An Oakland artist drew 1,001 portraits of black men

Artist Arjuan Mance, a professor at Mills College in Oakland, spent over 6 years drawing 1,0001 portraits of black men. Artist Arjuan Mance, a professor at Mills College in Oakland, spent over 6 years drawing 1,0001 portraits of black men. Photo: Ajuan Mance Photo: Ajuan Mance Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close An Oakland artist drew 1,001 portraits of black men 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

Nerdy men. Artsy men. Quiet men. Loud men. Ajuan Mance drew them all, and then some. The Oakland-based artist created 1,001 portraits of black men in just over six years. She completed the project this year.

The first portrait in the series, called "1,001 Black Men," was of a stranger on the street. The last was of Mance's father.

"Everything I know about black men comes from my family," she said.

Mance, an English professor at Mills College in Oakland, grew up in a large family on the East Coast. Her parents, both educators, have been married for more than 50 years.

"The notion of African American men as absent, as underachievers, could not gain traction in the environment I grew up in," she said.

Drawing 1,0001 black men helped her look beyond her own personal experience of blackness and enabled her to "see the complexity of lives that had less privilege than what I grew up," she said.

Mance completed a portrait about every other day during the six years she undertook the project. She found her subjects mostly by happenstance, encountering them in public spaces around the Bay Area, but her eye was often drawn to specific types of men.

"I was really focused on black people whose images you never see in mainstream media," she said. "I drew a lot of black nerds." Older black males and black men in business attire, too.

Interaction between artist and subject was often limited. Sometimes Mance would simply live-draw those sitting nearby, but in most cases she'd ask to take her prospective subject's photograph. Every man she approached, to her surprise, agreed to have their likeness captured.

"I don't know if that would happen if I were drawing women," Mance said, explaining that women possess a different notion of "being watched and gazed upon" than men.

"There's more at stake for women in their experience of being seen," she said.

The artist says she has always loved drawing men and finds the subject of masculinity "fascinating." But as a woman, drawing those whose experience differs from her own poses unique challenges.

"I don't own this experience, of being a black man," she said. "I had to really de-center, realize that I was the instrument."

She was also the inquirer.

"People think of art as this spontaneous expression, but it comes from the same place as writing and conducting research," she said.

Mance will continue her line of inquiry into the black experience with a documentary project called "Bay Area Heart and Soul," a series of interviews and portraits of black people in the region that is intended to be a "snapshot of black community in this moment of rapid growth and displacement."

A "1001 Black Men" book is in the works.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.