November 14, 2012
Noni Olabisi: Portrait of a South LA Muralist
Noni Olabisi posing with friends in front of her mural, Resurrection, inspired by SEED: A Weird Act of Faith.
Noni Olabisi is a wise woman. A St. Louis native who has lived in California most of her life, she is a well-known muralist who has dedicated her artistic energy to listening to the voices of the unheard and to representing their narrative in her artwork. Her murals articulate the hunger for justice in the communities of South Los Angeles and punctuate the landscape of the city with bold figures and striking colors.
Her art is not only inspired by the community, but by personal strife and the hope that it has engendered. She is a doggedly optimistic and happy person who has spent a lot of time working on herself and trying to find the right path.
Noni Olabisi and her protégé Van Negro at the unveiling of her mural, Resurrection, at Cornerstone.
Noni had a difficult childhood, but one that she is immensely grateful for because it now gives her a wider range of vision. “I grew up out of abuse. And I think that’s important to say, because that’s how I discovered being an artist. Out of abuse I used to hide away, doodle a lot, imagine things.” It’s part of Noni’s character to turn darkness into light, and every phrase she utters and every action she takes is aimed to illuminate a path to art and peace.
But the experiences of abuse affected her profoundly and colored her reality for a long time. “I hated people because when I was a kid and I was getting beat, I used to scream at the top of my lungs so someone would call the police on my parents. I was getting the crap beaten out of me. And nobody called.” The feelings of abandonment and neglect were not just familial, but also communal. To experience such isolation would, for anyone, make it difficult to move in the world with grace and artistic gusto. Yet that’s exactly how Noni goes through her day.
She says that it is not in spite of her difficult upbringing that she has found so much light, but because of it: “It’s an experience that got me to be who I am today. I forgave my parents. I forgave my neighbors. I learned to love people. I love my life because I had a real full life. Because one part doesn’t work without the other. You have to have some of the pain and the misery to see the God force in your life. To really appreciate.”
Art, for Noni, was the path to hearing the muse’s voice, “to see the God force,” as she says. As a young child she found comfort and relief in art: “I always felt there was a security blanket in drawing and I did it more and more. It became a safety for me as a child. I knew at 9 I wanted to become an artist.” Like other artists, Noni speaks of hearing a voice that guides her art, and she deflects flattery because she feels she is merely taking dictation. “There’s a voice that I don’t know if all artists hear. You know how you hear that voice? I hear this voice that I know ain’t nothing but coming from the divine. People give me all this praise for the work that I’ve done, but it comes from more than just me. Sometimes I look at my work and ask ‘Who did that?’ It just comes through me. I’m a vehicle and I can feel it.”
But Noni says that even now it’s hard to get out of her own way. The project Cornerstone proposed to Noni, that of painting our metal door, was new for her and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it. “I had to learn what the elders used to tell me years ago: You have to get out of your own way. And I learned what that meant. After a long time of living, now I know what getting out of your own way means. With Cornerstone’s call, for this project, I was offered a brand new project— a metal [surface], with ridges. In the past I would have turned that down because it’s not a surface I’m used to. And I said to Cornerstone, you know, I’m going to go for it, if you take a chance on me, I’ll take a chance on you. And Cornerstone was like ‘Oh, good! You can do it!’ Just like that! Very encouraging! And when I read the title of the script, I said, ‘Wow! That’s what my life is: A Weird Act of Faith!”
Written by Maria Guerra, Cornerstone’s Development Assistant.
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