Today we’d like to introduce you to Marquis Tucker.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Marquis. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have come to want to be known as BLUE. When in reference to my artistic career. Let’s see if it sticks. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a talent for drawing. I didn’t know what I had until I started drawing my favorite anime characters from memory. Middle school is when I started meeting other kids who could draw, like my friend Blake Showers, who I would draw original characters imagined inside the universe of some of the popular anime out at the time. But around that time, I began to explore graphic design when I began to fall in love with hip hop music.
So, to give myself to the hip hop and rap industry, I began to design cover art and logos for a local artist. Just keep up the skill, but never taking it too seriously until the middle of high school, where I met on of my greatest art teachers. My art teacher, Jena Momenee from Woodlawn High School, introduced me to a lot of new materials and mediums that would give me a new load of skills. A skill that I would then evolve when I went to college. But during my eleventh-grade year, I met a good friend of mine, KT Showers in the lunchroom, a rapper and producer. From then, we began working together on projects. I eventually ventured out and began meeting other local artists around the city of Birmingham. After I graduated high school, I attended the Art Institute of Atlanta for media arts and animation, which wasn’t my first pick of art majors. But it was there that I evolved my artistic abilities and strengthened my art foundation. I eventually dropped out within the first year, lived all over Atlanta for about two years, then moved back to Birmingham, where I’ve been ever since. But not for long.
During all this time, I was just experiencing many different things, learned about all kinds of new art, did some soul searching, defined my career path, and sharpened a few of my skillsets. I spent a few years circulating around the art and music venues around Birmingham “networking” as we tend to dress it up sometimes. I did a lot of design work for KT and his label Black Shepherd and a few other artists from Birmingham to Metro Atlanta. But it was not until the last few years where I’ve really have begun to hone in on my purpose.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Since I have begun taking my artistic career more seriously, I have come to face many challenges along the way. In my teenage years, depression settled in and that easily became my biggest challenge putting a huge damper on my career. I put a huge amount of pressure on myself to become successful enough not only to take care of myself and my family but give back to my community and create opportunities for people who look like me. That was a lot of responsibility I placed on myself at an early age was crippling. I grow to have a self-destructive mentality with expectations of myself and others around me. That made it difficult for me to date, build solid relationships with other creatives, and even experience important family moments, making it harder for me to escape that path I was going down. I did not have any guidance during these phases of my life and if I did, I rejected it out of pride. I missed out a lot because of that. I was lost.
I questioned my purpose, my surroundings, my friends, my family, the people I worked with or for, any and everything. That is when doubt manifested and because of that, I dealt with a lot of regrets as well. The reality of it all was that I was hard on myself; the most difficult obstacle was me. But even with of this adversity, I never stopped searching for my purpose and for peace. Recently, I have come to learn so much about myself and how my mind ticks, I have become more focused and intentional with myself. I can add that a lot of great women have come into my life to help me see the person I truly was, that help me tremendously. With this newfound sense of self, I have reached a new level of satisfaction and I move with clarity.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
With Project: Blue Blood as BLUE. I want to showcase my creative ability under a brand that would allow me to create freely but with intentional branding to make it easily identifiable by my audience. Project: Blue Blood is a culmination of digital and visual arts, product designs, and set designs, including fashion, scents, and food, for example, to immerse the audience and all their senses in an experience like no. All of which is heavily influenced by anime. With the digital design, I create memorable logos, flyers, and cover art designs for small businesses and musical artists from any genre or walk of life. I create custom artwork for my clients and sell original pieces as well. I specialize in space and nature art pieces cut from plywood in custom shapes and sizes. I try to use as many different mediums and techniques to achieve different effects with my pieces. I love working with different materials and find joy in using them to problem solve during my creative process.
I am using Project: Blue Blood as a steppingstone to enter these industries and really make an impact on the quality of life and the environment. With space and nature in mind, my product designs, while still in the development stages, are futuristic, functional, stylish, and ecofriendly. We have gone to long with outdated plastic products and poor disposal methods to reduce ocean waste and crowded landfills. My goal is to establish a company that will ultimately produce all its products one hundred percent from recycled raw materials. Taking a step back to my artwork, using those different materials and mediums to create pieces, has inspired me to venture into set design. The thought of creating real-world environments from a design and visual perspective is so fascinating! But as of right now, the closest thing to set designs I have done is the creative direction for music videos. Set design is where I know I will flourish, placing the audience into my mind triggering all the senses, creating characters for the space with fashion design and prop making, and triggering all of the senses that will take them to another world! That is what I created Project: Blue Blood for.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Throughout my life, I have met several inspiring friends, clients, and family members who motivated me to continue working on my brand. My sister has been one of my biggest supports lately, giving my advice and even helping me financially and that means the world to me. My mom helped me out a lot as well, guiding me towards my purpose even if I did not understand her logic. It took me some time to see what she saw for me, but she was always right. As moms tend to be. Haha! I also met my mentor, Marvin Smith, a few years ago, who instills a lot of great knowledge in me and helps me understand the materials and tools I use to create my art. My art teacher from high school, I mentioned earlier, fostered my art skills and never let up on me.
A lot of the friends and acquaintances I had come to know and work with all left seeds of knowledge and inspiration, like Valencia Johnson and Nadia Gulley, who believed in me before I believed in myself. These are some of the people that kept me on my path to purpose and I am grateful for them. But I can not go without mentioning those who doubted me. Though I do not use that negative energy as motivation, I can not forget those people and I use that as a reminder that there are people who do not want to see me succeed. When that happens, I am reminded that my success is in the hands of God and not man. Because without him, I am nothing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.marquistucker.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/bluebxi
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/PRJTBlueBlood
- Twitter: twitter.com/bluebxi
Image Credit:
Isaac Brady (IJB Motions)
C. J. Goodman (Live Prep Nation Media)
Caroline Japal
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