“We demand businesses! We demand cleaner streets! We demand public transportation!”
The children seemed to shout right through the small television monitor just beyond the front door of Bruno David Gallery.
This display was not what one would expect upon entering a Midtown visual art gallery, but the video set the tone for the Transformation Project Walk.
“We demand love! We demand respect!” the youth continued, with authority.
Through the Pulitzer Foundation for the Art’s Urban Expression program, these North City students had spent the past few months using visual arts to make public demands on behalf of their community.
“This is such a creative solution to address issues in a neighborhood,” said Juan William Chávez, collaborating artist and director of Boots Contemporary Art Space, a project partner.
“For the Pulitzer to step outside of its institutional walls and embed artists into the community, it’s just an amazing thing.”
The Pulitzer collaborated on the initiative with Boots Contemporary Art Space and Succeeding with Reading by ACCESS Academies. It also involved Chicago-based artist and 2010 Whitney Biennial participant Theaster Gates, whose neighborhood-inspired work celebrates culture and promotes social inclusion.
The resulting pieces from the program that lined the museum as part of the multimedia display were not the work of traditional artists.
The 4th and 5th grade students of Holy Trinity Catholic School in the Hyde Park neighborhood entered the program as art students. But upon completion, they were agents of change.
“If I’m this little kid and I can do this,” said 10 year-old Dimitra Ray, “then imagine what the bigger kids could do.”
Ray and her two sisters spent their evenings and weekends in the program getting more acquainted with the neighborhood they call home.
Photographer Stewart Halperin, poet Janie Ibur, Chávez and Gates guided students as they captured their daily lives through photography, writing and drawing.
“Art allows people into a problem without indicting them or making them feel like they are the culprit,” Gates said. “In that respect, arts can have more impact than a political campaign or a protest.”
Like many North City neighborhoods, Hyde Park is a shell of its former self.
But for the children of the families that still call it home, the area provided inspiration for artwork, writing and photography to illustrate their surroundings and improve them.
“They were more excited to get up for school on Saturday than Monday through Friday,” Ray’s mother Detrice said.
“Every time they came home, they were just so excited to tell me about the new thing that they were a part of. They captured a lot of aspects of the neighborhood. They took pictures and showed things that I had never seen, and I live around here. I was like, ‘Where was this?’”
Logan Jackson, age 11, described her community exploration in powerful words.
“My structure is strong with bonded walls of work, and I am filled with a community of policemen, teachers, priests, women, men, boys, girls and people who can just be forgiven, and, to be with God in this space of praise,” she said.
“I have a heart, but you, your family and community can only build up.”
After completing the program, Trinity Johnson, age 10, said, “Now, I care more about the neighborhood and how people act. And I think about how the world would end up if they might follow in our steps and try to make the world a better place.”
At the culminating exhibit, the excitement showed no signs of wavering in the young participants who came to see their work and their teachers.
“Mr. Theaster, Mr. Theaster,” they shouted, running towards the back of the gallery, eager for a reunion, when they heard the voice of their instructor.
He was speaking on a video, but the children stood around the monitor in admiration of him, shouting out memories.
“Normally in art class, it’s like, ‘This is how you make purple,’” Gates said. “But in a situation like this, when more is needed, you say, ‘Let’s mix colors … and then let’s sweep.’ The art part can be a lightning rod, so that Hyde Park can get attention for the possibility – and not from what’s missing.”
Gates, a visual artist with a background in urban planning, worked with the children to create a “master plan” for the redevelopment of Hyde Park.
“We had these 5th graders articulating the possibilities and requirements of a neighborhood better than major developers,” Gates said.
“When asked the right question, a 5th grader knows what their needs are.”
To say that Gates was equally affected by the program would be an understatement.
He had planned a series of installations to be displayed alongside the students’ work at the gallery to serve as the end of the story. But the power of the project inspired Gates to buy a home in the Hyde Park area. Now he is moving forward with the master plan he created with the students – who will soon be his neighbors.
“We give our places up way too easily,” Gates said. “I want to do more for Hyde Park and North St. Louis by encouraging black folks to repossess those forgotten neighborhoods and say, ‘Hey, we can make this beautiful again.’”
The Transformation programming series is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. For more information, visit mattaclark.pulitzerarts.org/transformation.
