The New Black History: Interview With Rello Jones

The New Black History: Interview With Rello Jones

The Chicago-based artist and Fat Tiger Workshop crew member spoke about how he first got into art, what New Black History means to him, and much more. He also hints at an upcoming collaboration with Stadium Goods.

Matt DeSciora

We continue our New Black History series with another guest making an impact in culture and in their community: contemporary artist Rello Jones.

Rello (given name Terrell Jones) was born and raised in Chicago, and the Windy City has played a central role in his career as both an entrepreneur and an artist. In 2014, Rello helped open Fat Tiger Workshop, a streetwear institution in Chicago that became a hub for creativity and culture to thrive in. The shop, which had to relocate several times over the years due to its growing popularity, routinely hosted workshops that encouraged entrepenurialship for local youth. Many of the folks under the tutelage of Rello and company have gone on to have prosperous careers of their own in fashion, art, and other creative areas.

As an artist, Rello has honored his city’s rich art history with exhibitions and founded his own design company, Paradise Design House. Most recently, Rello displayed his work at Fat Tiger for the final time ahead of the storied shop’s untimely closure with a pop up titled “Art Can Heal the World.” A portion of the proceeds from the show went to Community Goods, a non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gap between the arts and underserved students in the Chicago area.

Clearly, Rello is putting on for Chicago by being accessible to his community, who in turn are eager to spread the word of his amazing artwork around the world through reposting on social media, wearing clothes with his art on them, and the old school way, by word of mouth.

We caught up with Rello to talk about his influences, his place in New Black History, what’s next for Fat Tiger Workshop, and much more.

What’s up, Rello. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. You just had your Instagram Live interview with Reesa on the Stadium Goods Instagram account, and we know how Reesa likes to put people through the wringer, so we’ll try and go easy on you. But no promises.

Appreciate it, man. It’s been a crazy day, but I’m happy to be talking to y'all.

Help bring our readers up to speed on who you are and what you do.

I’m Rello. I’m a contemporary artist based in Chicago—born and raised in the Windy City. I’m known for being one of the founders of Fat Tiger Workshop, and for creating the “Ozzy the Bad Mouse” character.

When did you get into art?

I used to doodle when I was younger, but I didn’t really get into art until I was a little older when I discovered people who looked like me could make a living creating exactly what it was that they wanted to make. My entry point was fine art, streetwear, and design, and seeing early independent streetwear brands bubble.

Like The Hundreds, Mighty Healthy?

Yeah, Crooks & Castles. Basically all the brands that were from my generation of streetwear.

Did any of those brands specifically influence you? If not, who were some of your early inspirations? What made you say, “Yeah, art is what I want to do for the rest of my life?”

From an art standpoint, I think I decided I wanted to test my hand with fine art when I was maybe 20 years old and it was my first time in Los Angeles. Heavyweight Gallery had Parra’s work on display, and it was my first time seeing any of his work in my life. I was like, “This shit is fire!” That was the first time I was like, “I would like to be in this lane. I want to create something like this.” There was always this preconceived notion that you had to paint or your art had to look one way. Seeing Parra for the first time, it was like “Oh this is just like print editions. It’s super clean and really purposeful.” That was when the lightbulb went off in my head.

Could you explain who “Ozzy the Bad Mouse” is and why he plays such an important role in your work?

Ozzy the Bad Mouse is an experimental character. If you took the iconic Mickey Mouse character that everyone loves and you repackage that character and present it to people as a Black character, with the same personality, he’s still friendly, will people then treat Black people differently based on them loving a fictitious character? The name “Bad Mouse” came in because when I was first showing the character to people, they were like “He looks mean.” But I’m like, “He’s smiling.” Then people would say, “His eyes. He looks mad or upset.” Also, I designed his ears differently; obviously he has skin tone now. So that’s where the “Bad Mouse” stuff came from.

The ears, though, specifically, were inspired by Walt Disney’s first character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It was taking those two, old school characters and combining some of their iconic traits. That’s how you get Ozzy the Bad Mouse.

How would you define New Black History and how would you say that you’re creating it?

Well, in today’s time, we have the ability to define some of our Black heros, and they don’t necessarily have to be Civil Rights heroes. And that’s not to say that the Civil Rights era heroes aren’t important because they laid the foundation for us to be able to do what we want. But now we have the luxury of having our new Black heroes be artists, athletes, entertainers, philosophers, authors, whomever. Now we’re starting to have a lot more diversity in choosing who our heroes are. It’s not such a thing that’s focused on our dark beginning. Now our heroes represent our beginning as well as our bright future.

Are there any Black artists that inspired you?

Kerry James Marshall, for sure. One of my favorite things about his art is that he uses a very deep, darker skin tone and he presents it as a beautiful thing. If you look back at past art, depictions of that particular hue of Blackness were done to mock Black people. With Kerry James Marshall, he was like, “Look at this, Black is beauty.” I love Kerry James Marshall and what he achieved with his art. There’s several layers to it. There’s an element of Blackness in there, but there’s still so much more to look at.

We couldn’t let you get out of here without talking about sneakers. Do you have a favorite Black sneaker designer?

Best sneaker designer coming with all the heat this year… Joe Freshgoods.

There you go.

He’s got some stuff coming, man. I don’t wanna ruin any surprises but, yeah, stay tuned. I was just talking to Joe about some of his upcoming releases and it’s crazy.

I didn’t even realize this, which is crazy, but Fat Tiger Workshop actually closed, right?

Yeah, unfortunately we just closed on January 9th, so somewhat recently.

What’s on the horizon as far as a physical retail space now? I understand that you have an art gallery in the works?

The plan is to put the finishing touches on a gallery space in Chicago. The spirit of the gallery will have elements of Fat Tiger to it because, you know, that was our “first baby.” The gallery is going to be about giving artists a platform and being able to grow as an art brand as opposed to being boxed in to having to create these super premium pieces that have to sell for super high prices. It’s almost like artists feel like they have to focus on their, let’s say, 50 core collectors, when really, your art is good and you have a network of people who want to buy your stuff. You may not have a big network of people who want to buy, say, one thing for $20,000, but you may have 1,000 people who want to buy something for $200 or $300.

So the gallery is going to focus on print editions, collectibles, novelties; that’ll be the core of it. It’s helping artists with the process of putting their work in as many hands as possible without watering anything down.

What advice would you give to someone who’s looking to break into the art community?

First, be realistic with yourself. If you make art and it comes from the heart, no matter what happens or where your art lands, you can be happy about it. If you make art solely for profit, that’s going to put a lot of pressure on you because you’re not really doing it from the heart, you’re just making shit that you think people are going to like. You’re pandering to people, and that never works from an artistic standpoint. To those people, I say step out of fine art and go into design, because that’s what design is about. Design is about giving people what they want. Art is about doing what you feel, not necessarily having any rules attached to it. Design is about rules and purpose. So, always, always be true to yourself and understand your mission. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and be judged a little by people. In a lot of ways, if you want to be a public artist, that’s kind of the point. Art is for the people. You have to let people see it and enjoy it. Or not enjoy.

People are fickle, anyway. You could make the greatest thing possible, in any creative field, and people are going to have an opinion about it.

Yeah, it comes with the territory. You have to lean into it.

Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap things up?

Man, just watch out for this gallery. We’re about to reveal the name in the next few weeks. Also, watch out for these Stadium Goods varsity jackets we have coming. [insert Birdman hand rub] They’re fire! The jackets are going to drop close to the gallery opening, and it’s going to be beautiful.

You can follow Rello on Instagram at @kingrello