About the Exhibition

In the summer of 2016, my family of six moved to Pleasant Ridge and I got a call from the president of the PRM Foundation, who wanted to take me up on my offer to take pictures. Little did they know who they were asking, and what I would dream, or what I would do. I would go on to take a massive number of pictures and re-do the Foundation website – take on ticketing, emails and all the things.  On the phone, we talked at great length about how I would need to be careful about faces and protecting kids who didn’t have a photo release – which is always in my mind.  But when I began, I felt very much like an outsider, intrusive even. Over time, PRM got to know me and I… I have had the beautiful privilege to capture the heart of PRM in images for the past seven years.

You know how people say all the time, “Hello, how are you?” I never know how to answer.  Oh, I have the automated “good” or “okay” or even “alright” ready BUT if, on the rare occasion, someone asks me “Are you okay?”  as if they get the truth – the sense that I may not be ok – the answer I want to give is “NO”. 

No.  I’m not okay.  I will never be okay.  There’s too many things calling in my brain – too many contrary emotions and thoughts warring inside of my head. 

And although the OK part usually wins out – since I’m not dead – I’m still not ok.  Because even if I could sort through all the mess inside, the outside world is enough of a mess that I can’t be okay. 

And that’s why I am an artist.

Because I am desperately trying to make sense of it all. Here in these pictures something makes sense. Just like a piece of music, especially jazz - the dissonance, the resonance - the tensions and the diversity begin to fall into a rhythm, and something works.

If I’m starting to pause too long already, and swallowing, you might ask, “Why do you look like you are about to cry?” You may see me taking pictures around PRM of happy happy things and I’m teary eyed.  Sometimes, I don’t even have to be taking pictures.  I fall apart when I walk into this building.  When I walk into a classroom, and see the peace of a community circle or the mindfulness moment is playing on the loudspeaker – the people of PRM break my heart wide open. 

But why is that? 

These are happy things. When you see the musicals, the artwork on the walls or the one hundred strings players, the basketball players and 6th graders – they look an awful lot like adults sometimes, especially those young women. I cry because I am reaching for this beauty through the lens of the sadness. 

It's the unhappy things that I keep hearing and I can’t seem to push away. 

I think about what a child brings with them – when they walk through the doors of this place.  What have they heard?  Seen? Felt?  What trauma have they faced?  What trauma have the teachers faced? As children? As adults?  What about us parents?  I think about the children and the loved ones they have lost, I have lost, we have lost.  I think of those fighting breast cancer – that have fought and won. I can’t help, but count the loss. 

One of the collection of images comes from the Children’s March.  Some people may ask, “Why?”  Why tell our kids about the bad – the unhappy. 

I remember the chanting at the children’s march very distinctly – George Floyd, say his name… Breona Taylor, say her name – there is a reason they were chanting that at the Children’s March. It sticks in my brain because I ran around that march, catching as many photos as I could - the whole block, my lungs nearly breaking.

The thing is: I don’t think we are meant to forget pain. I told my mom who was having severe pain from a broken back – although we didn’t know that at the time – that pain is there for a reason. Mom, the pain you are feeling isn’t all the weight you carry, it’s the broken back.  Let the voices of our children call out their names so much so that we know the pain through and through.  Let it call us to reach for the great vision of peace, equity and beauty – because it isn’t the vision that is broken, that we want to carry, that we want our children to carry, but the system trying to carry it.

So, here I want you to look at these pictures again – there’s a quiet rhythm in these photos – a smile, a touch, an earnest face that reaches out, a cup of hot chocolate, a peace sign, hundreds of people coming together – that’s not so quiet.  But in these images, we can look at them with the knowledge of an imperfect world paired with hope - it is bittersweet and it moves us – maybe a shudder – maybe tears.  We look at art – we listen to minor key music – we watch heartbreaking movies – listen to poems that name the mountains of struggle – because it has the ability to move us from apathy to being broken apart to see hope – hope brings action and action brings change. 

I’ll end with this, that dream – I had decades.  As a young teen, I desperately dreamed of being a social photographer like Dorothea Lange who brought awareness to injustice and famine during the great depression – or Robert Frank whose book the Americans – captured a picture of America that was real and honest and raw in the 50s.  I dreamed of an adventure, but...  turns out, I desire connection to people more than photographs and safety more than the rush of photographing historical moments.

So long story short, here I am: an artist reaching to show this beautiful rhythm.

This is the voice of PRM. The reaching and the longing for diversity, inclusion, equity, community, compassion, education, Montessori – following the child with all of their joy and sadness – even if they cannot voice it yet. It is the voice of the public school system that offers a way forward in this world where kids grow up knowing what diversity is and how to integrate into a world that is varied – and yes, a world that is bittersweet – full of heartache and joy – noise and peace. 

This is what art is for – not my art – but the art of education - because I think we all have those moments where we are desperately trying to make sense of it all. And here in these pictures something makes sense.  The tensions, the diversity begins to fall into a rhythm, and something works.

One school.

One student.

One future.  One Voice.

We make a difference.

PRM.