A Liberty City father’s solo exhibition honors family

Roscoè B. Thické III, father of three, grew up in the Liberty City Square, a formerly racial segregated public housing project in Miami’s Liberty City Neighborhood. Some call the area “Pork ‘n’ Beans.” A child of the 1980’s, Thické remembers it as a village. With loving and supportive parents he and his siblings rotated between the homes of their maternal and fraternal grandparents within that public housing village complex. It was a large extended family.

Thické recalled, “This family unit made me feel safe and beyond the immediate family structure everybody knew everybody. The family shared common threads that banded everyone in the community.”

Thické continued, “Now the communal family structure generally is less a village and more an exclusive club opened to selected individuals.”

His children are growing up between extended families in Miami Gardens and Fort Lauderdale. Sons Nazir, 20, and Blake, 11, are active in sports. Daughter Jada, 13, is writing and reciting original poetry. Following in her father’s footsteps as an artist, her original poem titled, “ Flow, Grief. Grief /grief/, written when she was 12 years old, refers to “life in general.”

Despite troubled times locally, nationally and internationally, Thické hopes his children will “grow up happy, filled with love and laughter and find a passion to pursue. Find purpose in their lives and feel love in abundance.” The desire for his own children and the children who currently live in Liberty Square appear to mirror his life story: purpose, passion and love in abundance.

After high school Thické joined the Army, and while on a tour of duty in South Korea, he began taking pictures of the landscape on foreign soil, which was a new and fulfilling experience. Returning to Miami, he continued taking pictures using photography as a tool to honor, remember and document family experiences.

Through it all, Thické’s support was his parents and grandparents and his aunt Anna Williams, who continues to share her insight and keeps the family history.

Most of all his wife, Niki: According to Thické, “She is everything. Without her, there’s no Roscoè. She inspires me daily with her strength and wisdom. She’s the anchor of our families; not one move is made without consulting her. She is the calming force in my world of kids, coaching, photography and exhibitions.”

The first solo exhibition of Roscoè B. Thické III is titled, “Order My Steps: There are no answers here, move on.” This personal photographic narrative chronicles years of nurture and family in the public housing complex before and after some residents began the destruction of life and property; and it also chronicles gentrification.

This exhibit was curated by Rosie Gordon-Wallace, founder of Diaspora Vibe Culture Arts Incubator (DVCAI). With 27 years of service to artists, Gordon-Wallace’s local global laboratory is dedicated to promoting, nurturing and cultivating the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean Diaspora, artists of color, and immigrant artists.

When asked why she curated the exhibition of this up-and-coming artist, Gordon-Wallace responded: “This intimate narrative underscores the fact that we should never judge a book by the cover. The lives of these families (living in public housing) were filled with love and vibrant joy before they were uprooted.”

This exhibition focuses on time with his grandmother at the end of her life, which coincided with the end of the era of public housing as she knew it in Liberty Square, Pork ‘n’ Beans. Through photography and advocacy, the struggles and pain of both family and community in transition are revealed. Resilience of spirit and memory express the power of family.

In 2021 Thické received the Ellies Creator award, and in 2022, he was an artist-in-residence at Oolite Arts. Elsa Turner’s essay in the Oolite Arts exhibition catalog highlights the history of Liberty Square first as “praiseworthy and later troubled.”

According to Dennis Scholl, president and CEO of Oolite Arts, Thické’s work is currently shown in a group show at Oolite arts called LEAN-TO. Thické plans more exhibitions with purpose, passion and love in abundance.

Happy Father’s Day!

Dorothy Jenkins Fields, Ph.D., is a historian and founder of the Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida Inc. Send feedback to djf@bellsouth.net