0.31 Bert samples, b. 1955

Becoming aware

I was born here in Houston. I don’t have any recollection of the 50s. I was a little boy. The 60s are when I became aware of certain things about myself and my surroundings, family and friends and places. The 70s are when my awareness of becoming an artist was taking form.

My mother was a teacher when I was in junior high school, and every summer she would implore me to design her bulletin boards for the fall or the spring. And so that became a regular occurrence. (Of course, there was no charge for that.) She implored me to do her friends’ bulletin boards as well. I just had a propensity [for] looking at a lot of art books, even at the grammar-school level, but I was fascinated with animals. As the years went on, I found myself staying in touch with nature as I just began to recall and recollect them in dreams and in drawings. And so I guess it was in an indirect way that I became an artist. But my formal training, I guess, came when I went to Texas Southern University.

Houston in the sixties

There was connection and disassociation, you know. My everyday situation was getting up and going to school, but hearing these amazing stories over the news of the Civil Rights marching, assassinations, rioting, protesting. It was very turbulent. I do recall just briefly some local things about Carl Hampton

One time I remember going to the museum, and it kind of spooked me. I remember seeing these paintings of all these dead people. So it almost felt like a haunted house. I wasn’t spooked in the way I think haunted houses are, but it was kind of like a mausoleum because it was very quiet and still. Your energy was pretty reserved, you know, and you’re mainly controlled by your teachers and stuff. We used to take these field trips to the museum and to the Houston Symphony. I remember talking to one of my friends going up the escalator when this man at the top slapped me on the backside of my head and screamed, “Pay attention!” That shocked me, and it made me upset. So I didn’t like field trips after that one.

College days

My mother was very determined that I get in [college] right after high school. Me and my cousin took the college entrance exam at the same time—went into the auditorium together and we came out—and my cousin said, “College is not for me. I’m going to start working for the telephone company.” But for some reason I just started walking through the hallways of Hannah Hall on campus at Texas Southern University, and that’s when I saw the murals that were done by the present (and at that time, former) students. I think I even remember seeing Harvey Johnson working on his mural right at that moment because there were several murals in progress. It was considered a great honor to be able to design a mural then paint it and complete it. So that was an extra incentive to continue something or be a part of something that was more than just receiving a diploma, a degree in art. That was a tradition that was pretty unique in a university setting, or any setting.