How Tariq Flowers and his father’s prison drawings have influenced Atlanta

Tariq Flowers and his father, T.D. Mattox, have found a new way to bond while Mattox is incarcerated — and it’s with art. What started out with Mattox sending Flowers drawings turned into a father-son business, where Flowers goes around and gives the artwork to some of the most influential people in Atlanta, like Usher, T.I., Andre Dickens, Rich Homie Quan and others. Known as Art By Mattox, the two have a bond that works hand-in-hand with what they’re trying to accomplish in the city.

Flowers spoke with rolling out about their business and how it started.

How did the business begin?

[My father has] been drawing since I was a child, just sending me cartoon figures of me and my little brother. At first, I felt like it was cool. Then, he started sending drawings of Obama and just different stuff, and he was, like, “You need to sell those.” I’m just, like, I’m not selling no art.”

Fast forward, and I had this big hair company that had 100,000 followers, and this was during the era where people can just spam your page and get it deleted. I was down and out, and he was just, like, “Man, please go sell the artwork.” So it was … Super Bowl [LI] when Tom Brady was down here. He drew Tom Brady and mailed it to me and was, like, “Go down there. Please just try it.” I had no choice. I went down there — and I probably made five bands that weekend.

How long does the process take between your dad making the art and you selling it?

The hardest part about it is the mailing back and forth, the prison system. Just say if you want yourself drawn, you will give me a picture; I go print it out and mail it to him. I may send it in two days, but the prison may not give it to him for 7 to 10, or sometimes 20 days. Then he draws it quickly within like five hours. Right now, I’m waiting on some art that was supposed to get here, like, two weeks ago, but I’m hoping it gets here today for an event. It’s a headache, man. We’ve gotten to the point now where he’s taking a picture of the art and he tells me to print the picture out and give them that, and we’ll have the actual drawing for them later. We’re just trying anything to speed the process up because we can’t lose out.

How important has your father been in your life?

He calls me every day. When I say we talked three to four times a day, I’ve already missed two … calls today just ripping and running. I’m venting to him, and he’s walking me through all this because it’s new to me. I told you we first started during Super Bowl, and I’m used to kind of hustling. I’m really taking hustling into the business. After the Super Bowl, we started selling in Walmart and barbershops. That’s kind of how we got known [in the] city because every barbershop you go in, you’ll see all our art.

If you really sit down and think about it, Walmart is probably the second busiest place in the world besides the airport. It’s like 100 people coming in and out an hour. We would sell them as cheap as $10 at that time. My goal was just to sell 1o per hour. I sat out there for 10 hours, and I was making $1,000 a day. I was doing it every day, all day, until we [decided to] get bigger. He’s teaching me now to check my emails. He’s telling me different stuff like going to talk to different businesses … and [getting] advertising.