This past month (May) has been a busy one.
I have reached out to more than 1,000 people doing lectures and workshops in and around the Kansas City area. Recently I was a part of an effort to raise resources and awareness for a school in Kansas City called DeLaSalle. This is a school that is literally around the corner from where I live in Hyde Park.
It is on Troost – a “dividing line”; I have never understood this idea. I do remember the first time that as I child, I went from one state to another. In school we learn the lines on a map and as a child I was waiting to see the actual line when we got to the border of New York State (where I grew up) into Pennsylvania, but when I got there, I only found a sign dividing the two.
So how do you know when you have crossed over? I can be in Kansas on one side of a street and Missouri just by crossing that street. Ideas are powerful!
So how do you blend and mix ideas? I find is always easier when you can think of ideas as flavors. Working with youth is a unique experience and often with them I have to cross imaginary lines in my mind. Going into a high school is different then going into a grade school, or is it? I would say “no,” because I need to remain open to ideas from young people and what they have to share. I am raising a teenager and although I see the growth in her, she is learning just the same as when she was 5 years old and I know this because she is willing.
I spoke to more than 200 teens in an auditorium setting … the challenges, get over myself and speak honestly, let go of ideas and respect the audience and their needs. There are times when maybe I will only connect with 1 in 200 and that is OK. This school is offering hope across the lines that divide. I was able to work with some of these youth to create artwork that blended creative ideas into a piece of artwork all out of portraits of themselves. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry create amazing experiences when put them together. In the course of a class period allowing teenagers to show who they are in a portrait and putting all of the portraits together in one whole piece showed the beauty and power in all. I want to commend the parents, teachers, and students for coming together to show what it really takes to break the lines that divide us, one creative flavor at a time.
