Lesson in Inspiration

A living, breathing inspiration stopped by school Wednesday. That’s what 10-year-old Brian Anderson said about the “super cool” teenager who buzzed into Brian’s fourth-grade classroom and taught the students about art and life.

Brian wasn’t referring to a star athlete or a big-time pop celebrity. He was talking about a paralyzed 19-year-old in a wheelchair who, with a paintbrush in his mouth, can express a unique vision.

Esvin Rodriguez is his name, and on Wednesday afternoon he held Brian and 33 of his classmates at Reseda’s St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School spellbound.

Three years ago Rodriguez was cut down in a drive-by shooting in front of his home near downtown Los Angeles. The bullets that tore through his back severed his spine and left him a quadriplegic with no movement below his neck.

Rodriguez said he grew severely depressed after the shooting. Recently, however, he was able to regain a sense of hope when he discovered creative talents he never knew he had.

After reading about Rodriguez in a weekly Catholic magazine, Brian and his classmates in teacher Lysha Montiel’s class soon became pen pals with the budding artist. Cards and letters and encouraging phone calls were exchanged.

A bond began but was not cemented.

Until Wednesday, when Rodriguez, who said he was as nervous as anyone can be, entered the classroom in his wheelchair. It marked the first time he had met his young admirers face to face. The students, many of whom called his visit the highlight of their fourth-grade year, greeted Rodriguez with claps and hollers. Their energy charged the air.

“I was so excited, I didn’t know what to think,” said Rodriguez, offering a shy smile. “When I came in the room and saw all the smiling faces, and all of the kids who have been writing me and who appreciate my work . . . it felt like family. I will always keep this class in my thoughts and in my heart. And now I want to come back and also talk to other kids.”

During the course of the 90-minute period, Rodriguez talked to the students on his life and his art. He described what it is like to live as he does. He encouraged the youngsters to develop their own artistic talent, which their teacher has been emphasizing all year. He told them about faith and about not letting limitations get in their way.

The students then took turns painting on a large white sheet of paper taped to the chalkboard. Like Rodriguez, they popped a paintbrush in their mouths and gave it a whirl. Squiggly, curvy figures in a rainbow of colors soon adorned the paper. Flowers and cars and sunsets and helicopters emerged.

Brian created a little splotch of color with abstract overtones. Another student painted a stick figure of Rodriguez in his wheelchair.

Rodriguez admits if you had told him a short while ago that he would one day become an inspiration to others, he would have laughed. Just three months ago Rodriguez moved into a North Hollywood health-care center that provides around-the-clock care. Once there, he said, he fell under the wing of Gye’ DiCapua, the center’s director.

DiCapua said he saw in Rodriguez a mopey young man who seemed listless and downtrodden.

“A kid I thought maybe I couldn’t reach,” DiCapua said of his new charge. Then, one day shortly after the teen’s arrival, DiCapua put something in front of Rodriguez that would turn his life around: a 10-inch brush with a mouthpiece on one end. Rodriguez was asked to saddle up to a standing canvas in his wheelchair and try to create.

“That day I found something that could help me forget my pain and my past,” said Rodriguez, sitting in the black, motorized wheelchair he steers with the movement of his chin. “Art opened up the world for me in a way that I didn’t even have when I could move my arms and walk. It gave me hope.”

Within a month Rodriguez was spending most of his days at an easel. He had never created art before but quickly found he had a special knack. An ability, he said, to look at something, capture it in his mind and create beauty.

His first painting was a striking tiger’s face that was so good he was able to sell it for $60. Since then he’s moved on to surreal crucifixion scenes, gentle landscapes, pictures of musicians and abstract scenes of swirling orange, black and green.

His latest work is of two bull buffalo engaged in a head-to-head clash. Rodriguez said it is symbolic of some of the people he has known--people, perhaps, like those who shot him. Those responsible were never caught, but Rodriguez has decided to forgive. They were too bull-headed, he believes, to realize the pain that conflict and violence can cause.

By April, Rodriguez’s gift had begun gaining notice and his face adorned the covers of the weekly newspapers published by the Los Angeles Archdiocese--The Tidings and Vida Nueva. One article called him “The healing artist.”

As the presentation wound down, the students presented Rodriguez with a hat and a check for $50. They want him to use it to buy more art supplies.

Many said that after seeing Rodriguez they would look at their own young lives differently.

Lindsey Romero, 10, said she would never forget Rodriguez. “When I first heard about him I thought nobody could do what he did,” she said. “I mean paint like he does, with your mouth? Impossible? But now I think it’s possible to handle tough times and that if you have a passion, you can really do anything . . . shoot, you can even do math.”