His artwork is bold and decisive with themes that reflect the Black experience, resilience, and creative energy. A.K. Lovelace is a comic book artist, illustrator and co-creator of “City of Walls,” a fascinating, intricate comic series.
“By the fact that I have been able to produce and have success in the field, I look to impact culture because when I was growing up that wasn’t a common thing,” he said. “There weren’t a lot of comic book artists who looked like me. Being part of that cohort of Black artists that practice the artform and have been able to produce things of significance, it’s being able to tell great stories that include the Black experience. My comic, ‘City of Walls’ available on [webtoons.com], it was very important to me that one of the characters was Black. That was an organic process.”
In addition to making art, Lovelace has served as director of the media and design department at the Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) since 2021. HSA offers interdisciplinary arts programming to students ages 2 to 18.
“Harmony in mission, unity in vision,” HSA notes on its website. Empowering youth to reach their full potential in the arts, education, and life through interdisciplinary arts training that celebrates the rich complexity of their community. HSA values inclusivity, artistic excellence, and community engagement, fostering a vibrant and supportive environment for students to explore their creative passions and reach their full potential.
Lovelace understands how a young person can be drawn to art, because that was his own experience. In an accelerated program in elementary school, he made a book of animal drawings for a class project. Once his grandmother got him his first comic book, his artistic drive locked into place. After attending the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and earning a bachelor’s degree at the School of Visual Arts, he began doing professional comic work.
“I put together and pitched a comic book art program,” Lovelace said about his start as a teacher. After a break from teaching he returned with a fervor, beginning his work as an instructor at HAS in 2017.
“My entire credo when it came to teaching in general is I wanted to reach kids like me, who had a talent and a gift but did not know what went into pursuing it at the higher and professional levels,” he said. “There was an enormous amount of guessing and kind of haphazard fumbling through my development as a professional artist until I got to high school or even college. I wanted to try to connect with students that were really interested and had the chops for doing this and show them what it is to actually sit down and develop a comic, develop characters, and how a comic actually goes together.”
Founded in 1964, HSA is a historically renowned Black arts center in the heart of Harlem, a history which resonated with Lovelace. As director of media and design, he works with students across multiple forms of media, designing what the programmatic offerings look like. These range from fundamentals to specialized disciplines, including comics, animation, and commercial art. In addition, he works with the teaching artists to build curricula.
“Be honest with your work in terms of the time you put into it,” Lovelace said about the mindset he emphasizes to his students. “One of the very basic ideas of art creation, it’s an adjustment that every student goes through … is you work on a concept for this piece and you have to do it a few times. You have to put it through a process. It’s a fundamental principle of arts creation.”
It’s important to show the students that there is a destination for the work that they produce. Student designs have appeared at the local Harlem H&M, and there have been multiple exhibitions of student work across New York City. Lovelace started a mural program, and students produced several murals for Wollman Rink in Central Park.
A law firm contacted HSA and requested artwork for Black History Month. The firm created a gallery of student artwork; pieces were sold and students received a cut of the sales. The experience now appears on their resumes, and the work went into their portfolios.
“It’s one thing to draw a three-page story; it’s another thing to see that story actually printed in some sort of periodical that you can hold, share, promote, and even sell,” Lovelace explained. “That is a different level of understanding and it’s a grounding in the real world that gives the process a visceral validity.”
Lovelace believes this is an important moment for Black artists to share their work. “The Black experience is a unique experience and it matters; it needs to have its existence known, understood, and platformed,” he said. “It brings a lot of insight if we are to have better harmony as a multiethnic and diverse society.”
