The Man Behind the Painting
by Carol Kerr, VP, Marketing & Communications
If you’ve been to MDT’s Farmington Hills headquarters, you’ve likely been enamored by the graffiti that fills both stairwells of the 2-story building. MDT CEO Larry Nichols conceived the idea of graffiti to decorate an otherwise completely uninteresting space early on in the remodel of the headquarters and, not surprisingly, the stairwells have become one of the greatest highlights in the entire building.
The front stairwell is pretty tame: It sports the logos of MDT and several of our business partners and key service components, like Symitar, Cisco, Apple, and Dell.
The back stairwell, however, is an untamed canvas that is completely saturated with some of Detroit’s most identifiable icons, from sculptures to products: logos of Vernors, Faygo, and Better Made; the Joe Louis Fist, the Spirit of Detroit, and the GM World Headquarters building (a.k.a. the RenCen).
It, too, has shades of MDT in the form of our ten corporate values, including Empowerment and Teamwork. And it also says “Shades.”
What, or who, is “Shades”? The stairwells, works of art, are signed by Shades, the man behind the painting – one of Detroit’s most iconic graffiti artists. Larry interviewed a few artists, and Shades was selected to do the project. So popular is MDT’s graffiti that MDT’s management team recently commissioned Shades to create a painting for Larry for MDT’s 15th anniversary, and I had the pleasure of dining with Shades and hearing his story.
I had strong, preconceived notions of what a graffiti artist would look like before I met Antonio “Shades” Agee – a street-smart guy, cocky and arrogant with clothing to match. The man who met me at the restaurant was anything but. Antonio’s smile is a beacon of his humbleness, and his youthful appearance belies his age of 47. He was on the shy side for a brief period, but we were soon comfortable with each other and he was happy to share the story of his art, which has taken him from the Detroit city streets to skyscraper boardrooms and other facilities (and objects) all around the world. He is very well-spoken – with a bit of colorful language thrown in – but again, not what my mind had conjured up and expected.
Antonio, who prefers to be called by his given name versus “Shades,” left the Detroit inner city school system in the 10th grade because, “I was saving my life. My choices were to join a gang, become an addict or a dealer, or quit school. So I left.” With a whole lot of newly acquired time on his hands, he randomly picked up a can of spray paint and took to the streets, at a time when what he was doing wasn’t art, it was a misdemeanor (it is now a felony). Antonio has enjoyed a ride in the back seat of a police car more than a few times. In the beginning, the cops would just drive him around and threaten to throw both him and his backpack of supplies into the river. They’d finally let him out, and he’d go right back to painting.
Along the way, Antonio acquired quite a following for his work. His art has its own style and is very recognizable, so he was easy to follow. And his art improved as he went along, so much so that he was invited to participate in an art show in Detroit in his early years, an art show in which he would actively paint while he was there. As timing would have it, Antonio was picked up by the police, yet again, the day before the art show, and this time there was no threat of the river – they took him straight to jail. Figuring he’d be out in a few hours, he waited patiently to be “processed.” Seventeen hours later, he finally pleaded with the police, “You have to let me out – I have a show to do!” What?? Antonio did get out in time to participate in the art show, and the attention he got there started generating commissioned project opportunities and a true artist was born.
Many of the people who followed Antonio’s work around the city of Detroit have become the people who are making decisions today in corporate America, and they like to be surrounded by the art they fell in love with in their youth. “These people are now my clients. Everybody wants their space personalized. Sterile environments aren’t the thing anymore. You want to have what you loved as a kid to stare at.”
People stare at, wear, and even drive Antonio’s art. He’s painted corporate walls, barns, and buses, cars, handbags, shoes, and stairwells. And speaking of stairwells, I was interested in how the MDT project, particularly the “untamed” stairwell, came to be. “Larry got real nervous in the beginning. I told him I needed to pop some cans” – literally poke a hole in the side of the spray paint cans and just let the paint spew all over the place, creating droplets that serve as the background for the art that is to come. Hard to envision where this was going, Larry finally said, “I’m not the artist; I have to trust you.” Inside Antonio’s head, he was saying, “Yes, please!” As Antonio describes it, “When I first started painting, Larry’s voice was at a 10 octave. It dropped to a 7 two days later and what ultimately poured forth from the cans is amazing.
And now here I was, feeling that same trepidation in commissioning a painting for Larry for MDT’s 15-year milestone. What would come out of the cans? Would Larry like the 4’ x 6’ canvas that would be created for him? I finally said to Antonio pretty much what Larry had told him… “I will trust you.” This was the only time “Shades” looked and sounded a bit like the graffiti artist that my mind created. He cocked his head, closed his eyes, smiled the slightest glimpse of a cocky smile, and said, “Don’t worry…. I gotchoo.”