Visual artist Christopher Fabor Muhammad began drawing when he was four, joining an artistically inclined older brother at the kitchen table in Paterson. His brother eventually turned away from art, but Chris worked hard to develop his talent and won several art competitions in grammar school. The neighborhood in which he grew up was plagued by poverty and crime, but the streets held no allure for him.

“My family wouldn’t have that, and I had greater ambitions,” Muhammad says.