BLACK CHEROKEE

"I don’t know what you know and you don’t know what I know but together we have a whole lot of know," Black Cherokee.

I usually hate driving on the FDR to get into Manhattan. It is usually backed up with traffic to the point of insanity, but just when I am about to karate chop the guy in the car next to me, I see Black Cherokee's "art" installations and everything is right in the world again, or at least for the next 1/2 mile. Usually one might mistake his "crazy-ass visions" as just garbage on the side of the road but to him, and to many commuters, it is art.



Otis Houston Jr, aka Black Cherokee, has been putting together makeshift displays for at least the past ten years on the southbound side of the FDR at 125th St, underneath the entrance of the Triborough Bridge. Originally, Houston came to New York from South Carolina in the 70's and spent '76 in jail for dealing cocaine. A few years later, he was shot twice in the back. In 1984, he returned to prison for heroin, where he read books, took art classes, and became a vegetarian. And from what I have been able to piece together, he was released in 1992 and may or may not be homeless...I'm thinking he is though.

His art is really something you have to experience for yourself. Some of his work might deal with current events. After the Columbine shootings, he laid fifteen yellow tulips, one for each person killed, on a plank supported by paving stones. When New York City police officer John Kelly died while chasing a man on a motorcycle, Houston found a print of Jesus and framed it with a motorcycle tire.

Some of his work is his own social commentary like when he put up a big sign that read “Got Debt? Live Well, Eat Better, Spend Less“. And another which was a small sign that simply read "Try". Sounds like a page out of Yoko Ono's portfolio.



And then there is some of his work that is just bizarre, like four blue strollers upside down in a puddle, twenty-three bottles of juice in a row, a white stuffed carnival gorilla in a beach chair and one, that I had the privilege of seeing, a baby doll sitting in a chair with a pink suitcase to her left and palm tree to her right. But the coup de grace would have to be him standing in the middle of hundreds of books that have been stacked into a makeshift fortress. He had books strapped all over his body like a suit of armer, shaking his arms and pointing violently at the traffic that passed. No clue to what that means but whenever I see his "art" it makes me smile and wish that I could live that freely (without being homeless of course).

But you can not pigeon hole Black Cherokee to entertaining passerbys with just art. Morning commuters are regularly treated to the sight of B.C. exercising. Sometimes shadowboxing, sometimes yoga. His motto is that "People are stuck in their cars, and I like to show them that there's another way to be." "I do a lot of stretching," he said. "There's eight thousand poses in yoga, and I've invented a few extra ones myself. And there's no reason not to do them in your car."

Only in New York…right?



ATTRIBUTION ADDED ON 10/14/08
In a stunning turn of events, my blog was found by the outside world and was mistakenly thought of to be original. Yeah...it is a shock to me too. Here is a link to where I got a lot of my information on Black Cherokee...because if I don't add it soon I think I'm going to give "dancing" Tony an aneurysm. Oh and I didn't make that video...I don't put that amount of effort into anything I do, let alone blogging.