Ghanaian American artist Robert Owusu III was born and bred in Yonkers, N.Y., and it’s where he still lives and still maintains a studio.
Owusu’s artistic journey began with photography when he got his first camera in his early 20s. That later evolved into working in graphic design. Next, he worked with neon lights. Today, on any given day, he might make a sculpture; construct a piece of fine art; create a series of photos, videos, or digital art; redesign the fashion on a piece of clothing; or create a practical wall art piece.
“It’s pretty much a mixture of a couple of things,” the multidisciplinary artist said, “but overall, my standard for everything is pretty much in the storytelling of it. Each piece that I do always has a story to tell from the standpoint of my background or my growing up –– it’s all concepts of different things.”
Fascinated with artists like André 3000, Pharrell Williams, and Kanye West when he was younger, Owusu came to the art world through his interest in music and fashion. It was a professional move not immediately welcomed by his family.
Raised in a four-person home, consisting of his mother, father, and younger brother, Owusu said his immigrant family upbringing directed him toward a specific way of viewing the world. Both of his parents were born in Ghana and his extended family is scattered throughout Connecticut; New Jersey; London, England; and back home in Ghana.
When he was preparing to attend the University of Hartford in Connecticut, he had no thoughts of attending an art school. “Just like most of my first-generation [immigrant] counterparts, your parents, the majority of them, risked their freedom to make a living in the United States. What they want is the best for their kids; they want stability. Most of my people are in the medical field. They’re doing billing, billing for hospitals, or Medicaid. They know about stability, they know that [if] you do this amount of school, you’re guaranteed this amount [of income] if you acquire a job, et cetera. Anybody [who] goes a different route [is] not really presented with open arms.”
After entering college with a declared interest in medicine, Owusu left with a degree in marketing. “If you really believe in what you believe in, you have to go against the grain across the board,” he said. “That might be going against what the parents want for you, but at the same time, they’re not out in the world of newer jobs, the many different industries that are being built and created in real time. It’s kind of up to the individual to take a gamble with that.”
Owusu has gambled on art. He uses different art mediums to reimagine ideas. It took him three years to establish himself as a working artist, with individual and brand-name clients now reaching out to him under his Thiird.co company name.
Today, his art is known because of the different products he creates. “Somebody might be wearing a garment that I made and people want to know who made it, or somebody might go into somebody’s house and see an art piece and they’re interacting with the piece, and they might want to commission another. It’s all cohesive, right? Some people might know me for one thing, and it might kind of go into a bunch of other stuff that they didn’t know that I do. It’s kind of like a web. I guess you could say it all connects.”
This is exactly how Owusu wants to see his art functioning. He likes being able to reflect on all the influences that help him create his art and he wants to make art that is inspiring and affects people in several ways in the future.
“I’ll just pretty much push the boundaries,” he said. “I think that especially now, a lot of artists [work] in different mediums –– whether it’s cinematography, or whether it’s illustration work. There is a growing renaissance of multi-hyphen artists who want to be able to push boundaries. That’s pretty much my goal. I just want to be at a point where I’m able to wake up and do what I want to do. If I want to wake up one day and do a 60-foot sculpture, I’m able to do so. Creative freedom. That’s the path of creative freedom that I want, and I’m pretty much on the trajectory for that.”