CLAY CONNECTIONS

Most lively of all the Experience Corps members was Gloria Ross, or "Ms.G" as she is affectionately known. Bringing more than just the experience of her 65+ years, it seemed like Ms. G had lived a thousand lives right in West Baltimore. She could tell you the name of every child- and often used it when reprimanding a pupil speeding down the hall or playing in the bathroom- every one treated just like her own grandson, Marty, who attended the school and lived with her. By simply watching Ms. G's interaction with the students and the members of her community- no matter how shady they seemed, it became clear to me just how important her presence was. It seemed like she balanced out all the chaos taking place in the school- whether it be from the rambunctious students, their parents, or the short-wired teachers- often seen yelling or sternly talking to students in the hallways and open-styled classrooms. My relationship would grow with Ms. G over the years. And though she took some getting used to, it didn't take long for me to warm up to her personality, ever-loving and genuine. One year after the community art class ended it would be me and Ms. G in the Edmondson Community Center (ECO) creating, glazing, firing work on summer weekends. As she worked, it seemed like the clay gave her life. She may have had to shuffle at a pace around the work spaces- but once seated in her chair (with alterations made to give her five foot frame a boost) she was unstoppable. The clay was a therapy for her- and soon, an escape for me. Sitting with her, nothing but the radio on, I felt like I was sitting in the presence of an omnicient griot- who in the space of three- to- four hours could tell you everything about Baltimore and everyone who had ever lived- and died- in a city with few charms 'round her way.I watched and learned how a cycle of poverty works. How this cycle affects everything from education to good health and your access to it. The next year, the Experience Corps program at Lockerman Bundy would be discontinued. A result of a lack of funding.

ART MEETS JUSTICE

It didn't take long before I fell in love with the class. Though it required alot of work with alot of parts, I soon began to look forward to the sessions. Especially when we began to have part of our classes at Lockerman Bundy Elementary School, where an group of the school's Experience Corps workers, along with mothers and grandmothers from the surrounding community, helped make Flowermart material. It was here that I began to develop a lasting relationship with mentor, Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen, head of Rebuilding thru Art (RAP), and an internationally recognized studio artist. He had begun the program in 2003 with a mission to "ignite community engagement, empowerment, and action through art." And was it ever working. We conducted the community workshops in a building that was long suppose to be closed. Like many schools in Baltimore City and around the nation, Lockerman-Bundy was caught up in a game where education for inner-city youth were clearly not a top priority. When RAP arrived at the school, there was a library with no books. Many of the city's schools were completed with cement walls similar to the inside of a maximum prison facility, painted "prison white" as Jay called it, and Lockerman Bundy was no different. But then came my first real example of how community art, partnered with real social justice solutions can make a community do a 180 degree turn. With the help of RAP, a book drive was held- and students finally saw material on the completely empty shelves of their "library." This was followed by my first real proof of how much of an impact art can have on a human life. The organization executed a mural over every inch of hallway space on the second floor of the school. With the theme of Searching for New and Better Worlds, students completed workshops and came up with the images of student-astronauts flying through the universe, and Lockerman Bundy Bears on spaceshuttles. Color finally killed all the depressing white walls and the attitude that "this is just the way it is." By simply making the children feel like their space wasn't a correctional facility- but a place where magic truly happens, test scores went up. The color had literally brung everything back to life. Shortly after, the school's principle received a call that they would remain open.

"MINES"

The first excersice for the class was to jump right into preperation for an upcoming outdoor Baltimore arts festival- Flowermart. Hosted in tents lined up around the base of the Washington Monument and Museum in the heart of the city's Mt. Vernon community, everything from clothes and jewelry to flower seeds and ripe tomatoes could be found amongst those gathered to sell their goods. Our product? Dynamic flowerpots for all those Baltimoreans using the weekend festival to purchase greenery for their yards, window sills, and front stoops. It didn't take long for DePaolo to break out the clay. Instructing everyone to first put a wad of clay in the bottom of their pots for a base, she then proceeded to explain the easiest way for a flowerpot to be completed. With little background in clay, save for a few experiments in grade school and summer camps, I payed close attention to how she constructed an entire pot in minutes by simply palm-rolling the clay into coils. She then carefully layed them along the inside of the pot. One on top of the other. Taking her thumb, she then smeared and smoothed all the coils together. This seemed to ruin the work, but once it dried it popped right out of the mold with a coil design on the outside, and a smooth inside. Then it was our turn. With a pot in front of each student, we all proceeded to take on the task: making our first ceramic flowerpot. I looked around the table as we all got started. Working earnestly, designs were being intricately placed on the work when all of a sudden DePaolo stopped the class. "Now pass to the work to the person next you," she said, to a table full of artists. Everyone but the students who had already completed the first half of the class looked around. Was she serious? We already had our designs in mind- had already started to execute our work and now we had to hand it over to a stranger? This was MINES! What if their coils didn't match my coils? What if they did a different design then what I wanted? WHAT IF THEY MADE IT PINK? All of these questions were soon put to rest with a simple explanation. The point of the excercise was to learn that everyone had to have a hand in the design- whether it was functional or just for aesthetic pleasure. Everyone had their own ideas- which should be welcomed- because their own life experiences and lessons bring something to the table. Just because I started something and regarded it as "mines" didn't mean that someone else couldn't finish it- and make it better. Just because I didn't finish it didn't mean I couldn't claim it- it was still very much my creation- just part of a larger work. This was community art.

COMMUNITY

BEGINNINGS The first night of Community Art was one that is still vivid in my mind’s eye. Sitting at the edge of the ceramic studio’s massive steel working tables, with roughly eight or nine others, we all listened as Blaise DePaulo, renowned ceramicist and sculptor, carried out first day pleasantries. I was far from enthused about the class the evening class. It was one of roughly four in my entire college career, but by far the most interesting when compared to the night hours spent in Communication Law or Poetry. This was Community Art. The first of a two-part course that would require me to not only give of myself- but teach me how to accept and work better with others of all backgrounds and lifestyles. This would be best understood through DePaulo's partnership with a with a locally-based art program. We would be Rebuilding thru Art. http://baltimore.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Lockerman-Bundy-Elementary-School-West-Baltimore/G00003geSJv2MDOY/I0000xf7uqqk6NFM/C0000aGGT3AISHPA

Christmas Memories

" She left on Christmas and just didn't come back." He tries desperately to make this comment sound as nonchalant as possible, but I still hear the pain that lives deep inside his voice.

I know I'm not suppose to have one, but my favorite student, Monntell a.k.a. P-Nut, is one of our best students. But good intentions can only go so far. I worry that Monntell will get caught up in the life that most of his family has already full-heartedly chosen.

The Veal Family is an interesting group. And between me and you, they make up between all or half of our program attendance on most days. There is LaRelle, the youngest who we've already met. Then their second youngest sister who's 16 & pregnant. Lacee, our favorite kid crack pusher, is the younger brother. Montell is months away from Lacee but older. Somewhere in all the confusion that is their household, they found time to informally "adopt" DeWayne, who apparently just stayed a few nights and never went away.

I rarely inquire about the personal lives of our students, maybe because I rarely want to know what they do behind closed doors. But Monntell is different. He's graduating early because Doris M. Johnson is closing its doors (FINALLY), and in bootleg efforts to make things right, all juniors who were even close to graduating could take their remaining classes online and graduate in the summer. I think he'll make it. I hope he makes it. Only the circumstances say he won't.

I don't really remember what made me ask about his mother. I believe he was telling me that Lacee was moving out again, and some anonymous older sister was taking LaRelle to move in with her (or maybe he said the pregnant one was moving out-and LaRelle was moving with her. I got confused somewhere). Anyway, all of this made me wonder Where Is Ya'll Mama???!!! He got a little quiet, but he eventually told me.

I was expecting her to be in jail. Dead maybe? In a mental hospital, sick? But, no. He simply said she lives not even five miles away off Belair Road. I'm glad he wasn't looking at my face, because an expression would have surely given it away. But what kind of mother leaves her children- leaves her girls- to be raised by a man? As he continued, he told me he was three. She left on Christmas and just didn't come back. Now she calls every once and a while and tries to make conversation- but its too late.

Now how's that for a Christmas memory?

UBRAN MATHEMATICS : SEX= LOVE

"She can't fit into any of the costumes because she getting fat. Thats what the shot does to a lot of people," Sharon says very bluntly. LaRelle is only 14. She's a baby trapped inside a grown woman's body.It hurts me to think that at 14 she's no longer a virgin. Who would have sex with a 14-year-old that is clearly so lost? "Anyone 14 and older" my mother replies.

I think I'm drawn to LaRelle because I see a younger me in her. She floundering in a whirlpool of pressures to find love, acceptance, and identity. I watch as she comes in every single day in her leaning high heels. Her see through shirts with hot pink zebra printed bras. Her tight pants that show hints of thongs before she bends over. I come to the conclusion that she has no one to show her what's right and wrong. Her older sister is 16 and pregnant. And while I never hear them mention a mother, they tell me that their grandmother is pregnant too. Which is scary in itself, but shows the type of world they live in.

She's a sweet girl at heart. But she's just that: a baby girl. Her maturity level is that of a 14-year-old, but sexually, she is very forward. I've literally seen her make grown men blush. One day, LaRelle comes up to me and boldly proclaims " I asked Mr. Bill if he like you. Ya'll always around each other and talking." I take a minute to think where she could get that from. True, me and the guest illustration artist,Bill, did talk a lot; but only because I introduced him to the program and I was the only person he knew there. Plus, he was just a weird person in general, and the other staff really didn't know how to handle his awkwardness. Nevertheless, what I realized is a little bit of how LaRelle thinks. In her mind, if a man and a woman are friendly with each other (AND THATS ALL IT WAS BECAUSE TRUST ME, WHEN I SAY BILL WAS WEIRD, HE COULD REALLY BE OUT THERE SOMETIMES- PLUS HE WAS LIKE A 42-YEAR OLD WAITER AND EX-DIE HARD JEHOVAH WITNESS- I DIGRESS), then they must like each other and want to be together. Maybe this is why she's on Depro-Vera. In her head if a boy- or man for that matter- show her the slightest bit of attention, then he must be interested. And it was all so simple then: she equates someone showing her attention to someone having feelings for her. And someone having feelings for her maybe means they want to be with her. And if someone wants to be with her, they want to have sex. And sex equals love.

Any Given Playground

"It just hurts so damn bad." I sit on the other end of the phone this morning not knowing what to say. What can I say? I'm a southern girl trapped in a whirlpool that I'm realizing is considered the "inner city." The room is quiet in her background, and so is Tisha's* tiny voice as she cries and relays to me the events of this past Thursday.

Being in a relationship with an older man who has more than enough kids, attached to even more baby mamas, Tisha has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the girlfriend handbook. Thinking she was crazy at first, I didn't say much, but then I came to the conclusion that she is one of those people who don't love easy - but when they love, they love hard. She has taken his kids- every one of them- in as her own. From babysitting and spending time with them, to dress shopping with his daughter and getting her ready for prom. And while they are not officially married, I'm sure common law went into effect some years ago, as she genuinely considers his kids her "step-children " because she does so much for them; in some cases more than their own mothers. That's why when Mrs.Flemanns casually mentioned yesterday as I was leaving work that Tisha's "stepson was shot" I knew there was more to it.

"I'm upset and hurt, but i can't say I'm surprised," Tisha starts. Apparently Chris was hanging out with some fellow gang members who had just been involved in an altercation. These associates did not tell Chris that they had just jumped a 15-year-old in the neighborhood. Upon finishing the fight, the boys went to the playground, and invited Chris for a game of basketball. "As soon as he got out on the court, the little boy they beat up came back and just started spraying the playground. My stepson was hit first in the arm. Then the side. Then the leg. And then the chest." As she starts to sob she tells me of faint pulse he had in the ambulance, and finally at the hospital while surgeons were giving him a fighting chance, he just "gave up."

I can picture her thin body shaking in the darkness of their row house in West Baltimore. I try to console her over the line, but I know there's nothing I can say to make this better. Sadly, this is just another 16-year-old black male that has lost his life to these Baltimore Streets. I begin to think of my students.

Fear: One day, one of these students that I have grown to care for and genuinely love, will walk out of here and not come back.

Fact: It could easily happen on any given basketball court in this city.

When did playgrounds become killing fields?