Black History Month: Cey Adams

Throughout the history of the United States, African American artists have been pioneers in many artistic movement. Since the Harlem Renaissance (ca. 1920s–1930s), many Black American artists have gained international reputations. One of the movements that African Americans helped evolve is the street art phenomenon, a category of art associated with graffiti, murals, and other forms for public art. Cey Adams has been involved in this vibrant art form since the 1970s.

Cey Adams (born 1962, United States), LOVE, for the 3rd Open Eye Festival presented by Superflat NB, New Bedford, Massachusetts, 2018. Image courtesy of the Artist. © 2025 Cey Adams. (8S-30405)

In LOVE, Adams incorporates his fondness for pop culture with his typography design and color and pattern choices that give a three-dimensional quality to the letters, called 3D-style graffiti. The bold, positive message of LOVE—referencing Robert Indiana’s (1928–2018) Pop Art LOVE works—can be viewed from miles away, inspiring a sense of belonging in the community. The illusion of depth alongside patterns, colors, and shapes—a nostalgic nod to 1960s style—create visual unity in the mural. The effectiveness of this artwork is driven by Adams’s knowledge of branding, communication, and graphic design.

The art form of graffiti has been around since the ancient world. It has been found in ancient Roman cities such as Pompeii and in religious sites of the ancient Maya. It was illegal to deface public buildings in both cultures, but the art form was also an important means of communication.

Contemporary graffiti evolved in American urban areas starting in the 1960s. It spans all racial and economic groups. Its appearance on public buildings, housing, and public transportation in American cities has spread as a cultural phenomenon around the world since the "renaissance" of graffiti art in the 1980s. While many early artists were self-taught, today graffiti can be a steppingstone to art training and careers as professional street artists.

The first ever gallery exhibition of graffiti artists occurred in 1973 at Razor Gallery in New York City. The exhibit featured the work of artists in the United Graffiti Artists collective. In 1983, the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York brought graffiti art to the commercial art world with the landmark exhibition Post-Graffiti. 

As an artist and a designer, Adams combines graffiti, fine art, and graphic design to create layered murals and mixed-media artworks. Often incorporating bold typography placed onto backgrounds of colorful shapes, Adams references Pop Art imagery, comic book styles, and graphic design elements in his murals. His simple, bold statements uplift and empower communities and individuals, sending messages about social issues, race and gender relations, consumerism, and popular culture. 

A New York City native, Adams started creating graffiti as a teenager in the 1970s and 80s. He was featured in the 1982 PBS hip-hop documentary Style Wars. He studied painting at the School of Visual Arts before starting a career as the creative director for Def Jam Recordings in 1983. Two years later, he cofounded the graphic design firm the Drawing Board. In addition to his design work and murals, Adams lectures and teaches throughout North America. Featuring subject matter such logos, the American flag, music, and historic figures, Adams presents recognizable elements from popular culture in his work. In his mixed-media collage works, he layers found and handmade paper with vibrant colors to create value and texture, presenting familiar imagery in new ways for the viewer to discover.

Cey Adams, American Flag, 2019. Mixed-media collage on wood panel, 35 13⁄16" x 72" (91.4 x 182.9 cm). Image courtesy of the Artist. © 2025 Cey Adams. (8S-30403)

Like Pop artist Jasper Johns (born 1930), Adams was inspired to create his series of American Flag works because it is an omnipresent image in American culture, and an iconic image for such a diverse society. However, Adams’s flags are not meant to convey a specific message, positive or negative. Each collage flag in the series is meant to be wide open to interpretation. Despite the differences in the imagery included in each work, Adams believes that the viewer is unavoidably, in the end, confronted with the American flag, and is left to form an opinion, interpretation or conclusion. This iteration of the series contains magazine and newspaper clippings from the early to mid-60s.

Portrait of Cey Adams. Courtesy of the Artist. (8S-30407)

Correlations to Davis Programs: Engaging with Public Art Card and Poster Set, Davis Collections: African American Artist 1945 to Present, Davis Collections: Collage