- [Announcer] It's about social-justice issues.

It's about conversations.

It's about bringing the community together, and bridging those conversations.

- [Guest] Highlighting the local Black Artists.

(buoyant music changes into somber jazzy music) - I think that if you take time and put your heart into it and don't think money in upfront.

Think about what you love doing.

If you love doing it and you're honest with it, somebody's gonna like it.

Somebody's gonna say, "Wow!"

That's because they can tell it was naturally done.

It's important to really, to think about experimenting, to think about wanting to learn, and wanting to develop, and wanting to add to what's inside of you.

In a sense, what you really want to create.

My interest in art began when I was in the 2nd Grade, and it's something that I've always wanted to do.

I use to always be fascinated with art around me.

I'll go to the library and love to go through the books and see the illustrations and I'd say, "Wow!

I wanna do that."

- [Guest] For more than 56 years, Al Dogget has been creating commercial and fine art, in Seattle.

From advertisements, to paintings, to public art, his work reflects a deep love for his craft.

- If sometimes I could be walking down the street or during the day.

Ideas will come.

Ideas will kind of come up that I might feel I'd like to create a piece of.

And once I get focused on it, then I want to, I will sit down, and go to my studio, and I start sketching.

Kind of trying to get a feel for how I might approach that, in terms of my composition, of course.

Just what elements will be in there.

I kind of create these things in my mind, basically and then I, it winds up.

I establish a series of colors that I'm gonna use to actually produce the piece.

Then I start creating and experimenting with how these tones come together.

How do I see Seattle?

Do I think Seattle is a, I see it is vibrant with art.

It's a growing city in terms of, I see young people, older people putting their hand into art, creating art.

I still have a program in mind that I wanna create for schools that I think that getting that interest in, getting kids interested in creating art.

I like to help them develop that and just give them a reason why it's okay to do it.

Okay, to try and develop that.

What I've seen happen after the Liberty Bank project, there are more buildings now open to art.

And especially, the Midtown Building was across the street from the Liberty Bank Building.

There's lots of art around there.

It's just that the developers now are opening up to that.

Which I'm surprised that they've never, that thinking wasn't there before.

(jazzy music continues) - [Barry] I've been very fortunate to be able to do a number of large scale artworks around this area.

So the Vivid Matter Collective by The Homie-Homie, is a family.

We're just a collection of artists that all came together to create the monument for The Black Lives Matter piece.

And we're all just different artists in our own rights that are all collectively trying to uplift the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Artists, in the Pacific Northwest.

We had just did a project at MoPOP, where we got a chance to honor the life and legacy of Quincy Jones.

- [Guest] Curiosity drives Barry Johnson's approach to art.

A Seattle transplant from the Midwest, he is dedicated to expressing himself through as many artistic mediums as possible.

Multimedia installations, public art, portraits, sculpture, film, and he's just getting started.

- I presented this idea called, New Perspectives, and it was like these contrasting colors that would wrap the side of the building.

And it was my interpretation of an explosion of color through this tattered history of redlining.

When you look at the landscape of Seattle's art, it's very like muted.

It's very green, it's very (indistinct).

And I wanted to do something that just pushed outside of that.

Whenever Black and Brown people are trying to assimilate in society, a lot of times we end up having to code-switch.

So, we'll end up having to change our fabric, change the way we talk, change our entire mannerisms to be able to assimilate in these different societies.

So I wanted to be able to create a work that honored that.

I got to work with a couple of other artists, Craig Cundiff and Matt Midgley.

We created this really super dope, hyper-realistic collection of images.

Contrasting colors against these ultra-realistic details.

I used to just walk through here and be like, "This is such a really beautiful space."

And the bricks, the colors really jumped out at me.

So, the place where I worked at is right around the corner here.

These are like big well-known galleries.

And I use to walk by them and look in and not be met with a welcoming face, upon them seeing it was me.

And just promising myself that, "You know what that's okay."

In Kansas, after I had this incredibly racist experience happening at school, these kids started calling me, Burnt Boy.

And I remember coming home telling my dad about it and he was just, he looked at me very candidly and he was like, "Yo, just never "let another person dictate your self-worth."

So I didn't let that stop me.

The process of painting for me is extremely therapeutic.

It's one of the things where I get to process exactly what it is that's going on with me.

There's always just something on the inside that's like, "How do I find my place in this world?"

"Does the world even see me?"

You know?

So, it's a very solitary experience to be able to create work.

I'm always just thinking, "Can I do it?"