Marrying Hip-Hop, the Past and the Future With Artist Manzel Bowman

To see more art from Manzel, check out @artxman on Instagram. For more music stories, head to @music.

Freedom of expression is important to Manzel Bowman (@artxman). Growing up on Long Island, he started in art like most kids, painting stick figures and shapes in kindergarten and exploring his creative side with Lego sets. “I wasn’t one for the instructions. I just liked to make my own stuff,” he says.

Manzel, a self-taught piano player, later enrolled in a pre-med program at Virginia’s Hampton University, but it “didn’t stick,” so he switched to graphic design, which gave him room to express himself. He ended up creating digital illustrations of some of his favorite musicians — Tupac, Jimi Hendrix, Janelle Monáe, Sun Ra, Freddie Gibbs, etc. –– and soon hit his first big break, with a cartoon version of Big Boi, which the rapper saw on Instagram and asked to use for a potential mixtape cover. “This is me being three months out of school, just trying to get my artwork out there,” he says. “Since then, I’ve been constantly creating.”

He does a wide range of work — from illustrations to sci-fi portraits to sketches — but the 25-year-old can’t say what specifically influences his art. “I feel I’m an out of the ordinary person,” he says, laughing. He doesn’t analyze why certain artists’ songs inspire him, either, outside of saying “it gets me going.” He does create his own music, though, under the alias ORAKL. “That is going to be a huge project. I can’t really talk too much about it.” Why not? “You’d have to talk to ORAKL.”

While that might sound cagey, Manzel is upfront about his ambition. “I have a message that I’m slowly pushing. I’m trying to bring a commonality between the past and the future with my artwork, very culturally based,” he says. That’s easily seen in his space-like works that often present black women as Egyptian-like deities in front of psychedelic, starry backgrounds. “Sometimes I’ll see a pattern design in a fence or I’ll be brushing my teeth and an idea just hits me and I go straight to work.”

Manzel’s future sights are set on anime and cartoons, but for now he’s got a few exciting projects in the works, including artwork for rapper David Banner’s new album The God Box, which entails creating pieces for each individual track.

“My artwork is what I do,” says Manzel. “There’s not too much changing me to fit the bill of a project. I like to portray the black individual in its highest regard. I feel free to do that, so I run with it.”

—Instagram @music

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