Jerrod Carmichael

I just like to explore honest thoughts or feelings. How I'm feeling at the time. I want to explore it and talk about it and have a conversation with the audience. I want to throw something out there, see how they feel about it, and tell them how I feel about it. I know that's really relaxed, but that's the most fun.

The biggest thing that I get most excited about is, my family and I would watch television together, and we weren't just passive viewers. Something would happen, and then we would talk about it. When Will Smith was shot on 'Fresh Prince,' that sparked a conversation about safety.

I have this theory that I hold on to, the theory that everything great in art and in life in general is jazz. It's just like all these things that just kind of seem to fall into place. You know, like mistakes that somehow turn into something beautiful.

Oakland Technical High School. Like any high-school experience, it was ambiguous. I was shy with girls; I had friends, but there were times I didn't feel I had the right friends. My grades were only so-so.

Anyone who relishes art should love the extraordinary diversity and psychic magic of our art galleries. There's likely more combined square footage for the showing of art on one New York block - West 24th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues - than in all of Amsterdam's or Hamburg's galleries.