Reflections
The Art of Peace

By:  Kristin A. Rapp, LMSW, Founder & Executive Director of ArtPeace, Inc. in Rochester, NY. 

October 11, 2009

A few days ago, October 9, was John & Sean Lennon’s birthday. I’m an admirer. A friend sent me a little video message by cell phone that she took at Strawberry Fields in Central Park – a place I had visited only a week earlier - of people gathering and communally singing “Give Peace a Chance” in John’s honor around the Imagine mosaic adorned with flowers, apples and other memorial items. This vigil in that colorful garden of peace takes place every year, yet the words of the song seem even more relevant now. On the same day (10/09) this week, our new President accepted the Nobel Peace Prize during a time of tremendous unrest, conflict and war. What would John say?

Dale Davis asked me to write a piece about my founding of an organization called ArtPeace, Inc. in Rochester, NY five years ago. I couldn’t get John’s song out of my head as I went to write. It reminded me of the reason I created the organization, ArtPeace, and of the origin of that name – a combination of two of the most highly treasured things in my life – Art and Peace. The Arts being a vehicle through which to express and create Peace. That’s what John Lennon did with such depth, flare and artistic beauty. It may be interesting to note, that my first born, a daughter, Shealyn Kassidy Rose, was also born on October 9 – the “day of the penetrating gaze”. Shea (now 12) and myself are thrilled that she has the distinct honor to share that birthday with one of the greatest artists and peacemakers our world has known.

In the daily efforts to establish, fund, market and maintain a small not-for-profit organization in a troubled economic climate, it is easy to forget the higher vision. Peace through Arts. The uplifted place we hope to bring the young people we work with, in addition to ourselves. I am grateful that as I wrote this, I remembered the initial mission that caused me to leap without wings, and hope to continue to weave that vision into the work that ArtPeace does.

“Arts and Social Justice” is what I have, some would say perhaps unwisely, chosen to devote my career to. 5 years ago, I left a good, safe job as a social worker in a well-established local agency (with a salary, health insurance and good benefits), to start a not-for-profit organization, ArtPeace, Inc. (www.artpeace.org), that provides arts, technology and entrepreneurship opportunities to low-income and disadvantaged youth from urban, suburban and rural settings in order to reform education and create social change. We serve the Rochester, NY and Southern Tier / Finger Lakes Regions.

At times, this means I drive around in a van that is falling apart, work 12-18 hours per day (often without compensation), live without health insurance for my family and occasionally work all night in a women’s halfway house to make ends meet. Not as a martyr, but these are the real choices of an “entrepreneur” striving to make something fly.

ArtPeace is strong advocacy for the voiceless of our community; creative education through arts and technology-integrated work in schools (K – college); residency work; after school programs in a myriad of arts disciplines; creative arts therapy; and youth employment where young people are employed to start businesses collaboratively as entrepreneurs in the arts & technology (music & sound recording; dance, fitness & movement; literary arts; culinary arts; visual arts; digital media; animation; landscape design; filmmaking; photography; web design; etc.) ArtPeace contributes to or hosts creative events, arts showcases and festivals, as well as provides training and coaching in specialized areas.
 

We are also an affiliate of national City at Peace (www.cpnational.org), a musical theatre program where diverse young people prove that they can live peaceful lives, develop themselves as leaders and change their community, while writing a script, lyrics, songs and dance choreography for a musical drama.

Social justice in the context of an organization like ArtPeace is using the arts & technology to even the playing field for the under-served and impoverished. To educate in engaging ways and to teach young people how to have a real impact in their community. Arts are a vehicle for expressing their voice and to help adults understand them. It is a way for even very different people to work together collaboratively and to demonstrate that we can live in peace. It is also a way to make a living in an uncertain world. As young people learn to be flexible, creative thinkers with entrepreneurial and leadership skills, they can make a way for themselves and live fulfilling lives. After all, it is the creative among us who will survive uncertain times. They will think on their feet, solve problems, use limited resources effectively and be able to take various talents to create something new, with the currency of ideas.

The results of ArtPeace work are promising in this data-driven world. Programs are showing a real impact, including a significant qualitative evaluation from the University of Rochester Warner School; positive testimonies from students, parents and teachers; a “Creative Ticket Award” for excellence in arts-in-education in New York State; and quantitative stats that show improved grades, school attendance, promotion, behavior and attitudes. There are challenges too many to name as well, but it is the work with kids and artists that tell the real story of ArtPeace. It’s the teaching artists who choose this profession despite living at poverty level and working many jobs because they can’t imagine living their life doing anything else. It’s the boy who couldn’t talk or write who is reciting a poem in a public showcase of arts learning. The girl who came to school just to dance in the learning showcase. The employed youth who got a creative spark that kept him off the streets. The 12 young adults who are right now drumming up work for their new TV production and digital media business, incubated by ArtPeace Young Entrepreneurs. The young leaders who are now inspiring others with creative ideas and going to college.

In closing, a poetic statement that sums up my personal quest to keep pioneering change in this burgeoning field of arts-based learning. During a teaching artist training session in the summer of 2008, facilitated by John Cimino, director of Creative Leaps (arts & learning consultants), participants were asked to choose from a multitude of colorful photos John had strewn across the ballroom floor and overflowing into the hallway, depicting a myriad of different images. From these, we selected only a few and then wrote a personal manifesto that rose up out of the pictures and our own thinking about their connection to our work and to who we are as artists, teachers, leaders and individuals.

I remember some of my photos - a turtle, a strong knight riding a dark horse, a black child’s face, a compass, a mother and her children, a dart in the center of a dartboard, and sunlight on water. In only a few minutes of exploring the varied images in front of me, I scribbled down this Manifesto (what I am moving toward in this profession) in a flurry:

Kristin’s Manifesto

Slow and Steady wins the Race!

Patient movement forward with

                                                            Precision

                                                                        Focus   &        

                                                                                    Grace

Protector of children

Whose need

I have to Face…

Through uncharted lands

Without a compass

Safe in Parental Embrace

Tenacious Leader –

            Strong

                        Balanced  &

                                           Loving

Navigating complex terrain   

    --With heavenly Knight---

“Rising higher and higher from a boundless basis…“

Out of darkness and INTO THE LIGHT.

<Able to touch a heart.>

Peace & Progress made through Art.

ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE…

Top

Reflections

Andy Salgado

Rediscovering Ourselves in Tumultuous Times

This essay is intended primarily for those of you who call yourselves “Teaching Artists”, those of you who make a living in both your art form and in teaching young people in a variety of settings using your art form. I’m writing this essay because I know these next two to possibly five years are going to be very lean in terms of employment, and we’re going to have to give a lot of thought as to where we expend our resources and how we’re going to make it.

I wear multiple hats in the Arts In Education field, one as an executive director of an Arts In Education organization, and one as a Teaching Artist myself.  My world consists of designing quality programs with and for schools, writing grants to support this endeavor, and selling the programs to the schools.  My own artwork, photography, writing, scripting, has, up until recently, been a bit on the back burner, and though I never really stopped creating and doing the work much of it has not been exhibited, read, or presented.  Rather, I’ve been busy producing artists’ works; giving fellow Teaching Artists work in the schools and teaching myself.

My ability to find enough work for my fellow-artists and myself this past year has been slowing down considerably. In this past year, our after-school program lost one quarter of its funding.  Our city and state funding has been lowered by about ten percent overall.  And our foundation support is about one-quarter of what it was at its high point.  Put this all together and you have a perfect storm for closing up the shop.  Which is what I’m giving serious consideration in doing.  These are difficult times indeed.

But please let me share with you what I call life’s “little miracles”, the ability to find the silver lining in the dark clouds.  This past October through Mid-December I took on a photography residency at a special needs high school.  I met with the two teachers who would be participating in this extended-day program.  We had already put a program into place for this school last year and donated five digital cameras.  The students’ works thrilled the newly appointed principal.  Now her third year as principal, and her school being one that has many of the problems of the inner-city, urban, schools serving “at-risk” populations, she had ordered an additional twelve cameras for her school’s extended day program.  This year’s photography program was designed to build upon our previous program that not only connected literacy, technology and career development skills, (the all-important learning standards!) but fostered works that the students themselves observed were good, that the students themselves didn’t know they had the eye for, the talent for, and developed new skills. 

Just two days before the start of the program, the district leadership changed the plan.  The high school students would not be participating but during this fall cycle, the elementary students from the nearby school would be walked over to the high school and the program would consist of paraprofessionals from the elementary school and teachers from the high school.  Day one was a minor disaster.  The teachers simply didn’t know what to do.  We were able to show the second graders some pictures, they were able to take a few snap shots, but they just wanted to run around, play games, and we spent most of the time just trying to maintain some sort of organization. 

The principal was apologetic and said it was out of her hands, but to try to “make due” with the situation.  I met with the two teachers and we came up with a contingency plan of some photography and drawing pictures.  It worked a little better than day one, but this too was unsatisfactory.  At the end of the session I told the two teachers who were rather miffed with the situation that I had a bunch of pirate costumes and we could make a “living story book”.  Some of the youngsters showed they had the attention span for taking pictures, and those that didn’t could enact the story we would create.

This turned out to be the magic formula.  The young children loved dressing up in the costumes.  They loved getting their pictures taken.  The students who took the pictures were thrilled with their photography and they too had a chance to dress in costumes.  In that the students themselves have attention difficulties, I showed the teachers theatre games, the mirror game, and other games that slow young children down and help build concentration and focusing skills.  By making the program a multi-dimensional arts program where the students wrote short pieces, enacted short vignettes, looked at their photographs on their computers and received a printout of the work they were doing turned the program into a success.  I also had the insight to request one of the para-professionals participate and get into costume to be part of the storybook. Doing this made the project “real” not only for the young students, but for the staff as well who never considered actively participating.  Needless to say the principal and the staff were very, very grateful.

This kind of work can only come from those of us who have artistic backgrounds, know how to be fluid and make due, have experience with children of many ages, and those of us who are crazy enough to be unafraid to experiment. 

It is with this that I wrap up this essay and urge you to visit schools yourself, explain who you are and what you can do to contribute to scholarship.  You have to be part of making the work happen at this time.  You have to bring your stories to the schools themselves.  You have to explain to principals that you live in this community and have a stake in this community.  You have to explain that you see the kids everyday and this school and community is important to you.  And on a final note, with the fact that I have less work in the schools these days, I have more time for my photography.  I have started re-networking that part of my life as well and perfecting my skills and learning new techniques.  If we have more time on our hands, we can use it wisely.  And look, I’m writing you this essay-- at no charge!  Sending you my best wishes, my thoughts, my prayers.

Top

Reflections

Steve Alpert

Art From My Heart: Releasing the Artist Within

This is the name of the workshop presentation I give to artists and art students of all ages. It is meant to deepen their art making experience by connecting them to their life experience in a way they might not have previously.  I have been painting for almost forty years and this workshop is the sum total of everything I have learned from experience.  One section of the workshop is about giving one’s work away, creating art that has a job to do for something you believe in.  As we know, to have your artwork participate in the world is a most gratifying thing.  Over the years I’ve been asked to donate work to various causes, but this one time I was caught by surprise.  I made a large painting out of pure passion  -- I just had to make that painting -- without any particular destination in mind.  Here is the story…

In two weeks I return to Dover Air Force Base for a handover ceremony of prints of a painting I made to all thirty-two members of the base Honor Guard.  The Honor Guard members all have their regular jobs on the base, but volunteer to a part of the Honor Guard a 24/7/365 commitment.  They are amazing young men and women.  I first met them four years ago when I handed over the large oil painting, “Duty, Courage, Honor” to become a part of the permanent collection of the, Air Mobility Command Museum.

You might remember in March of 2004, a series of photos were taken at of flag-draped caskets at Dover AFB returning home from Iraq.  It was an election year and the Dept. of Defense squashed the photos, but not before one website got to upload all of them.

I went to the website.   I was upset that these fine young men and women gave their lives and that we, the American public did not get to honor them.  I was compelled to make a large painting.  It took me four months to make the 42”x60” monster.   Landscape is my milieu, so I really labored over the figures and faces.  I had a heck of a time figuring out all those legs underneath the casket.  My artistic inadequacies are evident in the painting, but nonetheless I discovered a raw power in the image.   I called the painting, “The Price.”  A friend whose opinion I value said the title was a little grim.

I should mention that I never served in the military.  I am of the Vietnam War era and was lucky enough to have a high lottery number at the time.   September 11 rocked me hard, and changed me.  I became truly appreciate all those who serve in the military.   

I showed the painting to a gallery owner visiting me in my studio.  “Oh, that’s public art,” she said.  I had no idea what that meant, or the foggiest notion of where to try and place it.  I went back to the website hoping to find some idea of what to do with the painting...maybe I could find the photographer and have a conversation...I had no clue. 

On the website was a new disclaimer that read, “Some of the images in this batch are from the Columbia disaster.”  Clicking further, it turns out the image I painted was indeed of the Columbia, the contents of the flag-draped casket were shards and bits of metal and glass gathered in Louisiana and Texas by NASA Engineers.  That changed the meaning of the painting to me causing me to really think hard.  “Duty, Courage, Honor” is what I came up with.  Anyone who puts on a uniform to perform life-threatening work for a cause they believe in moves me.  If anything, I had a deeper understanding of what service really is.  

I contacted some folks I barely knew who worked for NASA at Cape Canaveral.  I sent email images.  After six months of campaigning and nudging, the image was shown to the engineers who actually did the gathering of what was left of the Columbia.  I was told they were moved to tears when they saw the image of the painting on their computer screens.   I was told by my friend, “These guys are engineers, they never show any emotion.”   They forwarded the image to the Director of the Astronaut’s Memorial Foundation on the vast NASA campus.  Through an intermediary, I was informed the Director wanted the painting.   My dealer shipped it off to Florida. You can imagine I was more than thrilled.  I waited for my cell phone to ring confirming receipt of the painting.  And waited.  The shipping company inexplicably lost the painting for two days -- amazing that a box that size could be considered lost.

They finally found it, delivered it. I was told I gave birth to a litter of kittens during those two days, and I don’t remember anything at all except thinking maybe I should go down there and help them look for it.   

The day after it was delivered I again was on cell phone watch but no one called from Florida that day, either.  I called Dr. Feldman, was told he was in a meeting and would call me back.  I called my new buddy, the buildings Superintendent and he said, yes, Dr. Feldman took one look at the painting, and had it put back in the box and sent back.

“What!” 

“I can’t speak for the Director, I am sorry.  All I know is you will have it back tomorrow.” 

The Director never returned my calls.

Feeling like I had kicked in the stomach, a few days passed.  It occurred to me to visit the website of the Dover AFB, where the photos originated.  To my surprise there was a museum on the base.  Called the Director, Mike Leister, sent Mike the image while we were on the phone.  “I would love to have that painting,” Mike said.  “But give me 24 hours, these images were toxic for the D.O.D. a year ago.”  The next day Mike called and said, “Would you and your wife like to come down for a handover ceremony and I’ll give you a tour of the museum?” 

So, in May 2005, we went.  At the ceremony, one of the Honor Guard Members looked at the painting, pointed to the man in the lead on the left and said, “That’s Sgt. Willis, he’s still here.”  She pulled out her cell phone and a few moments later, Sgt. Willis was standing in front of me.  I was so choked up I could barely speak.  You can well imagine.  Willis took me into a small room filled with Honor Guard members and they asked me to tell the story of the painting.   They kept thanking me, but I kept thanking them.

They were all so very appreciative that a stranger appeared out of the landscape to honor their service with a piece of art.

This was a great lesson for me in how paintings have their life and timeline.  The good feelings I’ve experienced as a result of making and giving this work reaffirm why I am an artist, and have deepened my conviction how powerful a two dimensional object, a delicate layer of canvas, and ground up minerals arranged in a surface can have such a powerful effect on my fellow man.

Since that time I went on to make a series of paintings of Blackhawk helicopters, and paintings from photos taken by American GI’s in Iraq.   That series of paintings, (9) in all, raised $40,000 that went to Fisher House, a non-profit organization that builds multi-family houses on VA Hospital grounds where visiting families can stay for free for up to one month. 

I am very excited to return to Dover AFB to give these prints away to all those fine young men and women who represent the best in all of us.

Steve Alpert is a working professional artist with studio based in Quogue, NY.  Mr. Alpert is represented by Blazing Editions, East Greenwich, RI.  His work is exhibited in fine art galleries throughout North America.   His blog: www.myartheart.com

Top

Reflections 
Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield 
Kuwait University’s College for Women.

On Teaching in Kuwait

On September 11, 2004 I boarded a flight in cool green, Seattle, Washington and landed the next day in Kuwait where the temperature was over 115 degrees.  Within days I would begin my teaching at Kuwait University, Department of Art and Design in the newly established College for Women.

Prior to arriving my stereotypes of this culture coincided with predominant cultural stereotypes of the Middle East as viewed through popular and news media.  Stereotypes perpetuated by popular films portray the Arab world as a place of endless hot deserts where camels roam among cruel and barbaric people.  However, my ideas were also specific to my profession - teaching studio arts.  Based on my limited knowledge of Kuwait, I believed:

• I would have to wear abaya and hejab (long black robe and head scarf)
• I could not teach art using the figure, face, animal or flowers
• I could not use nude models
• I could not show pictures of nude or semi-nude models

As a professor I dress in the same skirts, blouses, dresses and slacks I wear when teaching in America.  Instead of posing nude models for traditional gesture drawings, I have students in my all women classes pose for quick drawings.  However, since most of my students wear abaya and hejab these gesture drawings are more like fabric studies.  Still life materials substitute for the organic forms found in the human figure.

While some students feel more secure “copying” from photographs, others paint and draw combining realism with imagination. Some will not render facial features.  At first I believed this was because of their religion or something depicted in the Qurán, the holy book of Muslims.  While this is true in some cases, I discovered students avoided rendering facial features because they had no prior experience in portraiture and did not want to ruin a figure drawing eyes, nose and mouth.

Learning to adapt my studio instruction in consideration with the culture and elements meant using water-soluble pigments and vehicles instead of oil-based media.  Between the air conditioning and the intense heat, acrylic paint dries too rapidly for blending, and lack of ventilation (curtains have to be drawn when students remove hejab) prevents use of oil paint.

Top

Top

Top