Getting to the Art of the Matter

Artist Marilyn La Grone-Amaral explains the symbolism of masks and colors to 10 students at the Inglewood Community Education Center. Yellow represents creativity, she says. Red is power. Black is the unknown. Blue is healing.

Tony (not his real name) has been quiet, withdrawn, ever since a friend was killed in gunfire. He spends weekends in jail and is court-ordered to attend classes here during the week. At 17, he has a lot on his mind.

He refused to participate in the first weekly art session, conducted at the school by Theatre of Hearts / Youth First. When told he would be given a failing grade for the day, he said he didn’t care.

On this day, he came to his teacher and apologized. He said he used to enjoy art as a youngster, that it made him feel good. He wants to feel good again. His cardboard mask is blue and black--for the unknown and for healing.

“It’s an expression of happiness,” he says. “It’s a happy face.”

A belief in the arts and a belief in the young come together through Youth First, a nonprofit artist-in-residence program founded by actress Sheila Scott-Wilkinson following the flames and violence of Los Angeles’ 1992 civil unrest.

The program was expected to last one year. Five years later, it involves more than 200 artists and provides classes at 30 sites within Los Angeles County.

The program offers instruction in theater, storytelling, dance, creative writing, music, choral music, visual arts, video and computer graphics.

Youth First programs throughout the county will present “Cool Art ‘97,” a sale and exhibition of works created by students and mentors, on Friday. More than 200 pieces are included in the show, 5:30 to 9 p.m. at the SITE Gallery, Space A-9, in the Brewery Studios, 2100 N. Main St. in Los Angeles.

Through the process of art come voices screaming to be heard, Scott-Wilkinson says. It’s important to see and to listen.

The stories behind the art describe lives in turmoil and in search. Some of the students are homeless, some are gang members. Some are involved in programs to improve job skills or to pursue GEDs. They all seek a place in the world where there is still a chance for them to fly high.

Here at the Inglewood center, a 17-year-old senior kisses a mask she named “Sista.” It is a representation of herself, she says. The student is African American. The mask she created is white with bright red lips. It’s a reminder that skin color does not define the person within.

Another student has created a mask called “Night and Day.” Half the face is light, the other dark. “I wanted to say how I change from day to night,” he says. “My personality changes. I’m different at night. I like how I am more in the day.”

Another has created the face of the devil. “It’s my homeboy,” he says. “He has a crazy life.”

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It slipped through his hands. Manuel Moralez patches together a ceramic mask, scarred by a crack that runs from skull to jaw. He paints streams of blood dripping from its face, collecting in pools on the blue background.

“Blood and pain,” he says. That’s what this face represents. It didn’t start out that way, but when it fell to the floor, that’s what it became. And, for many young people, it’s what life becomes.

Moralez, 18, is a participant at Project StepUP in Gardena, which focuses on developing youth leadership and job skills. Like the Inglewood center, it is a program that incorporates Youth First into its curriculum. Most of the students are here to earn general education degrees, splitting their time between the classroom and construction job sites through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity.

Moralez quit school in 11th grade when he became a father. He came to StepUP, based in Gardena, to earn his GED and to learn about construction work so he can support his family.

His mask is titled “Life After Death.”

The Youth First artist in residence is Kira Lynn Harris, who is preparing for a show of her own at the Smithsonian Institution. She grew up in Gardena and now lives in Inglewood.

“I grew up in the same neighborhoods,” she says. “The students and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. I think that’s important.”

It’s what Scott-Wilkinson had in mind when she founded the program, which pays artists to serve as mentors, often in their own neighborhoods.

“A lot of organizations come in from a hierarchal situation and they throw some art at you, but we’re coming in from underneath. A lot of our artists come from similar backgrounds. They understand students from the root source, not from the intellectual idea of, ‘These poor kids in the ghetto. We’re going to come in and help them and do a little artwork with them.’ We’re not bleeding hearts. The reason we’re involved is because we have a skill and we can make a difference.”

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Scott-Wilkinson grew up in Aurora, Ill., and studied opera at the Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt, Germany, before moving to London to study drama.

After three years of study, her acting career launched her to lead roles in film and on the stage. She spent 10 years in England before returning to the States, where she continued to act, largely in television (“Cagney & Lacey,” “Benson,” “Cheers,” “Quincy”). But she hungered for work in the community.

In 1986, she founded Theatre of Hearts Inc., believing the arts could empower communities and create unity. In 1992, funding became available for the artist-in-residence component of the nonprofit group.

“The civil unrest put a magnifying glass on what was happening in the communities,” she says, “that the youngsters had nothing . . . also that these kids had no one to talk to; and through the arts they started to express themselves, and all this stuff came out--their fears, their frustrations, their image of self.

“All of our youths are at risk in one way or another,” Scott-Wilkinson says of the students. “They’re either urban youth or homeless. They’re neglected and abused children. We’re going into places here that normally would not have a quality, comprehensive fine arts program.”

They are people who, at some point in their young lives, have slipped through fingers. Some have cracked and bled, and some are trying through art to heal.