“I think our hair is one of the most special beautiful things that we have – that we are shamed by and often told that it isn’t enough,” artist and floral designer Maurice Harris said Saturday morning in the auditorium of the Saint Louis Art Museum.
With his own mane of short locs unapologetically sprouting towards the sky, he presented “Don’t Touch My Hair: A Talk and Demonstration” as part of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s 16th Annual Art in Bloom programming. The enormously popular annual weekend incorporates floral designs inspired by the museum’s collection. Harris’ contribution would be live action.
“I think it’s our crown,” Harris said. “I think it’s our royalty and I think that it’s one aspect of what makes us beautiful.”
As a culmination of his talk, he invited St. Louis based artist Yvonne Osei on stage, where he designed a floral hair arrangement that perfectly complimented her chocolate skin and neon pink dress.
“Oh, this is going to be so good,” Harris said as he started strategically placing the flowers in Osei’s afro.
He began his talk with a candid introduction to who he is as a person and as an artist and what led him down the path of being a creative. Harris isn’t quite a household name yet, but he’s on the way. His clientele includes some of the biggest names in entertainment. He was featured in a visually stunning Microsoft Surface commercial and has two television shows in production.
“Can you believe someone gave me a show?” Harris said, knowing full well his natural charm and self-proclaimed fabulousness make him ready for prime time.
He talked about being a black gay creative with roots in a family church and a grandmother who fascinated and inspired him with her larger than life personality and attention to detail as she used fashion and millinery as a creative outlet.
“I used to sit at her bedside watching her create her outfits and watching her create her hats and watching her create floral arrangements – she mostly worked in silks,” Harris said. “Her life became a sacrifice for her family and her creative practice took a backseat. Because I have been afforded these opportunities, I wanted to take a minute to just honor one of the key people that informed my practice.”
He exuded joy as he talked about the love for his art and his blackness and the people and things that have inspired him in addition to his grandmother – including Grace Jones, Kirk Franklin, Kerry James Marshall, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Eddie Murphy movie “Boomerang.”
“Alvin Ailey was first time from a dance standpoint that I saw a black vocabulary that is so specifically black but also pure excellence,” Harris said. “There’s a level of grace, there’s a level of strength and there is a level of drama that can only be executed by a black body. It’s something that I strive for every day. These black hands make beautiful things that only these black hands can make.”
As he transitioned into the specifics of his work as a floral designer, he shared how he finds and celebrate his blackness in the flowers he chooses.
“Bird of paradise is the flower that kind of represents blackness for me,” Harris said. “It unassuming – and at first sight it looks like there is not much going on, but it always rises to the top. It is always resilient – and it always has multiple blooms. It has a peacock element to it, but it’s also subtle. You can’t stop it. It keeps going. You will often find bird of paradise in my work a lot because I feel like they are beautiful in all of their elegance.”
He was going about his business as one of the most in-demand floral designers, when he couldn’t help but be affected by the deaths of young black men at the hands of police – including Michael Brown in Ferguson.
“I saw this happening and then I am simultaneously doing these glamorous weddings and these crazy big projects where I’m servicing the one percent and I am the token black person in these places,” Harris said. “I am this weird exception to the rule, and I don’t like how that feels. It’s so unfortunate that in this country, we have not done a good job of reconciling our slave history. We are still living out those narratives in a very unfortunate way.”
He couldn’t find the words to express how he felt, so he decided to create. Bloom and Plume: Shades of Blackness Volume 1 was his artistic response.
Nude black male bodies juxtaposed against a floral background – or foreground.
“I think that black male bodies are not really respected,” Harris said. “We get killed for being black. And we have to cover our bodies up with our hypermasculinity. We have to cover it up with by being hypersexualized. So, I was trying to figure out, is there a way for me to show up in my body with no clothes on – nothing to protect me – and just be?”
After two volumes, he still isn’t sure.
“Every image that you see when there is nothing but your black skin, it’s like ‘ooh, he is so hot.’ Or he is strong. Or that’s my kind of man,” And that’s literally what’s also murdering us and making it where we can’t just be. That was my goal – for us to just be – and I haven’t figured out if we can.”
His goal for volume three was to highlight the beauty black hair, which the Saint Louis Art Museum audience delighted in seeing a sample of what “Shades of Blackness Volume 3: Don’t Touch My Hair” calendar and poster looked like as he designed in Osei’s mane while taking questions from the audience.
“How are you fastening them in?” one woman asked.
“Luckily, with our black hair and our tight curl pattern, the hair is able to take the stems that I pre-wired and we just put it in,” Harris said. “That’s the luxury of black hair.”
“My question is, ‘Can you do it in my thin, flat, white hair?” a second woman asked when handed the microphone.
“Probably not,” Harris said without a care.
“I want to feel beautiful too,” the woman shot back.
“You are,” Harris said. “And society has told you that for a long time. So, this is us getting a little time to shine.”
