Most at home surrounded by the chaos of Mardi Gras and the percussive beats of a marching band, Bruce Davenport Jr., better known as Dapper Bruce Lafitte, a New Orleans native, has found success in his unique style of pen-and-marker drawings of the city’s vibrant street parades. He cites Ernie Barnes, Bob Ross, Clementine Hunter, and his grandmother as inspirations. Dapper Bruce Lafitte is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery and his drawing I’m a NOLA Art Beast is on view in the exhibition Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans, the donated collection of Arthur Roger. Davenport will speak as part of an Artist’s Perspective lecture series on Friday, June 30, at 6 p.m. Arts Quarterly editorial assistant Starlight Williams discussed Davenport’s aspirations as a young African American artist.

 How did you develop your style of art?

Ernie Barnes. I would watch Good Times, and I would imitate his work. (One of Barnes’ paintings, The Sugar Shack, appeared in the sitcom’s final credits and on the 1976 album cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You.) I remember one time he did a scene with the people in the pool hall, and I remember that I drew that and my grandma was like, “OK, baby that’s how Good Times did that, now go on and create your own style.” Then, I remember watching the PBS channel, and Bob Ross would come on (The Joy of Painting) and as he was painting, he was teaching me how to be creative and doing the work. So, I remember going to the Mardi Gras parades and seeing the marching bands, and then I would come home and I would draw that. My grandma said “OK baby, that’s your style. Picture that.” Then, I remember seeing Clementine Hunter’s work and I thought I would put a little bit of that inside my work. The work it comes from observing, watching other artists that were inside the game, and I learned from them. I learned about Ernie Barnes more. I learned about Bob Ross more, Clementine Hunter more, and figured maybe I could combine all three types of styles and put into one and call it Dapper Bruce Lafitte.

 What do you hope people get from looking at your work?

I want people to get three things. I want people to get the culture of what I’m creating. I want them to get the history of it. Sometimes, I do the marching bands that were tore up after Katrina, and sometimes people don’t know the history of the marching bands, or the history of certain projects. I want them to take me home like they would do a Picasso, put me on their wall, and go “wow.” I want them to be amazed. I want them to be educated, and I want them to be proud of it.

Your roots are deeply planted in New Orleans. How is that expressed in your work?

I want people to get three things. I want people to get the culture of what I’m creating. I want them to get the history of it. Sometimes, I do the marching bands that were tore up after Katrina, and sometimes people don’t know the history of the marching bands, or the history of certain projects. I want them to take me home like they would do a Picasso, put me on their wall, and go “wow.” I want them to be amazed. I want them to be educated, and I want them to be proud of it.

I’m competing with New Orleans, and I’m competing with Mardi Gras, competing with the criminal activity, the courts. I’m competing with the good things and the horrible things in New Orleans. I had to find my niche inside New Orleans, and take it and represent New Orleans in a way that when people looked at it they say, “Hey, that’s a Dapper Bruce work.” Even though I’m a native of New Orleans, I still had to find a way inside it, and that’s what I did when I found my way inside the horse game with New Orleans’ history, culture, and style to represent it. I tried to do it in a good way because when I was coming it up it was rap, it was music, it was the food that was representing New Orleans. Sometimes it was good, and sometimes it was bad. I just want the younger generations to see my work and go “OK, I can be somebody.”

What was it like to work with the Arthur Roger Gallery, and how has the association helped your career?

I remember after coming back from Katrina, I was working on Bourbon at Orleans Street, parking cars at this hotel, and Arthur Roger’s dog—it was like a weenie dog—and him would pass our hotel every day. I would see him, and I told my lawyer —I like to call him Uncle Pete—that I had some artwork. He said, “Well Bruce, you got some great artwork, and I know this gallery named Arthur Roger. You should take it over to them.” At the time, I was real timid and said, “Nah, I don’t think I can do that.” Uncle Pete was like, “Well Bruce, if you ain’t going to show it, then get out my face. I’m telling you go to the table and eat, and you don’t want to go eat.”

Later, I remember going to Arthur Roger’s gallery, and he had an event going on. This was about 2008, 2009. By then, it was my second or third year in the art game. I gave to the Arthur Roger Gallery a drawing about a high school marching band, and they sold it. Later, I remember meeting Arthur Roger again. He came to a studio that I was working at, and he saw what I was doing.

He goes, “Wow Bruce. I really love this work what are you going to do with it.” I turned and said, “No Arthur, what are we going to do with it.”

Arthur said, “ Bruce, you are just doing this?” and I said, “Well, I was just doing the work for somebody to come want it, but I think you and me would do well to do business with each other.”

He laughed and smiled, and said “Alright, let’s do White Linen.”

Dealing with Arthur Roger is something beyond my expectations. Getting into the art game, I knew that I had to have me a big dog in the New Orleans art scene. I knew I had good work, and Arthur Roger’s was the place for me to be at. Working with Arthur Rodger exposed me to different types of artists and different styles of art, and I’m able to compete against the best that he has, and I want to be one of those artists that is respected. It was an honor dealing with the Arthur Roger Gallery.

What has an art career done for you?

I remember my grandparents, especially my grandmother, would speak to me about my future. She said, “You can either go to the penitentiary or the cemetery, which one you want to go to?” As a little kid, I was like, “Wow, OK. I need to do right.” This art allows me to do right because I remember when I wasn’t doing art, I was living in the dark stages of my life. I was doing all kinds of wrong things, and with art, it takes me out of doing wrong or even thinking about doing wrong. Art deterred me from the penitentiary. It deterred me from having hundreds of children. It stopped me from being a slave to anyone else but me.

With such repetitious and detailed work, how do you stay focused to get the job done?

I would watch Good Times and it would only come on for thirty minutes, and Bob Ross would come and he would stay on for thirty minutes, so I would sit there with my pen and paper waiting and then I would tell myself, “Alright, I have three minutes to get this work done. Let me hurry up and try to remember what I had seen on T.V.” I remember going to the Mardi Gras and seeing the parades for two or three seconds or the floats, and you would have to remember that in your mind. Somebody might try to distract me, but I remember my grandmother stopping people from dealing with me or put me somewhere in a corner so I could work. So now as a grown-up, I still have my grandmother’s mentality that nothing around me can take my focus off my work. Being in the game for twelve years, you learn to stay focused and that you better stay focused, otherwise the person coming up behind you will knock you out.