Art to amplify the marginalized
JTroy ade Warrick stood on the top rung of a stepladder and dabbed swirls of canary yellow acrylic paint onto the ceiling of a cramped vestibule of the Troy Dance Factory.
Warrick was transforming a drab entryway into a vibrant street scene. It pulsed with wave-like motion, the energy of a boom box and a stylized Black dancer with androgynous features clad in the colors of royalty.
Warrick, 29, who identifies as a queer illustrator-artist, is a sought-after local artist with a rising reputation. Her work can be seen in large murals on both sides of the Hudson, from a six-story creation along Broadway in downtown Albany and at the Troy Farmers’ Market.
Warrick’s artistic vibe is a mash-up of 1960s-era flower power, comic book accessibility and subject matter that represents the underrepresented and empowers the marginalized, especially the BIPOC and LGBTQ communities.
“I came to Albany and noticed the only Black art I saw was in memorials for people who were killed,” Warrick said. “As a Black person, I find those memorials vital, but I wondered where was the art of happy Black people?”
She set out to correct that omission with a buoyant aesthetic that brings sunshine on a cloudy day.
“There’s so much stress in the world. I want my art to be healing and calming,” she said.
Warrick came to Albany four years
ago because her grandmother lives locally. Her “Trashkid” tag is a growing presence on the region’s art scene. The nickname came during a tumultuous childhood marked by the struggles of her single teen mother.
“We created our own games, my sisters and I called each other the Gambino crew and we all created nicknames. I was Trashkid,” she recalled. “I never thought of it as degrading, but more of a poor kid vibe.”
She spent stretches without housing in the gritty Inglewood section south of Los Angeles. The family couch-surfed with relatives or lived out of a car. The oldest of seven kids, money was tight. They drifted as nomads between several cities across California, Nevada, Mississippi and Texas.
“We had some tough times,” she said. “I learned to handle pressure and to create art on the fly.”
With few toys and no electronic games, she entertained her younger sisters with art supplies — her mother is an artist and fashion designer — and a fertile imagination.
Warrick was 6 or 7 when she drew a recurring character, Captain Squiggle Fish, and kept her sisters amused by the starfish’s antics.
She was home-schooled and rebelled from her mother’s Christian conservatism with doodles that were angry and dark. She carried a sketch pad and drawing was her main mode of expression.
“We were poor, we moved around a lot, I didn’t have any friends and I was not happy being raised in a strict Baptist household,” she recalled. “That came out in my art.”
Warrick also knew as an adolescent that she was queer, but dated boys to mollify her mother. She was 18 when she introduced her girlfriend to her parents. “It felt good to come out because I have a trans aunt and family members who are queer,” she said.
A grandmother helped raise Warrick, who earned a visual communication associate degree from Lone Star College in Houston.
Warrick has a state job in multimedia production that pays the bills and allows her to pursue an art career on nights and weekends. She brought her little brother, Arick, 13, on a chilly Monday evening to the back of an industrial building in Troy along the Hudson River. Rainy, windy weather had delayed the project.
“Fill in those thin areas with this,” Warrick told her brother after she mixed a lighter shade of yellow. “Use the small brush for the edges. Be careful not to drip.”
He shrugged. “I like painting and helping out,” he said.
Warrick brought her brother into Amplified Voices, a community collaborative public mural project she created with artist Eugene O’neill. The program offers art training to help amplify the voices of young local artists of color through mentoring.
Although her artwork does not focus on political themes, she merges activism with her passion to create and teach art. “I consider myself more of an on-theground activist,” said Warrick, who taught art at an elementary school in Houston. “Amplified Voices is a way to inspire young artists, make art accessible and teach kids to do what I do. That’s a kind of activism.”
Warrick partnered with Jammella Anderson and her Free Food Fridge Albany project by painting colorful scenes on three refrigerators placed around the city for anyone in need to take fresh produce, dairy products, frozen meats and other food staples.
She credits Tony Iadicicco, executive director of the Albany Center Gallery, as a mentor who helped her grow as an artist and assisted with mural projects.
Clients find Warrick through her Instagram page: trashkid_art. That’s how Nadine Medina, owner of the Troy Dance Factory, hired Warrick to create a mural.
“I was a big fan of her work,” said Medina, whose dance space is now in its 10th year. “It’s been great working with Jade. Our entrance in the back of the building was hard to find before. We’re like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.”
As Warrick worked, a tattooed guy in a custom pickup truck stopped and walked over. He said he liked Warrick’s comic book style and expressed interest in hiring her to paint a mural at his new Central Avenue business.
“Hit me up on Instagram,” she told the guy. “Just look for Trashkid.”