A Defining Moment: Weary Featured in Lastest Exhibit

Art is the expression of human creativity filled with skill and imagination. This month, Frank Hayden Hall is hosting an art exhibit featuring the works of Mike Weary. Students and staff gathered at the exhibit to admire the thought-provoking pieces of media.
The opinions of Jada Smith and Kahlea Scott while visiting the exhibit yielded a detailed description. These two students were both from Alexandria and were freshmen. After viewing the painting Smith stated, “It was giving slavery…trials and tribulations at first glance,” but upon closer examination, she believed the man in the painting was a runaway slave. Scott agreed that the man looked like a slave and also believed, “He was on a journey, but got overwhelmed.” She added, “He looks to be saying he’s done and cried his last tear yesterday.”
It was then they stated this that Randell Henry, the curator spoke. Randell Henry is an endowed art professor in Frank Hayden at Southern University.
Henry put the exhibit together and saw first-hand Mike Weary’s painting in his apartment. He said that “I Found a Junebug Dangling in an Oak” was the reason why he needed to put on an exhibit. His opinion of the painting is that it is “one of the most wonderful paintings I have ever seen in Baton Rouge.”
“The skin color seems to symbolize life draining from the body,” Henry explained. He agreed with comments from other students who said the man looked tired and added, “People look at him as if he is just as insignificant as a bug,” and continued saying that his descendants will be the ones to help continue the fight he started and had to suffer as an effect of.
Henry described interesting techniques the artist used such as painting upside down and dabbing his paintbrush against the paintings. After getting the opinions of both students and faculty, I wanted to hear from the artist himself. When asked why he wrote about the painting he said, “I write a story or short narrative for every one of my paintings,” Weary elaborated. Anti-lynching was the inspiration for the painting. “Originally, when I started writing about it, it was about anti-lynching. It is imperative to focus not only on survivors but on the descendants of survivors, he said. He then discussed that art was something he’d done since he was six and finally took a class at 15 to start carving and painting. He uses painting as an outlet. He says, “Painting is the place you can pull the most emotions out of.”
Weary is completely self-taught and studied fashion merchandise at the University of Lafayette. I asked Weary what he wanted people to take from I Found a Junebug Dangling in an Oak and he said “I hope it just shows a bit of humanity” and continued saying that he hopes all his art can express the message that history and identity are important and it’s our duty as a community to ensure it lives on.