and I can't wait to frame it and hang it.

So thanks a lot, Jonathan Harris, man.

I really appreciate it.

- [Bill] Did you think it would catch on the way it did?

- I didn't think that it would catch on like this.

I still lack that art confidence, so I just didn't think it would catch on like this, but it's a blessing.

I'm just excited that the conversation is being had, especially right now.

- [Bill] Critical race theory.

- A heated debate in yet another metro Atlanta school district.

Right now, parents are lining up-- - [Bill] The idea popped up in the news, then anti-critical race theory protests came to school boards last year.

- We will take a five minute recess at this point.

- You're teaching children to hate others because of their skin color.

- [Bill] Like most of America, that's when Harris learned about the CRT fight, too.

The painting came soon after.

- And I was just talking to somebody at the show about the piece and the person had said, "I see you painted Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, "but why did you paint Aunt Jemima?"

And the person was serious.

- [Bill] Harriet Tubman rendered in black and white matching an image more of us should know about escaped slave champion of the Underground Railroad and much more.

- A couple people asked me why Harriet Tubman not smiling because she in the front.

It's like, you know, what was there to smile about, I'm a slave.

- [Bill] Hope for more awareness of Tubman, President Obama ordered her face on the US $20 bill in 2016.

Didn't happen under the last president, perhaps on track with our new president.

- We're exploring ways to speed up that effort, but any specifics would of course come from the Department of Treasury.

- [Bill] No action from Treasury yet.

- And this row behind here is important, too because this represents the road that African Americans already traveled, everything that we already went through.

And that's why it's not no sun shining back there, it's not no trees, it's nothing happy.

It actually looks sad like a real dreary day, just a dirt road and some dried grass.

It wasn't pretty.

- [Bill] Fine art with a direct message.

We see it conceptually in posters, some capturing a time on canvas like Spain 1937 or right here right now with Critical Race Theory, and might bring to mind The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell back in the '60s, inspired by Ruby Bridges, relevant again with concerns in some Tennessee schools about a book telling Bridges' story.

- I wanted just a casual person if you're not into art or into art, whatever it may be to just look at it and it catch your attention and you have to question, hey, what's going on here?

Then it say, oh, critical race theory.

Oh, what is that?

Oh, this is going on in the South right now or slowly making its way up to the higher states.

- [Bill] Most of the painting a whitewash depicting a future that stops just near the top.

- So this figure right here, he represents the America trying to cover up our history.

- [Bill] Chronologically speaking, Harris has us now at the bottom of the canvas.

- It's right here now and eventually it's gonna be here and then in more years, it's gonna be here and then here and then here.

And then we can look up 100 years from now or even less and say, the talk would be, oh, why do we gotta teach about Harriet Tubman if we didn't have to teach about this figure or we didn't have to teach about Marcus Garvey, any other historical figures that down here or stories or things that happened, it's covered up by America because it don't make they kids feel good knowing what their ancestors were capable of.

And that's not fair.

- And he has distilled that whole idea of what they're trying to do in this magnificent painting.

- [Jonathan] I don't think that we gonna be done with this any time soon, this whole critical race theory thing.

It's a beast that's never gonna be full.

It's just gonna keep going and growing and growing and growing and years from now or generations from now, they may get up to the point and say, hey, we don't need to teach the kids about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Harriet Tubman.

That's what this piece is about.