That Neon Kid. Visual Artist.: The Inner City Getdown

My man Chris startin out with their
first handimal

Honestly, stepping into my painting class on the first day, i never thought we'd have an opportunity like this. Never in my three years of college so far have i participated in anything like this for a class, nor has a single professor promoted their line of study in a field situation like this; real life, as real as it gets, pure interaction with art through the community. Our class, among others under the guidance of Professor Hereth of the College of DuPage were fortunate enough to visit the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Elementary School/Junior High in Humboldt Park, Chicago, to paint the stairway walls of a 100 year old facility with its students. Our mission was to decorate the deteriorating walls of the schools' main stairwell, using the childrens hands to form the animals which we would trace, then paint(like shadow puppets on a wall). Just a glimpse of the action//

these kids were absolutely owning this wall!

View from the top floor

'Lilly'(her nickname) was among one of my favorite kids to work with. She's in..3rd grade i believe. Her favorite color is purple(and red and black. awesome right?!), and favorite animal is a tiger. so we painted a purple striped, red tiger!(: She was pretty open about family(her older brother was a favorite topic), random fun facts, and school- her favorite subject is math- math seemed to be a favorite subject at BVM..interesting. It was amazing, being able to work outside the classroom and get more out of it than just working with enthusiastic kids. And honestly, the kids at this middle school completely set the bar, shall we take another field trip like such. They just give you this energy, studying art for so many years, then messing around painting hand animals in a run down stairway. It just gives you a lot of perspective,and makes you appreciate how far you've come, that whole 'taking a step back' thing. The whole experience was just too exhilarating to put it in type, it doesn't do it justice.

Lilly putting the finishing touches on our red tiger. She painted a green
tongue because she said the tiger tried eating the Lilly flower but got sick from it.

We ended up painting for almost 5 straight hours with the kids, i ended up painting with 5 kids, ranging from 2nd to 8th grade- Yesenia, Anthony, Lilly, then the George and 'Bleach' duo at the end of the school day. The last two were really cool too, especially. George wants to be an artist as well, and has had quite the history with pets in his family(the name of his dog escapes my mind). Forgot to give him a business card for this site -_- oh well. Really amazing kids however, and that's an understatement. The light for these kids truly shines in Humboldt Park. Some shot of the finished stairwells//