'Write it down in caps lock: BE THE CHANGE'
Teens' statement put forth in mural
Desperate times call for desperate art. Ask Picasso, who painted "Guernica" in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. Or closer to home, ask the seven students who painted their own response to trouble: a mural they call "Love in the Revolution."
The students created the artwork as counselors in training in the city-run Somerville Adventure Camp last summer. Now, after a month on display in the windows of the Davis Square
The exhibit opened Jan. 16, with more than 50 participants from Belmont, Boston, Cambridge, Middleborough, and Newton, as well as Somerville.
"A lot of this exhibit is about helping the kids to develop self-esteem," said Nave volunteer Susan Berstler. Still, she said, "These are all real themes that we do in the gallery on a regular basis."
Themes like drug abuse, suicide, and sexual orientation.
Jonathan Moreira designed a Narcotics Anonymous logo filled with the organization's slogans; Jennie Vallesio a meditation on suicide that incorporates the text "gregg . . . miss . . . best friend." Rufus Dixon's portrait of a bald man with a tiara includes positive and negative stereotypes of gay men.
The mural is the largest and most pointed piece, and the most poignant.
Painted on donated plywood, the left side of the 4-by-8-foot image radiates sadness in dull, dark colors. A parent holds a child next to a newspaper headline mourning a teen's death. A television set flies from an apartment building's window. A tree burns.
On the right side, the tree's flames have turned into blooms. A gun projects flowers. A family sits down to dinner. Across the tree, the mural reads: "If we are all family, why are there millions of people who die each day? . . . If we all want a change, why aren't any of us making an effort?"
"One side is like reality and the other side is what we want to be there," said artist Samantha Pino, interviewed after school with fellow artists Sheila Harris and Himanot Mulugeta. The three 14-year-olds live in Somerville. Three other girls and one boy participated in the mural as well.
It's simply what they see, they said, both in their own lives and in the media.
"There are a lot of teen deaths, because of nonsense around us," said Pino.
"This girl, I swear, she thought that I hacked her MySpace . . . she was all ready to fight me," said Harris.
The television in the mural, Mulugeta said, signified the harmful behavior "people are learning from TV."
"During the Super Bowl, they have so many alcohol commercials," Pino said.
Harris brought up a former friend who had "started wearing more makeup . . . having sex." She and Mulugeta said they have had friends who became pregnant.
The students chose the project with the encouragement of Maya Nitzberg, program coordinator for the camp.
"There was so much going on in their own lives that they wanted to talk about," said Nitzberg, a Somerville-raised artist. "As youth, their voices can be drowned out."
Perhaps most powerful to the three girls was a sense of lurking sexual violence.
Pino said she had learned in camp to be careful about posting photos on MySpace because predators could be watching.
"We have that on the streets," Harris said. "We don't need it on the Internet, too."
Along with getting mad, the girls got creative. Pino painted the graffiti-style mural name. Harris "was more like the idea person," she said.
Art "opens up their world," Nitzberg said. She noted that Somerville doesn't have a youth center.
Despite the heavy subject matter, "everybody was just laughing, giggling, making jokes, singing," Pino said. "We had the iPod going 24/7."
They continue to express themselves through art. Harris has written seven chapters of a novel. Mulugeta and Pino have won contests with, respectively, an essay and an oil pastel.
Academically, "they're passing," Nitzberg said. "Two of them were thinking of dropping out."
She's talking to the mayor about finding a permanent place to install the mural, preferably in East Somerville. Berstler wants to make the youth art show an annual event.
No matter where the mural goes next, the artists seemed to have taken its slogan to heart.
"You have to be the change," said Harris.
"Write that down in caps lock," Pino told a reporter. "BE THE CHANGE."
"Shout Out!" closes Saturday with a sale of knitted items to benefit the Somerville Homeless Coalition. The Nave Gallery is open on Fridays from 6 to 8 p.m. and weekends from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, see artsomerville.org.
