Proceed and Be Bold

Proceed and be bold is a very interesting documentary. It is about the life of letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. who is a very interesting person. He has many views that I never would have thought about without watching this documentary.

Kennedy started out working a corporate job. In fact he did that for a long time until one day he just got tired of it and decided to start letterpressing. Kennedy prints about things he cares about, mainly issues that have to do with being African American. At one point he worked in a university and would print postcards about whatever issue he had seen recently.

Kennedy is a very interesting character. What he does is art, but he doesn't consider himself an artist. He describes himself as a "humble negro printer." He loves to stir the water—be bold. If he sees an issue he will print about it no matter how controversial. He isn’t interested in selling his art for a lot of money, instead he sells it at a price that makes it affordable for everybody. He thinks that art shouldn’t just be for the wealthy, which I agree with.

Something I loved about this documentary was Kennedy’s boldness. He sees an issue and he makes art about it regardless of whether some people might be offended. He talks about how people need to be brave enough to talk about things. He says that art is art and people shouldn’t get offended by it which I thought was a very interesting perspective. Kennedy talks a lot about racism and being an African American. He talks about how people are so scared to talk about racial differences because they don’t want to be considered racist and that is a problem. People should be able to talk about different races without the fear of being racist. There is a difference between discussing racial differences or mentioning a race and being racist.

Another thing that I loved was that Kennedy decided to quit his good corporate job and do what he loves. This is something that a lot of people are scared to do. If they have a good, well-paying job, they will usually stick with it even if they are not happy with that job. We should all be doing things that we love, things that make us happy and Kennedy is a great example of this. Maybe he doesn’t make a lot of money, but he loves what he is doing.