Journal Update

May 2, 2008

National Comprehensive Center for Fathers

I want to thank Maxwell Brown and Kofi Asante for inviting me to work with the men at the National Comprehensive Center for Fathers.  The people at the NCCF have been welcoming and supportive of this portrait project, and I am honored that they have invited me to work with them.  I would also like to extend my thanks to Mayor Nutter and the Mayor’s office for graciously supporting this event, for supporting the Center for Fathers and the good work they do, and for continuing and expanding city support of the arts. 

I met Maxwell a couple months ago.  He is a very impressive man who articulates who he is and where he wants to go with a clarity all too rare.  I asked if he would pose for a portrait.  He introduced me to Kofi Asante, and together we came up with this idea of making portraits of the men who have come through the program at the Comprehensive Center for Fathers.  The success of this project speaks loudly as to just how good that program is. 

“I was born in North Philadelphia, 1974.  I grew up in a poor neighborhood with my mother and two sisters.  I had a good childhood. We struggled a lot.  Sometimes no food and no clothes.  I went to West Penn High School, and dropped out in 12th grade.  I started dealing drugs, crack cocaine.  I would make $2,500 every two days.”  These were the first words I heard in the first interview I had at the National Comprehensive Center for Fathers. 

I want to reflect just a bit about my time with the 7 men at the Center for Fathers who courageously shared their very personal stories with someone they didn’t know and had no reason to trust. I am not sure if they noticed, but I am not black, I didn’t grow up in Philadelphia, or even inside a city, and have never had a run in with the law.  We don’t seem to have much in common, and still these men trusted me by telling me of their lives, and I cannot thank them enough.

These gentlemen, each and every one of them, opened their lives and their hearts to me in a way that was moving and meaningful. As they spoke to me of their past experiences, I drew and painted their faces as best as I could, and then in the final minutes took dictation on what it is that they want to share with the world about who they are.  The heart of this experience for me has been the chance to listen to these men, who are my neighbors -- we all live in Philly after all -- tell me about lives that couldn’t be more different from my own.  It is my goal to use the skills I have as an artist to help bridge some of those distances between people of different backgrounds, to break down the misunderstandings that keep people separated and suspicious of one another.  Each of these men tells a compelling story about their own life, about their childhoods which were never very easy or financially secure, about their hopes and dreams for themselves, and the troubles and wrong turns they may have taken along the way.  Each of these men spoke to me, a stranger to them, with respect, courage, openness and honesty.  I am indebted and impressed. 

I did my first interview with someone I didn’t know in 1987, over 20 years ago.  That interview took place in a rural village overseas, and the man across the table from me 50 years older than I was, told me about growing up in a time of deprivation and war.  Over the past two years I have listened to men and women from Iraq describe their lives under the current war.  These last couple of weeks, across the table from me in a conference room on Juniper Street more than one man told me that by the time he was 25, most of his childhood friends were dead, a handful of others were in jail.  That sounded again a lot like war. 

I don’t believe in violence as a method to solve disputes, and I certainly don’t believe in war.  I believe in art and education, and connections between people.  I believe that listening to another person can make a difference.  Some people need to know that what they have lived is special, is valued, is worth sharing, and other people need to hear that they are not alone, that their lives are part of a great fabric of shared experiences.  As I am renewed by the process of this listening, I hope my paintings enable others to listen and connect, and understand a little bit more about the people we do or do not acknowledge as our neighbors.  The men from the National Comprehensive Center for Fathers taught me again and again the common cause we all have with each other.