How Two Black Artists Amplified Pittsburgh At Miami Art Week

Thousands of artists from around the world descended on Florida at the end of the year to exhibit and sell their work at Miami Art Week. Among the gathering’s 20 art fairs, Art Basel is its crown jewel. What began in 2002 has evolved into North America’s most comprehensive display of international contemporary art—with reports of pieces being sold for thousands to millions of dollars.

NewsOne Presents Still Blooming In The Whirlwind: Pittsburgh As A Black Cultural And Artistic Mecca

Last December, the Red Dot Miami art fair convened at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center. It’s where DS Kinsel, a Black-American artist from Pittsburgh, showed his paintings. This was his first time at Miami Art Week, and he exhibited alongside another Pittsburgh Black artist, Camerin “Camo” Nesbit. This was Nesbit’s eighth time at Miami Art Week. Both men represented BOOM Concepts art gallery.

 

Kinsel and his business partner, Thomas Agnew, founded BOOM Concepts in 2014 in a 1500-square-foot storefront in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood. What started as an incubator for its founders has evolved into a community mixed-use space and creative hub for advancing Black, brown, queer and femme artists.

Kinsel has a pioneer vision for BOOM Concepts artists. So, despite the costs of travel, lodging, food and preparing art at Red Dot, Kinsel took the leap to continue to advance his collective’s reach nationally and internationally with Miami Art Week.

I’m like a graffiti artist, a street writer, someone who was raised and inspired by the culture.

“It’s time to test BOOM Concepts and our artists in different markets,” Kinsel says. “And we are highly confident that the Black artists, the queer artists and the femme artists that we work with through BOOM Concepts can stand up in any market. And who better to prove that than myself and Camerin?”

Kinsel’s grandparents came to Pittsburgh during the Great Migration, which accounts for his familial deep roots in Pittsburgh.

Kinsel, 40, was born in Pittsburgh in 1984.

“The same year [Michael] Jordan got drafted. The same year Mario Lemieux got drafted,” Kinsel says.

Raised in the Hill District—the very area where August Wilson, the celebrated playwright, grew up—Kinsel is the father of three children ages five months, one and a half, and five years old. His wife, Anqwenique Kinsel, is an artist, too.

Kinsel is also a straight shooter.

When asked how he became an artist and whether or not he formally studied art, he responded: “Man, school of hard knocks, MFA in hip-hop. I’m like a graffiti artist, a street writer, someone who was raised and inspired by the culture.”

Kinsel’s father purchased his first rap CD. Kinsel was inspired by the cover art. As an adolescent, he went to major art fairs and museums in Pittsburgh—such as the Carnegie International and The Frick Pittsburgh—and looked at the contemporary and classical art on exhibit.

Camerin “Camo” Nesbit’s non-art school trajectory syncs with Kinsel’s. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1992 and grew up in an area called Homewood. Nesbit stands 6’6” and was a college basketball player at Mercyhurst University, located in Erie, Pennsylvania.

While playing basketball at Mercyhurst, Nesbit suffered a severe concussion that ended his collegiate career. “So, after that I did a little art therapy and started taking art seriously and doing sneakers,” Nesbit explains.

What is more emblematic of hip-hop culture than the sneaker—the sneaker as an art artifact itself? Nesbit goes on to further explain his evolution as an artist: “I went from a sneaker customizer to canvas to walls, and today, I have over 350 murals under my belt.”

We caught up with the BOOM Concepts team during Miami Art Week while they were deeply immersed in the action.

The Black artists, the queer artists and the femme artists that we work with can stand up in any market.

Kinsel and Nesbit told us that they toiled away during long days at their booth at the Red Dot. Their typical workday, manning the BOOM Concepts booth, ran from noon to eight.

Both artists made it clear that the television perception of artists is not their forte. Their work as artists is not all fun and games. They don’t have assistants. They “assist” one another as working artists.

At a fair like Red Dot, Kinsel and Nesbit represent “from the ground up” artists working, diligently, with a peering accountant’s eye. For example, booths vary in space, and rental costs range from $8,895 – $23,795, so managing costs associated with participating at the art fair is another proverbial hat they must wear.

As artists representing BOOM Concepts, Kinsel and Nesbit split the costs of a booth with sculptors Jason Sauer and Shawn Farester. Both are also from Pittsburgh and represent the art gallery Most Wanted Fine Art. Jason is the founder. He has been a mentor to Kinsel.

Kinsel thinks back about the process of participating at the Red Dot for the first time among his Pittsburgh colleagues who have been there and done that. What most people see is the end-product installation of art. They don’t have any real idea of the financial considerations.

Clearly, there has to be a bite-your-nails aspect to this for artists like Kinsel. Kinsel does not convey it overtly, though he has expenses and familial responsibilities.

This is what Kinsel sees as part of the process—the leap into the Red Dot art market for BOOM Concepts artists: “Jason asked us if we wanted to formally join the booth. That comes with an investment, that comes with planning, and that comes with a certain standard and quality of work and presentation.”

“Jason asked us if we wanted to formally join the booth. That comes with an investment, that comes with planning, and that comes with a certain standard and quality of work and presentation.”

One cannot help but think about the crapshoot aspect of Red Dot for artists like Kinsel and Nesbit who are not well-heeled. There is a put all your chips on the table mindset that functions as managed risk.

All of this is to be weighed against Kinsel’s insistence that, “We come from a kind of classic blue collar, you know, Pittsburgh background.” Nevertheless, Kinsel has been deeply influenced by hip-hop culture’s emphasis on entrepreneurship.

I went from a sneaker customizer to canvas to walls.

Kinsel is a hip-hop head and even though he talks at the speed of light, he does not talk fast. His ideas about art and co-founding BOOM Concepts amplify the grinding wheels of art production as an aspect of human and economic development in his native Pittsburgh community.

Artists are not flighty there. They can be seen. They can be touched. There is something else: It is the idea that people from poor and working-class Black communities can simply “be” without regret and pursue the artistic endeavor of their choice.

Hakim Hasan’s writings have appeared in Black Renaissance Noire, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle.

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