Cameron Gray’s focused eyes scanned between the margins of the lithography plate as he pulled away his oil crayon and the “bridge” formed by blocks of wood. The bridge, he explains, allows him to place pressure on his hand without touching the surface of the work or obstructing it.

There’s a quiet intensity about him while he works, it translates to his conversations.

Gray, 26, was the center of the crowd that assembled to see his recent exhibition “A Negro From the South” at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Downtown Ames on Feb. 22. He was charismatic, but quiet; magnetic, yet humble.

Staff at the Octagon estimated that 85 people were in attendance, many of which wanted to speak to the young artist — he obliged as often as he could, answering questions and sharing the process of his art.

Room for movement was scarce as a panel titled “People of Color in the Arts” started. The panel consisted of professors and administrators from Iowa State, and Gray, a graduate student in art and visual culture.

“I tried to make sure I had as many people there as possible,” Gray said. “I wanted to make a statement that this is what Ames needs and this is what Ames needs to see.”

Gray expressed deep gratitude for all that attended, including the panelists that took time out of their busy schedules to sit with him. He also noted his gratitude for the Octagon, expressing the concern he had about not having anywhere to show in Ames because it is a predominantly-white community and preconceived notions about what art galleries should showcase.

“I was as surprised as many when they told me I could [show art,] and they would be happy to have a show like mine there and so I’m forever grateful of them and the things they’ve allowed me to do in that space,” Gray said. “I feel like the luckiest man on earth, honestly.”

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Gray looked through his oil crayons to find the one he wanted and loaded it into his crayon holder. He began to pick his place to start adding to the piece.

His focus causes him to stop speaking momentarily. Only once he sees it, Gray begins to work with precision.

Among his pieces in the exhibition were his series of seven “Voids,” made mainly with charcoal and graphite, on large canvas drop cloths. They were all done in the span of two days in the Octagon gallery. These pieces represented different facial features of loved ones, including himself.

“What I’m trying to illustrate is the idea of what the “other,” or the minority community feels like in a sense of voicing that black psyche but then also the minority psyche in the sense of being seen but not seen,” Gray said. “In a sense of, you’re aware of my body for your own usage, but you’re not aware of my body at the same time.

“I feel like people are quick to use the black male form but not really looking at the soul of the person that they’re using.”

Gray found an example of this in a recent event where Laura Ingraham of Fox News told Lebron James to “shut up and dribble,” after making comments criticizing the president.

“So you’re telling me he can play ball but not speak his mind at the same time?” Gray said. “He’s a person. He has his thoughts and views, but you just want him to do that thing that he’s known for.”

To Gray, this is nothing new for black people in America, and is related to centuries of abuses.

“It reverts back to the idea of slave culture,” Gray said. “Our black bodies were used for one thing and one thing only. We were seen as cattle in a sense. That same mentality has been brought over to the new era. ‘I don’t want to hear your thoughts; just do that thing you’re good at and shut up.’”

Gray had a series of four prints depicting barbaric devices that were used to control and monitor slaves in the exhibition. The prints were done in a sparkling gold ink, the series titled “All That Glitters Ain’t Gold!”

“How can I make something that is painful to look at and has such a dark, gross, vile, sad history and make it beautiful and gorgeous,” Gray said.

He felt he needed to depict the uniquely inhumane treatment of humans — by humans — in slavery.

“These things were put on black bodies as a way of control and making them seem like cattle,” Gray said. “These were instruments that were manufactured by people; things you would place on a runaway cow were placed on human beings. When you have that history behind it plus the way I depict it, you have this juxtaposition. It’s terrible, but it’s gorgeous at the same time.”

Above that series of prints, at least 10 feet above the floor, sat his “Jordan” series. There were three pieces, each featuring the iconic Jumpman silhouette of Michael Jordan. One silhouette, titled Amistad, was filled with the a “diagram of how the bodies of slaves were stacked in slave ships,” another filled with a collage of nooses and titled “Strange Fruit,” the final filled with cotton in bloom.

“I had to have everybody looking up at him,” Gray told a patron in the gallery.

Gray felt it was important to depict these icons of oppression within an iconic depiction of an immensely successful black man.

“His triumph over society is as important as those men and women who sacrificed their lives and decided to be resilient and keep fighting rather than succumbing to pressures of slavery in the transatlantic slave trade,” Gray said. “We can’t talk about the greatness of this man without including those stories, too.”

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Gray added strokes of pigment to darken the wrist of a hand holding a tarot card, an image depicted on a lithography plate that is part of a series he’s working on.

Gray describes himself as “a normal person,” but his artistic works represent a sharp break from the normalcy of an art world dominated by wealthy whites.

His first publicly-displayed work at Iowa State was unsanctioned and controversial. The piece was titled “You’re never too young” and was inspired by the hanging death of an 8-year-old black child.

“I love making white people uncomfortable,” Gray said. “That means you’re becoming critical of the things that are happening in your world. This happened on your soil. This wasn’t in Sudan or some Middle Eastern country. We have some atrocities that happen here.”

The piece was composed of a white baby doll in blackface (because he couldn’t find a black baby doll at WalMart in Ames), in a noose. He “deployed” it over the third floor railing in the design building atrium. He admittedly liked the commotion it created in students as they noticed it and a buzz began to spread in the crowded atrium. It only took five minutes for the piece to be removed. Gray followed the piece into administrative offices to take responsibility for it.

This happened on a Wednesday in August, just weeks after Gray had arrived at Iowa State. That Sunday, Gray “deployed” the piece again at Design on Main, a space for college of design graduate students at Iowa State in downtown Ames. He briefly walked away to visit a nearby business. When he returned, a crowd of police and onlookers had materialized in front of Design on Main. Again, he agreed to remove the piece for the time being and found himself meeting with several high-ranking administrators at Iowa State that week.

Gray said Ames police had told on him to Iowa State administrators.

Gray learned the processes to follow at Iowa State to be able display his work, although, he said such requirements were new to him. He was speaking of his time at Auburn University, in Auburn, Alabama, where he completed his undergraduate degree.

Gray is not one to shy away from controversy, he wants his art to make a statement. He said when he begins making art, it’s like he’s putting on his boots to march, describing a sense of radicalism in his art.

“I’ll never apologize for my blackness,” Gray said. “I’ll never apologize for my work.”

Gray believes art is a form of protest. He wants reactions from people, he wants awareness, he wants dialogue.

“It’s all about the people,” Gray said. “I feel like the work that I’m creating, the things that I do is all for the fact of I want the relationships that people are having to be more genuine and to feel okay with having these conversations on an everyday basis.”

In a city like Ames, that is over 80 percent white, Gray feels that dialogue about race can be difficult, but that is what makes it all the more necessary. He said that honest questions and frequent conversations represent a genuine desire to reach a better understanding.

Gray said that people need to challenge their discomfort in having these conversations.

“I understand that it’s uncomfortable for you to talk about race because you then bring in your own aspects, in the same sense of your own guilt,” Gray said. “But there’s no reason for you to feel guilty because you didn’t do anything wrong.

“So us actually having these conversations will actually make relationships better, rather than worse.”

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Gray carefully swept debris from the surface of the lithography plate with a folded piece of paper, remarking that he had no idea what the offending debris was, or how it got there.

Gray, the oldest of three children, is from Birmingham, Alabama, a city that is over 70 percent black, now living in Ames. Gray described the initial shock he felt when he arrived in Ames. He had lived in St. Louis, Missouri after his undergraduate studies, a city that is nearly 50 percent black.

“I’ve never had this experience before in my life… where I walked into a public area and didn’t see anyone like myself,” Gray said of walking into Stomping Grounds cafe on a Saturday evening, when he arrived in Ames to tour the campus. “Just pure whiteness.”

Gray was able to work with a renowned printmaker and a personal hero of his in Tom Huck of Evil Prints in St. Louis.

“It’s kind of crazy when I think about the places I’ve gone and the things I’ve seen,” Gray said. “I don’t even feel like I’m worthy of it, man, to be honest.

“This is something I want to do for the rest of my life.”

He seized the opportunity and learned as much as he could about being a professional artist, although there were ups and downs.

“You never realize how much shit you don’t know, until you’re there in the moment… in a shop like [Evil Prints],” Gray said. “Your span of messing up is minimal; you can’t mess up on a stage like that where you have to perform and if you don’t perform, we’re not making any money.”

Gray snapped in quick succession describing his old work habits, saying Huck dubbed him ‘a gunslinger.’ He said Huck taught him to slow down and be more diligent in his work.

“It may seem like this process takes forever but you’ll be very surprised by the outcome of your time that you’re taking for this thing,” Gray said.

Working with Huck at Evil Prints was more to Gray than just getting his chops as a professional artist.

“Those three years that I spent there; incredible, absolutely incredible,” Gray said. “I can’t tell you how many stories and how many friends I’ve made over that three year period. It was probably the most influential time of my life in a sense of I learned a lot. I gained a lot I had a great times, I had bad times, but I learned a lot about myself at the same time.”

Gray lived in St. Louis during an important time, when Michael Brown, an unarmed 18 year old black man, was shot to death by police in Ferguson, Missouri. He said the significance of the timing he arrives in places is something he doesn’t plan, but there seems to be a pattern.

“I was one of those things where I couldn’t be removed from it,” Gray said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to not comment on it because you’re always being asked questions on a daily basis about how you feel about certain things because of your skin tone and so I didn’t have the opportunity not to think about it.”

While Gray said his art was partially inspired by the movement taking place in St. Louis and across the country to confront police violence, he didn’t want the message in his art to become one dimensional.

“You can make stuff that is of the moment because you’re capitalizing on something or you can make work that’s timeless,” Gray said. “I want it to be something that stands the test of time.”

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Gray sharpened his oil crayons over a large trashcan next to the table he was working on, taking tremendous care to not agitate the shavings in a way that would make them land on his work.

The patience and deliberate nature of his movements he learned in St. Louis are apparent now.

Gray said the environment in a town like Ames is much different, leading to many conversations about statements he finds insensitive or offensive.

“It’s different,” Gray said. “I can’t tell you how many times I have to check people. But, I’m okay with doing that. I am very confident in myself to be able to check [people].

“I’d rather I do it, than somebody just punch you in the face. There are people that will take offense to some things that I’ve heard said around here.”

Gray said he often hears things in bars he frequents that are racist. He said people often have never had someone of a different demographic around them, so they’ve never had the opportunity to be questioned by someone they are degrading. Gray was quick to say that there are many allies to him that are vocal and have “come to bat” on his behalf.

“I can’t do this by myself,” Gray said. “I can’t make a difference as much as I want to just myself alone. I have to have allies, I have to have people that are in my corner at the same time.”

Gray said this environment has definitely been different to him, but that he is here for the challenge to improve Ames any way he can. He believes people vocalizing their prejudices leads to them confronting how absurd they are. That if the person listens to the words justifying discrimination coming from their mouth when confronted, they are more likely to recognize how wrong it truly is.

Gray often hears people claim they don’t see race, which he completely disavows as a concept, noting that it’s impossible not to see race.

He notices when people refer to things as “ghetto” with no understanding of what a ghetto truly is. People try to speak in ebonics to Gray, a pet-peeve of his, and try to engage in handshakes they stereotypically attribute to black men. He said it stands out because it shows he is being treated differently because of the color of his skin, adding that people need to just be themselves.

“There’s no reason for you to talk to me that way,” Gray said. “Just speak to me like I’m speaking to you.”

He said the caricature of someone’s culture is the deepest form of disrespect. He believes people can hear it in themselves when they are depicting this caricature, so it’s pointing out something the person is already aware of.

“Don’t get me wrong, I probably have some faults in there, too. I try my best to work on those so that I’m always making sure I give my best self at every opportunity I can,” Gray said.

Gray had an impassioned plea. He believes that people need to show empathy, saying it would have changed the course of American history and still can.

“Don’t be afraid to love,” Gray said. “Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Be vulnerable in front of people.”

He said people make mistakes but they need to own up to them, and not be afraid to own up to them, because they’ll “bounce back.”

“Do things you’ve never done before,” Gray said, noting the importance in his life of attending pride week festivities as a straight man and working to better understand the struggles of those in the LGBTQIA+ communities, a struggle he said he can’t separate from that of black people in the United States.

“Every day, I do what I feel I need to,” Gray said. “I do what I feel is right.”

“A Negro From the South” will be at the Octagon Center for the Arts until March 6.