SOARING
Artist Hebru Brantley’s Chicago-born vision has resonated far beyond his home turf—and this could be just the beginning. By Matt Lee It’s the goggles. Or maybe it’s the vintage WWII-era pilot’s cap, coupled with the handkerchief. Or, maybe, it’s the sheer momentum of the character, flying forward. Whatever it is, once you see Chicago artist Hebru Brantley’s Flyboy character, you remember him. These days, likely more Chicagoans than not recognize Flyboy. Inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen, Flyboy has adorned murals from Bucktown to Uptown to the South Loop and, in 2016, was the inspiration for a Chance the Rapper video viewed by almost 20 million people. While he’s no doubt Brantley’s signature character, though, he’s far from the only one—and the scope of the artist’s work is sprawling, in more ways than one. Like other creative pioneers, Brantley has made not just a remarkable career, but a remarkable life, out of doing what he loves. That’s far from a platitude. An artist since he was a child on the South Side, Brantley has produced a body of work influenced by phenomena ranging from comic books and cartoons to JeanMichel Basquiat and anime. This amalgamation of influences
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isn’t a quirky-sounding bio sound bite, but rather the uniquely disparate components of Brantley’s vision—simply put, what he had, by hook or by crook, to get out into the world. Brantley’s story is a Chicago story, though, and first of his influences among equals is the Chicago-based AfriCOBRA street art movement of the 1960s and ’70s. “It was all around me,” says Brantley, who splits his time between Chicago and L.A., but calls Chicago home. “That was my daily journey to the crib. You pass by those walls, those murals… In my limited exposure growing up, that’s what I was exposed to and what I understood to be art, or street art.” He didn’t take an art class in high school, but while studying film at Clark Atlanta University, he found the art classes he snuck into at the Art Institute of Atlanta more compelling than his chosen field of study. After graduation, in 2002, while painting on the side and working at a record company, he sold his first painting to a DJ friend. It was then, he says, he considered becoming a professional artist. His vision, ultimately, coalesced into what can be described as character-driven narrative art.
