Day 132: Merletta Martin
“I think it helps them to identify with the fact that they can take their crayon drawings all through their life. This is somebody that has done the exact same thing that they’re doing. I am inspired by inspiring them.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Merletta, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Merletta Martin: My name is Merletta Martin. I’m President of Merletta J. Martin Gallery and …
Toni: Go ahead, go ahead …
Merletta: And also President of Black River Management, Incorporated, which runs the Gallery.
Toni: Okay, well thank you for that. Merletta, when you think about that word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?
Merletta: When I think of the word inspire, I think of inspiring kids. And the reason why I say that is I started painting when I was eight years old. Back then, it was just playing with crayons. So when I see a little kid who wants to play with crayons or wants to draw and stuff like that, I like to motivate them or inspire them to go farther with their crayon or with their drawings, because I see myself in that little kid.
Toni: That’s very cool. How do you go about that then? Do people … do you invite children to your Gallery? Do you get to be in their presence? How does that happen?
Merletta: Yes, I invite children to the Gallery. I also do an online class where I teach art online. I have to bring them onto a platform where they can be anywhere in the comfort of their home and watch me paint and interact with me. I started that almost half a year ago, and it’s going fine. I have students from all over. They’ll call me up and want to paint or their parents would say “Oh, my daughter likes to paint, can you talk to her?” I’m like “I will get her onto the platform,” and I paint with them.
Toni: So you do virtual painting classes.
Merletta: Yes, I do.
Toni: That’s really cool. So when you’re teaching a child to paint or helping them explore their creativity, how do you think that helps them explore their potential?
Merletta: I think it helps them to identify with the fact that they can take their crayon drawings all through their life. This is somebody that has done the exact same thing that they’re doing. I am inspired by inspiring them.
Toni: So when you say they can take their crayon drawings all through their life, what do you mean by that?
Merletta: Well, based on the fact that they’re playing with crayons right now or they’re just learning to play with it, they’re going to go through all the stages in school from grade school way on to college and to grad school and they can — as they master and get a degree and open a gallery — do stuff, do anything that entails what they want to do with it. So that’s where I say they can take it right through their life with it.
Toni: So depending on how creative they want to be with their creativity, you inspire them at a young age to do just what they want to do.
Merletta: Exactly.
Toni: So how does that then work for you? What do you need to be inspired?
Merletta: What do I need to be inspired? I just need to get up and go take a walk outside or watch the sun come up, because I paint nature … if you look at my website, most of my paintings are of some places that I have been. So, if I’m driving down the street and I see like a gorgeous sunset, I’m inspired to jump out of my car, set up my easel, and paint.
Toni: Oh, that’s great; and I bet you’ve done that, haven’t you?
Merletta: A lot of times.
Toni: What else do you need to be inspired to foster your creativity? Are there tools or methodologies that you reach for?
Merletta: Well, the tools I would say would be just basically enjoying what I do. I enjoy what I do, so the fact that I enjoy what I do, that inspires me to deliver more.
Toni: So, Merletta, you have your own gallery, and you’ve been successful with your creativity, and you know what you want to do and you enjoy it, but how would you then advise others? I’m imagining that this was not an easy journey for you, or maybe it was; did you always know that this is what you wanted and it just came that way to you?
Merletta: I always knew this is what I always wanted to do since I was a little kid, but it never always came that way because I’m going to tell a story.
Toni: Okay.
Merletta: There was a time when I wanted to paint water so bad. Like, I would be driving down or walking down and I’d see that … you know when you’re looking down and you see a reflection in the water? That was something I wanted to put on canvas. It took me a long time to get to that part, because I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t like put it down and “Oh well, oh I can’t do it and it’s not going to happen.” There was an urge inside of me that I needed to know how to get it done. So, I went from the canvas and the crayons and wasting all that paint to going into the library. I spent a month in the library, and I read every single book there was on how to paint. By the end of that month, I was painting water, reflections and all!
Toni: So you were determined, you were absolutely determined, and you found a way to educate yourself so that you would be able to do that.
Merletta: Yes, yes.
Toni: So is that what you tend to do in your life is that if you have an obstacle, do you try to educate yourself in a way to overcome that obstacle?
Merletta: Yes I do. If there is something that I need to do or I need to learn and I don’t know how to do it, I always go to do the research because there’s always some written document or something written about whatever it is that I’m doing, because it’s already been done by someone already.
Toni: In doing that type of research, does that flow over into other work that you do?
Merletta: Yes it does. It does. It does in terms of everything I’m doing; in terms of running the corporation and doing all the businesses that entails running a business. I have to do researches for tons of things that I don’t know how to do.
Toni: So you said that with running a corporation … that’s running a corporation with your Gallery?
Merletta: Yes. It’s run by a corporation.
Toni: So how do you then continue to explore your own potential? With everything that you’re doing, I can imagine that there’s so much more even in store; what do you do to continue to explore that potential?
Merletta: Well, what I’m doing right now is I just launched a greeting card company, the Black Legends Greeting Card Series, which is a joint effort between a lot of us put together. That is the major project I’m working on. If you talk about inspired, that is an inspiration to me in itself, because when we started talking about it with William Patterson and putting it together, it was just a thought. It was brainstorming, putting stuff together, writing things down … we could do this, we could do that, could do that, could do that. But when all the words and the thoughts started to manifest into real deeds and actions, then things start to flow in a different way, and I’m really excited about it.
Toni: Now, can you just give me a little example of what this is? It’s a greeting card for … for what?
Merletta: It’s called the Black Legends Greetings Cards.
Toni: Okay.
Merletta: What it is, I get quotes from prominent African American business leaders. I ask them for a quote. I ask them to be part of the series. When they say yes and I get a quote from them, I would go into my collection of painting and choose a painting that goes with the quote, and I create a greeting card. And the greeting cards are out there, and they’re everywhere right now. They’re online. I’m trying to get them into stores, but for the moment they’re all over the place on the web.
Toni: Fantastic. So what you did was you took even the paintings that you’ve been creating all these years and now, as a further outreach of displaying those paintings, you are attaching them to a powerful quote of leadership.
Merletta: Yes.
Toni: Wow. Did you ever think you’d be doing that?
Merletta: Well, not in that sense, not when I was a teenager painting, no.
Toni: But what a great example of really expanding on your creativity and your talents, and what an example that must set with the children you work with.
Merletta: It is, and I like to bring them into that realm, too, because when I’m working with them and I like them to see how far I’ve taken this creativity from the ages that they are. Because I’m working with a nine-year-old little girl right now, and she’s just excited about painting, and I’m bringing it down to her like this is something that you’re going to live with all your life if that’s what you want to do. And I’m encouraging her to save all her little drawings to see 20 years from now what she had done.
Toni: So what do you think it took for you to explore this potential, to launch the greeting cards? What was it inside of you that it took in order to move and do this? What would you call that?
Merletta: What it took … it took dedication, dedicated to a project, because I was dedicated to it and I still am, and it took, I want to say … I want to say it took some kind of commitment, dedicated commitment, pretty much the same. But also, to be able to reach out to these individuals, it took a little bit more, because some of these leaders that I call upon, I don’t get them. I get their secretary, and oftentimes their secretary will not relay the message. So I have to follow up, follow up, follow up, so I would say it takes a lot of …
Toni: Tenacity.
Merletta: Patience and everything there is, you know, to make it happen because there were months when I would just come in and sit at my desk and going over names, ticking off names, who I’ve called, who I need to follow up with, when I called them, and to see how many people I was going to get to say yes. Like I said, oftentimes I don’t pick up the phone. When I pick up the phone, I don’t get that person. I’d get their secretary or somebody else would say … I would tell them what I wanted or what I’m about and they would say “Well, I will relay a message,” and I’ll call back in a week or two and that message may or may not have been relayed, but I just didn’t get to talk to that person. So I have to follow up, follow up, follow up, and more follow up until I get a yes.
Toni: So I’m hearing from you, based on how you’ve described how you inspire others and what that does to explore their potential, but what also you need to be inspired and how you explore your own potential is dedication, commitment, and tenacity and patience to not only the work that you do, but the projects and the artwork that you create. But also I can only imagine how that’s then translated to the kids that you work with and not only teaching them how to paint but also teaching them those characteristics of dedication and commitment, and I think that that must be pretty powerful.
Merletta: I would say. Thank you.
Toni: You’re welcome. Thank you so much, Merletta, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and we will provide a link at the end of this interview so that people can take a look at the work that you do and get to know a little bit about you outside of the interview. We thank you so very much for agreeing to be part of the Get Inspired! Project today.
Merletta: Oh, thank you. You’re very welcome.
Toni: Take care, Merletta.
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For more information about Merletta Martin: www.artinharmony.com, www.blacklegendseries.com
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