When you ask photographer Roscoé B. Thické III how he’s doing, you’re likely to hear, “I’m great. Life is beautiful.”
For Thické, a recipient of the 2024 South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Grant, his life took an unexpected turn in 2021.
Thické, who enlisted in the Army after attending Miami Norland Senior High School because he was “definitely not feeling school,” took his first photography class while stationed at Camp Casey in South Korea. After returning home and studying photography and design at Broward College, Thické, who now lives in Plantation, quietly amassed what he calls his Rolodex of images in a small studio he built in his mother’s home.
“I didn’t think of it as a studio. It’s just where I got away and did some work,” says Thické. “I developed my images. I did screen printing. I was doing a lot of things inside there and, for a long time, I had this large body of work just for me. Nobody had seen my work. Nobody knew me as an artist.”
But an ad for the 2021 Oolite Arts Studio Residency in Miami would change that.
Despite not fully understanding what an artist in residency entailed, Thické took a chance and applied to the program, which provides artists with time, space and resources to develop their work. After learning that he was selected, he was honored by the recognition but also wondered what exactly he had gotten himself into.
“Like, what does one do at a residency? I didn’t understand it,” he says. “But they’re a great community. They held my hand. They showed me and now that’s what I do. I give back because I feel like I was so blessed and people, literally, put their arm around me and showed me the ropes and loved on me, and breathed air into me.”
Since the Oolite Arts Residency, Thické’s impact on the South Florida arts scene has only grown. He was awarded the artist’s residency at the African-American Research Library of Fort Lauderdale in 2021, and calls being selected as a grant recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium “an absolute blessing.” Thické is one of three Broward-based visual artists to receive the grant this year with award amounts of either $7,500 or $15,000.
The South Florida Cultural Consortium, established in 1988, is an alliance of the arts councils of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties. It has awarded over $4 million in grants to more than 300 artists. Broward artists Kandy Lopez and Angelica Clyman also received grant funding awards this year. As part of the award, Thické, Lopez, and Clyman will share their work in an exhibition at Florida Atlantic University in 2025.
Thické, who has moved quickly from an unknown artist developing images in his mother’s home to an established presence in the South Florida artistic community, says that the Consortium award means “everything.”
“Just the recognition from the community is amazing. Being chosen is a special honor and privilege,” he says.
Thické does not consider himself a traditional photographer but says it all starts with images.
“I carry a camera around with me everywhere I go. I take pictures of all kinds of things in my daily life from my kids to the community that I grew up in, just everything that interests me. So, I have this large body of images to work from,” he says.
With most images, Thické says, he doesn’t have an end result in mind when he takes a photograph.
It’s when he decides what it is he wants to speak about that he goes through his images to see which photos can help him express that.
“I let the images talk,” says Thické. “And then I build things. I build frames to speak about the images. I build different things to inform the images.”
He also uses experimental printing techniques, unique framing concepts, and combines sculpture with images.
For Thické, personal experience, things he sees out in the world, and memories influence his artistic direction.
“I fashion myself a sentimentalist. Things that have purpose and meaning for me inform my art,” he says.
Thické, who finds that people often take for granted how much it costs to be an artist, says the South Florida Consortium grant will help him reinvest in his practice.
“That’s what this grant means to me—to be recognized and have some money to dream bigger. I think that’s the best thing,” he says. “Being able to dream bigger because dreams cost.”
