Students Find Artistic Voice in ‘I, Too’

How can you label me?

My mother’s from Guatemala,

My father’s from Honduras,

My grandmother’s from Belize,

My grandfather’s from Jamaica.

And it goes back so much further.

I speak English and Spanish.

So do you label me Hispanic?

Or Black-Hispanic?

Or “Blaxican”?

Here’s an idea:

Don’t label me at all.

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That earnest plea is a poem by Ingrid, one of hundreds of students at Los Angeles-area schools who, over the past year, took to heart the message in the “I, Too, Am America” student arts program.

The program culminates Sunday in a celebration of the students’ work in the third annual “I, Too, Am America Youth Arts Festival,” at Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood.

At the free event, the public can sample poetry readings, visual art exhibitions, animation screenings and a display of handmade books created by students working with professional artists and writers in weekly workshops. Performers include Ishmael Wadada, Leo Smith and the CalArts Creative Music Ensemble, the East L.A. Sabor Factory and Performing Tree’s Abalaye: African Dance Ensemble.

There will also be workshops in printmaking, Mexican tin painting, Chinese scrolls, murals, and African wrap dolls and dance, and free tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House.

Designed to bring together urban youth from different cultural backgrounds in a creative experience, the event is funded by the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, established by Russell Simmons, the founder and president of Def Jam Music Group, and his brother, visual artist Daniel Simmons.

The program’s title comes from the 1924 Langston Hughes poem “I, Too, Sing America,” which will be read at the festival by performance poet and storyteller Willie Sims. Sims, who performs his own work at spoken word venues throughout the Southland and who conducts writing workshops in schools, juvenile halls and youth camps, worked with students in the program at five high schools over a period of several weeks.

“Poetry is a means of expression,” Sims said, “and these kids have a lot of things to say.” To illustrate the point, Sims read Ingrid’s poem and another by a male student called “I Can, Brother,” which begins, “I can make it, brother. I can do the things you dream of.”

“I use the Langston Hughes poem as a springboard,” Sims said, “because Hughes wrote very accessible poetry, and when I give them examples of his work--not just those related to race--kids relate to what he writes. And I guess what really hooks them is to hear each other. So it not only becomes an exercise in self-expression but one of finding out what their fellow students feel.”

Professional artist and arts educator Stuart Vaughan worked with some of Sims’ students in making books for their poetry. Vaughan, who created the “Riding the Red Line” mural at Barnsdall’s entrance, also teaches at the L.A. County Museum of Art and is artist-in-residence at the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation in South-Central L.A. He is passionate about the value of giving young people a creative arts experience.

“We’re giving these young people alternatives,” he said. “I’m hoping that just by meeting a working artist, it shows them possibilities. At first,” Vaughan said of his visits to students in schools from downtown Los Angeles to East L.A. and South Central, “they’re not sure what to think of me. By my fourth visit, they’re so anxious to participate, I know it’s working.”

Vaughan said he is moved by how the students discover that art can be an outlet for deep feelings.

“I had one young woman who made a book about her father, who had died in a drive-by shooting. Kids who have a family member in jail, who know people who have been killed, it comes through in their work. My belief is that if we want to change these problems, we have to start with the kids. More opportunities like [the arts program], beginning in preschool and elementary school, could make a big difference.”

Vaughan hopes that people who come to the festival will see how much the students have invested of themselves in the work and “will continue to support programs like this, because they’re so important.”