As I approached Lanier High School one morning in April, I mused over the fact that I only traveled to that part of Jackson for stories. After parking my car in the lot across the street from the school's front entrance, I was reaching for the door handle to get out when I stopped.
"Should I leave my iPod in the car?" I asked myself silently. I had, after all, seen people milling around the area just moments before. "Is it safe?" I continued.
Chastising myself for falling victim to a stereotype that I claim to detest, I defiantly unplugged the device from the audio cable connecting it to the stereo and placed it into my cup holder. I opened my car door, stepped out into the street and walked toward the school's front doors.
I stopped in to the front office to check-in, telling the office attendant that I was there to see art teacher Candy Cain. After a brief wait, a student led me through a maze of hallways and staircases and into an art room on the second floor of the building. As I walked through the door, students who were attending to their paintings as they sat drying in the hall followed behind me. My youthful face seemed to startle Cain when she first saw me, but confusion quickly turned into excitement. We had talked on the phone the afternoon prior to my visit as she packed her car with art from a show in Hattiesburg. Her clear blue eyes lit up as she led me around the room, pointing out gifted art students she had told me about earlier. "This is the one I was telling you about," she told me as we approached several students. She couldn't wait for me to talk to them.
The students, on the other hand, seemed to shy away from my advances, answering my questions as simply as possible. Besides, they were intently working on art pieces to show in the Jackson Public Schools student art auction.
As I moved around the large classroom talking to different students, Cain intermittently beckoned me to her gargantuan pile of student art projects. "Isn"t this just great?" she would ardently ask me with each piece she picked up and handed to me. Three-dimensional still lifes made of model magic depicted students' favorite foods. One student's sushi roll looked so real, my stomach fought off a growl. Another student's self portrait, made of Paper Mache and magazine clippings, enchanted me as it jumped off its anchoring matte board.
After circulating about the room, I approached a table where two young men sat painting, one using acrylic and the other caulk. At first, each student paid me no mind, trying to wish away the inquisitive reporter, but soon they were opening up about their talent and ambitions. One of them, Djuan, was an award-winning artist on the state level, placing in the Scholastic Art Competition. The other, Paris, had won the district-wide Martin Luther King Jr. art contest and was an aspiring art teacher like Cain.
As I listened to them speak about their passion for art and how Lanier's negative image affects it, I became inspired. "People wouldn't expect Lanier High School to have students who do art so well," Paris told me.
I left Lanier High School that day with the intention to tell everyone I knew about the student art auction. I wanted to support the students and their art, and I wanted other people to feel the same way. Why should Lanier be characterized by basketball and juvenile delinquency? The students have more to say, I told myself.
The evening of the art auction, which coincided with Arts, Eats and Beats, I walked around Fondren telling people to stop by the auction and "support the kids." When I arrived in the lobby of Rainbow Co-op, people were milling around, but very few were looking at the students' art. There was less than an hour left for the auction, but fewer than four names appeared on each bidding sheet, if any at all. I was appalled.
When I found a piece that I liked, I weighed the chances of my actually winning the bid against my broke-college-student budget. I passed up the ones that were astonishingly brilliant; someone else would yank those up for a pretty price, anyway. I ended up taking my chances, however, on a beautiful scene of a snow-topped cabin by a Jim Hill student and a portrait called "The Prayer" by a student from Lanier. I knew someone would outbid me, I knew it.
When a JPS representative called me the next morning to congratulate me on my two winnings, I was excited to acquire two pieces of art by two promising students, but I was also disappointed. Where was Jackson when its youth was putting a positive face on its schools?
I know that this is just one incident, and that there are other ways to support the arts in the city, but the arts is under-funded, under-acknowledged and under-appreciated in this country's schools already. It hurts me to imagine that some students have yet another reason to dismiss their faith in the community's concern for them. These are our future leaders - whether on Wall Street or Broadway, City Hall or the Museum of Art. They need our support, and even if they won't say it, they crave it.
Students want a pat on the back. They light up when someone tells them that they've done well. Jackson has its problems, but discouraged young people breed needy adults. Let's uplift our young people. Let's show them that we care about their accomplishments and future goals. Art gives way to genius; it's cathartic therapy for troubled hearts and inspiration for hungry minds. Art is a path to self-discovery and good work for idle hands. It is beautiful, just like the souls of young folk. Embrace it and support it. In doing so, we embrace and support Jackson's young people.
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