TEXAS -- Raise your hand if you know a full-time artist, with a law degree, that also doubles as a full-time journalist.

  • Texas native
  • UT graduate
  • Law degree from TSU

If you haven’t met such a person, we’re proud to introduce Spectrum News’s very own Dawn Okoro.

She is a Texas native, a University of Texas-Austin graduate and has a law degree from Texas Southern University.

“I’ve always loved doing art,” Okoro said. “Once I hit college, I didn’t know how to be an artist or what that meant and neither did my parents so I went and studied other things for years,” Okoro said.

As a law student, she stayed involved in her art, managing to even paint a few children’s portraits for coworkers at her law internship.

Once she graduated, she dove back into art and decided a job inside the courtroom just wasn’t for her.

“When I graduated from law school, I realized I didn’t really like dealing with law, I don’t want to practice, and from there I just kind of dove into the art,” Okoro.

After spending some time evolving her art in New York City, Okoro returned to Texas. The move was supposed to be temporary, as she had set goals to move back to New York City.

Instead, Okoro landed at Spectrum News Austin, and she’s been here for almost seven years.

In those seven years, she has grown not only as an artist, but as a journalist. As far as the idea of balance, she said there is none.

“I don’t balance being a full-time digital producer and being a full-time artist, at all,” she said.

Okoro is currently working on an art show tour of “Punk Noir,” which just made a stop in San Antonio and will be at the Carver Community Cultural Center until September 20. It will travel to Seattle and Dallas.

 

The project focuses on local black creatives with a punk spirit.

“To me, a punk spirit is just living freely, disregarding societal norms and just being free to be themselves,” Okoro said.

At Spectrum News, we wish her nothing but the best in her art career, but we still hope she sticks around for a while.

“Doing journalism has helped me grow as an artist,” she said.