For Oregon resident and artist Desere Mayo, pursuing her passion in art is about honoring the legacy of her family.
It’s also about uplifting the Black students that go to school in Oregon, Mayo told the Observer, through art that showcases their collective past and heritage.
Mayo’s grandpa was an artist for newspapers and her dad is an artist too, but neither found the success they aspired to, she said. That led to Mayo’s desire to be the first person in her family to own a business to succeed in her craft, she said. She takes commissions for hand-drawn portraits through her in-home business, Design by Mayo, LLC. And since moving to Oregon last May with her husband and three boys, Mayo has also sought to have her art displayed in schools across the district.
“I want to take the gift (my grandpa and dad) both gave me and be able to use it,” she said. “I cannot give up on art, I cannot quit. I will be one to make it prosper, they couldn’t do it.”
Each of Mayo’s boys goes to a different Oregon School District school, including Brooklyn Elementary, Rome Corners Intermediate, and Oregon Middle. So Mayo has gotten to know a lot of people around the community, she said, enabling her to pursue her goals for inspiring local youth and connecting with others.
And that is the perfect inspiration for her art – which primarily includes graphite pencil or charcoal drawings of people. Some are local figures like Oregon superintendent Leslie Bergstrom, Governor Evers and Lt. Gov. Barnes. Others are historic figures like Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass. Mayo also makes collages that chronicle significant moments in Black history, she said.
She’s been drawing since she was three years old – when her first canvas were walls, she said.
Mayo’s only formal training was one quarter at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, she said, where the main takeaway was she learned how to shade and afterward quit using color, as she’d fallen in love with creating art in black and white.
Growing up, she always wanted to work for Disney, she said.
But while she has yet to achieve that goal, she launched Design by Mayo. Through that business, she creates commissioned gifts for weddings, Christmas, Mother’s Day, she said.
But her art is not strictly business, as portraits like the one she made of Bergstrom are personal notes of appreciation.
“The superintendent of Oregon is amazing,” she said. “She’s done so much in the community. I just want to give a gift to say “thank you, you’ve done so much.”
Inspiring Black youthApart from taking commissions and thanking community members with her art, Mayo has another goal – to bring joy to Black students in the school district.
That’s because as Mayo’s grandfather was one of the freedom riders in 1961, she wants to become a “freedom artist,” she said, having her art inspire Black youth to become more than “athletes and celebrities.”
“I want little kids to see they can be the next astronaut or scientist or invent a cure for cancer,” Mayo said. “You can do this, it’s all in you, passed down for so many generations – never give up or quit. They need to see Black faces, not just athletes, but civil rights leaders, people who made inventions.”
Mayo has prior experience making waves in schools with her art, she said.
She helped start the Parents of Black Excellence group at Cesar Chavez Elementary School when her sons attended there before they moved to Oregon. She designed the group’s logo and made T-shirts that read ‘I am Black excellence.’
“It was pretty awesome to see kids wearing it,” she said. “I want our kids to feel like they belong, just because you are another color, you’re no different – you have talents, you have gifts, and not just in sports.”
The school purchased nine portraits Mayo drew of black historical figures including Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Michelle Obama, which were framed and hung in its library.
Collaging Black historyMore than chronicling Black history through individual portraits, Mayo said she loves creating collages, which she called “history inside a picture.”
When U.S. representative John Lewis died, she drew elements of his life as a civil rights activist such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge from ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1965, a freedom rider bus, and mug shots from when he was arrested.
“It’s not just a drawing, it’s actually a collage of his life and his legacy of what he’s done for African Americans and for America,” Mayo said. “I wanted people to see that.”
One of her favorite collages is of actor Chadwick Boseman in all his roles from Thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson to Marvel Comics superhero Black Panther. It took her three weeks to complete, she said.
She plans a similar one for comic and actor Kevin Hart surrounded by various characters he’d played.
She has several collages in mind that will represent groups of people collectively, including one of basketball players Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Scottie Pippen and one of Motown Records artists like the Supremes and the Jackson 5.
One of her goals is to capture the energy of the figures she draws, and to aid in that she’ll watch videos of them or listen to audio recordings while drawing, such as listening to speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. while drawing him.
“I try with every stroke to represent you – your pain, suffering, joy, happiness,” Mayo said. “I want it all in a picture for people to see it.”
