Closing Reception & Conversation with the Artists

Black Futures in Art: Excellence Beneath My Feet Lives Within My Bones

Don’t miss the closing reception of Black Futures in Art: Excellence Beneath My Feet Lives Within My Bones at the Bus Stop Gallery. Join artists Joseph H Graves Jr., Kevin Johnson, and Adderly Grant-Lord for a conversation about their creative process, the ideas shaping the work, and the vision behind Black Futures in Art.

Friday, February 27 | 6-9pm NoBo Bus Stop Gallery | 4895 Broadway
Conversation with the Artists: 7-8pm

The gallery opens at 3pm — come by early and settle in. Artists will arrive around 5pm to connect, share about their work, and enjoy snacks and beverages with the community.

Excellence Beneath My Feet Lives Within My Bones

Genome Speaks What Erasure Cannot Silence

Black Futures in Art affirms that excellence is inherited and embodied. It lives beneath our feet and within our bones—carried through memory, discipline, and lived experience. Everything we are, and everything we will ever be, travels with us. It is encoded. This exhibition brings together two artists whose lives are shaped by service and responsibility—one through teaching, the other through military service. These lived truths are not separate from the work; they inform how the artists see, build, and imagine. Knowledge carried. Protection offered. Presence held. The works presented here rise from lineage and lived truth, shaped by resilience, commitment, and imagination. Through color, form, and material, the artists speak across time—honoring ancestors whose courage made room for learning, survival, and possibility. Rooted in its beginnings in the NoBo Art District and carried across Boulder County, Black Futures in Art now marks its fifth year as a growing continuum—expanding through relationships, creative ecosystems, and shared vision. Black Futures in Art holds space for transformation: burden transmuted into brilliance, experience shaped into vision. This exhibition is both reflection and offering—a reminder that Black futures are not imagined in isolation, but built through care, community, and creative authority. Thank you for the time you spend here—time that cannot be returned. In exchange, we offer vision, care, and truth meant to move with you. May what you receive take root, awaken memory, and remind you of who you are becoming. This is given with honor, with gratitude, and with celebration.

Curator — Adderly Grant-Lord

About Joseph Graves Jr.

Joseph Graves Jr. is a Colorado-based visual artist, educator, and author whose work explores creativity, identity, and cultural memory through vibrant, narrative-driven imagery. Working primarily in acrylic, illustration, and mixed media, Graves creates work that centers everyday figures and overlooked histories with warmth, humor, and intention.

Rooted in Kansas, where his early life as a Black cowboy shaped his worldview, Graves now lives and works in Colorado. His practice draws from personal experience, childhood memory, and contemporary culture, challenging narrow ideas of who is seen, celebrated, and remembered in American visual narratives.

Graves is the author of two children’s books, including You Are an Artist, which encourages creative confidence and self-expression in young readers. His work has been featured on PBS and NPR Tiny Desk Studios, and he has exhibited with Niza Knoll Gallery, Charles Cousins Gallery, and Vida Ellison Gallery. He presented a solo exhibition at See Saw Art Gallery titled In Plain Sight: A Celebration of Black Cowboys. His artwork is currently held in residency at The Clayton Hotel in Cherry Creek.

Graves teaches Drawing & Painting and Graphic Design, using education as an extension of his commitment to community access, mentorship, and creative empowerment. Through both studio practice and teaching, he builds spaces where creativity becomes a shared language—inviting people of all ages to see themselves as artists and active participants in culture.

Follow Joseph’s Journey on Instagram: @artbyjoseph_graves_jr

About Kevin Johnson

Kevin Johnson is a Colorado-based painter, concept artist, graphic designer, sculptor, and animator known for his striking employment of vibrant colors and depictions of everyday people  progressing, and  evolving through life. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Johnson pulls his images from childhood memories, life experiences, and his active imagination, with friends and family inspiring several works. Primarily working in acrylic but known to “dive into oil paint from time to time,” Johnson paints positive figures and images, ones that leave us hopeful, enchanted, inspired.

“I love using bright colors and painting images of people and how they move through life. It’s amazing, to me, how we can change from day to day.”

A retired 21-year member of the U.S. Army who actively served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Johnson graduated with a B.S. in computer animation from Full Sail University before returning to school to study media design. Mentored by contemporary figurative artist, LaShun Beal, Johnson also studied under world-renowned fine artist and illustrator, Thomas Blackshear, for seven years. His gallery appearances include shows at Colorado’s Southwinds Fine Art Gallery, G44 Gallery, Bella Art Gallery, and the Beauty of Blackness Fine Art Show. In late February 2021, Johnson’s art was included in the historic reopening of the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) as part of the exhibition, Fresh and Contemporary: Moving Forward. Johnson, whose work has been purchased by the likes of celebrity collector and former NBA baller, Grant Hill, lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and six children.

Connect with Kevin on Instagram: @kevjart

Learn more about artist and curator Adderly Grant-Lord: www.adderlyart.com