Artist Jesse Smith at work on the George Floyd portrait outside Loose Screw Tattoo in Carytown
Where others may see blank walls, Jesse Smith, owner of Loose Screw Tattoo, sees blank canvases. It’s the reason he painted a mural on his plywood-clad entrance door after the Carytown Merchants Association advised him in early June to board up his shop as a precaution when marches protesting systemic racism and police brutality would travel along Cary Street.
“I was kind of against boarding up,” Smith says. “I don’t have an issue with the protesters, I’m on their side.” But noting opportunists who looted and vandalized stores during the first weekend of protests in late May, he says his employees were worried about damage and theft. So, Smith followed other Carytown businesses and boarded up. One thing he didn’t do was write "Black Lives Matter" on his plywood.
“I started feeling like that was kind of a forcefield of sorts that people were trying to create whether they believed in the message or not, and I felt like it didn’t require much thought, time or creativity,” Smith says. “It’s just like, ‘Hey, let me put BLM on here to protect against the protesters,’ as if the protesters were the ones rioting. They’re not rioting, it’s other people.” So, Smith returned to his roots as a graffiti artist, grabbed some spray paint and created a portrait of George Floyd, a Black man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May sparked protests across the nation and around the world.
One thing that made Smith’s artwork challenging is that realistic portraiture is not his signature style. He typically creates images that are cartoonish and whimsical. “Initially I was like, my style is more like the cartoony stuff, and I was [thinking] I can do some cool little characters on here, but then I thought that would be very distasteful with the temperament of the situation, and it was just a more serious situation,” he says. “I was like, ‘OK, what can I do to kind of support and make an impact?’ ” Using a photograph of George Floyd, he freehanded his spray-painted portrait.
The resulting image was not without controversy. In June, Smith and the mural were featured on Richmond's CBS 6. “They put [the video] on their Facebook, and it was just like such nasty comments all the way down,” he says. “I was just so surprised. … I ended up losing like 150 followers — well, 150 for Loose Screw; I lost like 400 for myself just from posting it.”
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The portrait in detail
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The completed portrait covered the entrance to Loose Screw Tattoo.
Even so, wanting to inspire conversation about racial injustice using the medium he knows best — art — Smith says Floyd was a fitting subject for his mural. “To this day, George Floyd kind of represented that movement because his situation is what stimulated all the protests, so you get a lot of people … saying, ‘Oh, he’s a criminal and he doesn’t deserve to be martyred’ or whatever. But I think he stands for more than that at this point. And so, my thought process was, this is the symbolic image of what’s going on right now, and we’re supporting this movement that has been caused by this person’s situation.”
Smith is now auctioning his mural, with proceeds benefiting Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Richmond (MAD RVA), a nonprofit organization offering services and resources to those who have reduced access to medicine, food and other essential items. Formed in 2018 in response to public housing needs, MAD RVA is currently focusing its efforts on supporting those affected by COVID-19. The auction continues through Friday, July 17, and bids can be placed online at a special event page. As of July 9, the highest bid was $900.
The auction is presented by the Giving Arts Foundation, a nonprofit Smith started to raise money for meaningful causes through art. The nonprofit hosts a handful of annual events, most notably the Live Art for Charity benefit that brings international artists to Richmond to auction their original artwork. With this year’s events canceled due to COVID-19, Smith is currently working on how to continue the work of the foundation safely.
Staying busy even during the pandemic, Smith wears many hats beyond Loose Screw Tattoo and the Giving Arts Foundation. He founded a clothing line called One Trick Pony in early 2019, selling graphic T-shirts. In mid-2019 he launched Method, a modular organization system for tattoo artists that allows for ease of access when searching for a specific ink color. He also co-manages the Richmond Tattoo, Arts & Music Festival with Fredericksburg-based tattoo artist Kenny Brown. And he recently became a partial partner with TattooAwards, which supports artists. All the while, he still works in his shop as a tattoo artist.
The pandemic forced Smith to close his shop for three months, but there was a bright side to being home. In April, he and his girlfriend welcomed a baby boy into the world. “It was good, because normally I would be working all the time, so I wouldn’t have [had] time to help my girlfriend out with getting the house ready,” Smith says. “Then, a month and a half after he was born, we were still in lockdown, so I get to spend a lot of time with helping her out mostly and hanging out with him, too.”
Loose Screw Tattoo has reopened by appointment only, and Smith has been able to rehire almost all of his artists who were laid off while the shop was closed. Smith says he’s shocked at the number of people who have requested an appointment. Already implementing strict sanitation methods, cleaning efforts have been ramped up throughout the building, and, in addition to employees, masks are now required for all clients during the entire process.
Passionate about charity and human rights, Smith hopes to be able to advocate and offer more in the future. “We’re not doing enough,” he says. “Unfortunately, we’re in a situation right now where we’re still recovering from the COVID thing. We’ve been closed for three months, so it’s hard to put the energy into these different directions, charity being one of them.” But that’s not stopping Smith from looking at what he can do to help those in need, with this auction being only the latest in a long list of charitable acts.
