Art That’s More than Just Pretty

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.  —Ernst Fischer

On a good day in North Minneapolis, it’s feasible to conclude that this part of town gets a bad rap. There are arts organizations, community events, and commissioned sculptures and graffiti art. The ambitious Lowry Avenue Corridor Project promises to add landscaped boulevards and retail shops. There are even kids on bicycles. On a bad day, however, it’s a different story. The Northside, after all, helped earn Minneapolis nationwide notoriety as “Murderapolis.” Violent crime and poverty are worse here than anywhere else in the city. Those kids really shouldn’t be on the streets.

Keeping them away from trouble is the goal at Juxtaposition Arts, where a thirteen-year-old can walk into the studio, grab a can of spray paint and decorate a pair of sneakers, then sell them online to make money to buy new clothes, take his family out to dinner, or start saving for college. He could also work on his portfolio, which he might later submit to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, or another top-tier art school. In the summer, he could work on community mural projects with Ernest Bryant, a Bush Fellow, and other local visual artists.

Roger Cummings is the cofounder (with visual artist Peyton) and artistic director of Juxtaposition, which occupies a small building on the corner of Broadway and Emerson. Juxtaposition offers art instruction for kids up to twenty-one years of age, as well as college-level classes on art interpretation and art history. Cummings grew up in inner-city south Minneapolis and knows it’s crucial for kids to find appropriate emotional outlets. As a kid, he used aerosol art, painting, and graphic design to express himself and help avoid “a lot of the gang and drug stuff” that many of his peers were getting into, he says. When the mid-1980s crack boom rolled around, his sights were set on a future that involved college, not quick cash.

All the classes offered at Juxtaposition are free, and most culminate in a public showing, during which students are encouraged to sell their work. The teachers, all of whom are successful visual artists in their own right, help students prepare portfolios and price their work. The young artists pocket 75 percent of their sales; the rest helps cover operating costs.

Cummings does not emphasize developing great artists, though some of Juxtaposition’s former students have attended art school (one went to Harvard, then Parsons). What he’s most interested in is using art to foster innovative thinking and financial independence. He encourages the kids to develop what he calls “microbusinesses”—sole proprietorships they can operate in their bedroom or on the Internet. One of the youngsters supplements his family’s income by selling his aerosol-painted sneakers on his MySpace page. “I want them to be the boss of themselves,” says Cummings. “If they choose to work for somebody, they’re doing it for knowledge and experience, not a paycheck. They have the tools to choose an independent path.” Creation, in this sense, goes beyond sculpting, drawing, and decorating textiles. Juxtaposition is teaching young people how to craft their lives.

“It’s important to connect with people through the gifts you have and be able to engage them with what they’re concerned with,” says Cummings. “That’s the strength of art. It can have some function like a bench, a chair, a landscape, or something with solar panels, or a well-designed sidewalk. That’s cool. Stuff that hangs on walls that speaks to a struggle that you would like to address”—Cummings pauses—“these are my ranting and ramblings on what I do. For me, in the social situation I’m in now and the neighborhood I’m in, art can’t afford to just be pretty.”In a similar vein, but on a larger scale, the Plymouth Christian Youth Center operates its summer Theater Arts Institute for Children. PCYC has been around since 1954 and occupies a spacious, well-kept, well-lit building that’s an oasis in an otherwise rundown area. PCYC runs an alternative high school and offers after-school programs for kindergarteners through twelfth graders, as well as social-service programs. Twenty-two years ago, the Wheelock Whitney Foundation gave PCYC the Capri Theater, a defunct movie house/theater on West Broadway. PCYC executive director Anne Little Long realized the theater’s potential and began renting out the space. She also launched the Theater Arts Institute and hired professional actors to work with the kids.

Twelve-year-old Alfred Hartwell says performing onstage at the Capri is “like winning the Super Bowl!” Hartwell moved here from south Minneapolis with his family a couple of years ago. “This neighborhood is OK because it’s silent in the morning, but not at night,” he says. “You either hear fire trucks, police [sirens], or ambulances every night.”

“Every night,” concurs his friend Sharay Ayers, thirteen, who has attended the Theater Arts Institute the past three summers. She and Hartwell come here every day after school and stay until their parents pick them up at six o’clock. Ayers giggles easily, but is solemn when she talks about what goes on outside of PCYC. She used to live in Burnsville and is still trying to get used to the nonstop nightly noise. Waking up to gunshots is not uncommon.

About forty-five kids participate in the Theater Arts Institute each summer, working with playwright Gavin Lawrence, Penumbra Theatre company members Austene Van, Kevin West, T. Mychael Rambo, Dennis Spears, and other top-notch Twin Cities actors. The kids are schooled in singing, dancing, and acting, and make their own costumes, props, and sets.

Last year’s musical, Once Upon a Summertime, was written especially for the group by Lawrence. Putting together the final product took three weeks of intensive acting, choreography, and music rehearsals. Ayers says she almost lost her part to Hartwell because she wasn’t working hard enough. “Mr. Gavin says that to everyone,” says Hartwell. Ayers giggles. Both say the show was “awesome” and that the theater program built up their confidence and made it easier for them to talk to people. “If I don’t become an actress,” says Ayers, “I want to be a vet.” Hartwell says he would like to act professionally too, but first he wants to play in the NFL. His third choice is to become a professional basketball player.

As a Northside resident, Van views her work with PCYC as an opportunity for her to give back to her community. “I know from personal experience how art can save a life. It saved mine,” she says. When Van was growing up, many of her peers became addicts, gang members, and teenage parents. “At PCYC, teachers don’t focus on the disciplines of the arts alone,” she says, “they also concentrate on teaching self-discipline. When our children have no outlet, no safe medium for which they can creatively and positively express their fears, concerns, questions, pain, anger, frustration, issues, or even rage, they will turn to negative ways of expressing these things. Theater kept my mind too busy and my body too tired to get into trouble.”

Ayers and Hartwell understand what’s on the line for them. “I had an experience with a gunshot,” Hartwell says. “One day, I saw a car doing a donut and this man got out of his car and started shooting straight up into the air! My dad—I don’t know why he did it—opened the door and told him to stop it.” Whenever Hartwell sees a slow-moving car coming down the street with its windows cracked, he hides behind the bushes. The police, he adds, always take a long time to arrive. At best, they’re two hours late; at worst, they never show up. In addition to Juxtaposition and PCYC, other organizations are using arts programming to help change North Minneapolis. The Northside Arts Collective collaborates with community centers to produce public sculpture. The Peace Foundation hosts numerous events and community forums dedicated to cleaning up the area and creating dialogue. Its annual Peace Games includes street parties, a 5K run, and an arts crawl, Flow. Then there’s the Camden Music School, the Lundstrum Center for the Performing Arts, the Workhouse Theatre Company, Homewood Studios, Asian Media Access, and Universal Dance Destiny Studio.

Artistic director/performer Edna Stevens Talton, who runs Universal Dance and lives in New Hope, says the Northside reminds her of her childhood in Queens and Brooklyn. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows each other,” she says. “The Northside has a huge African American population, which is unlike the other areas in the Twin Cities. When I moved here, I thought the majority of Minnesota was Caucasian until I found the Northside. Its distinct down-to-earth qualities can make a newcomer feel at home.” She loves that she can buy the “hottest kicks” in the entire state on the Northside. Yet, as a business owner, Stevens is dismayed by the filth of North Minneapolis and the city’s negligence. “Appearance is crucial in any business,” she says. “I’m not sure who’s responsible for this.”

In Mayor R. T. Rybak’s 2006 State of the City Address at the Capri Theater, he said that there was no other part of the city that needed more attention. “Now is the time and this is the place to make North Minneapolis the jewel we need it to be,” he said. “This entire city—from top to bottom—needs to be committed to success in North Minneapolis.”

For Ayers, Hartwell, and their friends, Rybak’s words hold little, if any, weight. “Within the first three days of moving to the Northside, we heard an ambulance because someone got stabbed in their backyard,” says Hartwell. “If every neighborhood had an afterschool program like PCYC’s and if the police would come on time, there’d be a lot less violence. That’s why I came to PCYC. To not get into trouble.” 

Jaime Kleiman is theater columnist for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.