Today we’d like to introduce you to Marcellous Lovelace (Infinito 2017).
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I am also known as Infinito 2017 musically. I’m a full-time multidisciplinary creator of Black Art (Painter, Filmmaker, Animator and Sound Designer) and Hip Hop music creator. I’ve done all my creative expressions my entire life from a young age. The art form that I practice is mainly Black Art / African Awareness Painting in Mixed Media with Found Materials. I paint from my experience living on the South Side of Chicago and Living in Poverty all over America. I use found objects throughout the Cities like Chicago and The State of Illinois as the reference of my surroundings in my work. I work on everything from old found pieces of paper, garbage cans, tires, mattresses and used construction material found from torn down buildings. Chicago is such a diversely segregated environment it influences struggle and pain. I have worked several years as an educator in school systems and working for public libraries in-which I teach the students to be intelligent and self-loving, giving back to their communities development.
I learned to call myself an Afro Urban Indigenous Folk Artist because every idea needs some type of label I guess. The tragedies that occur in my city help me reinterpret the oppression on all surfaces. I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago in a community called Roseland. This segregated poverty-stricken environment helped me to develop over 400 images a year over the last 35 plus years of my life. Creating over 20 painting a week over my lifetime that’s about 25,000 painting and drawings or more (way more). The environment I was reared in is so negative it helps me to create beauty form this struggle. I paint because it’s the only thing that feels good after feeling like I’m trapped in a world of colonialism that has no hope. I also have lived in various places in Chicago from Terror Town on the East South Side of Chicago too, Auburn Gresham, Grand Crossing, Avalon Park and Chatham etc.
From these experiences of poverty inside highly populated communities with a lot of gang activity due to the fact the city really doesn’t care about what happens to the under served, underprivileged citizens in the city. And the cities goal is to push out as many Black People as possible. Areas like Terror Town which is near 75th and Exchange off of South Shore Drive, in this area, I painted a large portion of my work in a residence that was dilapidated from unequal housing and redlining, leaving people depressed from negative urban induced poverty forcing human’s to become addicted to drugs and living in areas bombarded by rats and roaches. Many of these pests and addictions ended up being a part of my work. No one in the city or government came in to help anyone that looked like me. The current gentrification of people removal from their communities is the outcome of these conditions, I now create art from this awful conditioning. I see nothing good from colonial oppression.
For most of my adult life, I have worked on Art regardless of the situation and I always will because these colorful forced colonial problems help me to continue to see through the blight. I graduated from the University of Memphis with a Masters and Bachelors degree but most of my studies came from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Art Institute. Marcellous Lovelace the Hip Hop artist is based in protest, awareness, positive, inspirational and making sure I create music with meaning that develops and teaches my people. My creativity is based exclusively on my roots on the South Side Chicago and the entire Pan African Diaspora worldwide and any of the Indigenous regions of the earth. My creativity is black/Nubian inside and out and full of culture and content. As a recording artist, I have created over 300 plus albums using multiple aliases (some the world will never know), I normally record 10 to 20 albums every year this has been going on since the late 1990’s when I was a huge part of underground and indie hip-hop globally.
I have traveled all over the world doing music and I’m always open to more creativity. My EPK states, Infinito 2017 (known as MCML at the time) wanted to make music his career when he was just 13 years old. He teamed up with his cousin Dariel, and the two spent hours in their basements recording crude beats and rhymes on their boomboxes. When he and his mother moved to Kentucky, Lovelace found solace in rapping, something that also kept him going after Dariel’s untimely death in 1994. Following that event, Lovelace moved to Tennessee and bought his first professional equipment and began recording. He enrolled in the Memphis College of Art, where he studied painting, also performing regularly at local open hip-hop mike nights. It was at one of these that he met Mr. Skurge; the two connected instantly and decided to work together, calling themselves the Unorthodox Poets Society (and it was Skurge who then gave Lovelace the name Infinito).
In 1998, the MC moved back to Chicago, where he joined up with crews the Molemen and the Nacrobats, working on albums with them as well as releasing his own material (sometimes as Infinito 2017, the 2017 was added as a goal setter), including 2002’s Music with Sound Right Reasoning, 2004’s Low Income Housing, 2005’s Roddny Dangrr Fild, and 2006’s The Soul of Benjamin Banneker in the Age of the Aquarius, 2007’s Natural Time, 2010 Outer Body Experience 9.0: Thinking the Unthinkable, 2011 Rid The Stereotypes and Programmed Slaves, 2014 Threatening Music X Brash and Abrasive, 2017 African of Kenya Ether Part 18 on Culture Power45, 2018 / 2019 From Inside Self Living to Please Me (Fixed With Tape) and MANY MANY many more… LOOK US INFINITO 2017 / www.infinito2017.com go to www.marcellouslovelace.com.
Please tell us about your art.
My art is a consistent Black expression from the African GLOBAL AWARENESS and an Indigenous story of the people of Alkebulan / Nubian’s. I paint daily over 20 paintings a week every day all the time (about 25,000 and counting paintings circulating the world). I make and record video’s constantly with over 500 video productions, 25 plus short films/documentaries and 100’s of music videos. I create with the tools afforded to me and I don’t wait for hopes or dreams to make artwork, I can use anything that exists to create my work. I record over and up to 20 albums or more every year for 30 plus years with over 300 albums recorded and released. I have written almost 100 books (three or four a year) about art, life music, African/Black awareness journals, novels and essays, my focus is life in its infinite state of being. I create graphic designs, t-shirts, blogs, magazines, art curator, teacher and run several record labels (My own Joe Left Hand Records and Culture Power45’s daily activities)You should know I document and create and I don’t do my expressions for outside validation but as a way to express my soul to those labeled Black as a way to record their story. Everything I do can be proven with facts and actual work not talk.
We often hear from artists that being an artist can be lonely. Any advice for those looking to connect with other artists?
Be your self and don’t count on anyone. I inspire myself, we only need our reflections in order to live and build with similar minds who work at your level if needed.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
www.marcellouslovelace.com
www.infinito2017.com
www.facebook.com/
www.twitter.com/infinito2017
www.instagram.com/
www.joelefthandrecords.com
www.culturepower45.com
Search google and your local library/iTunes/Amazon, etc…
Contact Info:
- Website: www.
marcellouslovelace.com - Email: joelefthand@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/
marcellouslovelace - Facebook: www.facebook.com/
marcellouslovelaceart - Twitter: www.twittter.com/
infinito2017 - Other: www.infinito2017.com
Image Credit:
Soul Color Mural by Marcellous Lovelace (photo from downtownmemphis.com)
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
