Full Circle or Just the Beginning of Concentric Circles?
It is easy to go through life thinking that what we do doesn’t really matter. Every once in a while though something stops us in our tracks and makes us realize how big life is and how connected we are. The tapestry suddenly flips, we see the other side for a brief moment and realize the yarns of our life that seemed so individual: the dark strands, the bright colorful ones, the muted tones, the strands that seemed so separate and unique have been woven into a pattern of unimaginable beauty.
A few years ago my husband and I attended the first Lookout Wild Film Festival in Chattanooga. We stayed at The Crash Pad, a local hostel. It was our first real introduction to Chattanooga, and it was love at first sight. After months of struggle trying to figure out, “What are we going to do when we grow up?” we had found an answer, “Even if we don’t know what we are going to do, this is definitely the place to do whatever it will be.” We fell in love with every aspect of Chattanooga. The public displays of artwork, the kind and helpful people, the commitment to making Chattanooga one of the best outdoor cities to play in, the beautiful mountains that surrounded the city like a hug, and the incredible restaurants that served locally grown food with (gasp) plenty of vegetarian options!
I started searching real estate in the area and found a wooded city lot that was listed at $850. We went to look at the property. It was beautiful, on the side of a mountain, extremely peaceful, and very wooded which was important to us. So why was it so cheap? As my friend said, “You can’t buy a purse in Chattanooga for $850 dollars. What is the catch?” The catch, as we realized when the realtor we called kept putting off meeting with us, was that this piece of property was in the 37406 zip code. A high crime area that most people avoided stopping in. As we came off the mountain we went down to the business street below, Glass Street. What we found delighted us as much as the wooded property. There were beautiful pieces of public art work, art that said to us, “There are people that care about this neighborhood.”
There was one piece in particular that caught my eye and held my heart. It was a life size mural of a colorful trolley made of multi-colored pieces of yarn. I stood there and thought about the artist or artists that must have spent hours putting this extraordinary piece together. What love! What dedication! We could see that even though this neighborhood was struggling, it was a neighborhood that had a beauty that would be worth investigating.
When I got home I started researching the Glass Street neighborhood, I found out about the Glass House Collective, an organization started by Teal Thibaud and Katherine Currin, that was working with the neighborhood to revitalize Glass Street. This is a street that 10,000+ people drive through every day in order to reach other areas of Chattanooga. The economic potential of the street was incredible. We could see that with people working together it could become a new “go to” place in Chattanooga. We loved the mission of the Glass House Collective which was not to gentrify this beautiful neighborhood but rather to empower the residents already there to see their own abilities and potential, to encourage them to work together to rebuild what they once had but had been lost to them for a number of reasons.
I also researched the Trolley art work and found that it was made by a local artist, Olga de Klein. I posted pictures of the trolley and other beautiful art works in the area on Facebook and started day dreaming about what it would be like to live in Chattanooga. We took a leap of faith and purchased the property on the mountain. Then because our son, Liberty, had just graduated from community college we started looking into what it would take for him to go to the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. We went for a visit of the school and going into the fine arts building we just happened to run into Ron Buffington, the head of the art department. Ron stopped what he was doing and gave us a tour of the department. We were so impressed with his kindness and his willingness to go the extra mile. Liberty enrolled that fall in UTC as a bachelor of fine arts major in photography.
Now, two years later we have indeed discovered, “What we want to do when we grow up”. In a sudden flash of inspiration William had the idea of starting a Master of Fine Arts and Social Justice academy in the Glass Street area of Chattanooga. There are only three places in Tennessee where you can receive a Master’s of Fine Arts, none of those are close to Chattanooga, and there is no place where you can receive a combination degree of Fine Arts and Social Justice even though more and more art jobs are requiring experience with social justice. The East Chattanooga Academy of Art and Social Justice will be a unique degree where students will spend two years using their art to promote attention or bring about social justice in an area of their choice. Our building for the Academy is just down the street from the beautiful mural of the trolley that first captured my attention.
So here we are embarking on this new journey to start the school, and excited for our son, Liberty who has just received the news from the art department at UTC that he has been chosen to receive the Adrian Gomez Memorial Scholarship. Knowing our laid back son I knew he hadn’t filled out any forms to request a scholarship so I was very curious as to why he received this honor. I researched to find out more about the scholarship and was overwhelmed with emotion when I realized Adrian Gomez was the son of Olga de Klein, the artist of the trolley mural whom I had never met but had started us on a journey to live and work on Glass Street. As I read about Adrian, who died at the age of 22 in a car wreck, I felt like I was reading a description of my son they sounded so much alike. They were both born in early January, both with a love of playing soccer, having a unique energy drawing people to them, both with a rich sense of humor and a love for life in the moment. Later we were told that the art department professors choose the recipient of this scholarship for someone that seeks to encourage other students in the art department without seeking any recognition for himself.
The UTC fine arts honors ceremony was held on Friday and we surprised Liberty by coming to the ceremony. We all laughed as Liberty instead of walking up the stairs like every other student being awarded, just used his long legs to leap up on the stage. I was hoping that we would get to meet Olga, but she wasn’t at the ceremony. Saturday however as we were working on the ECAASJ building I took a break from painting and planting flowers to go across the street to visit our friend Rondell Crier’s Studio Everything which was buzzing with activity with an art workshop that is joining kids from all over Chattanooga with kids around Glass Street to create art projects together. It was in this happy environment that Rondell turned to me and asked if I had met the artist standing next to him, Olga de Klein. Tears started forming in my eyes as I reached out my dirty hand to meet this beautiful, unassuming artist and started telling her our story.
When I tell this story the first thing everyone has said is, “Wow, full circle.” However, I can’t help believing that this is just a center circle of many bigger concentric circles to come, a reminder that life is remarkable and full of beautiful connections just waiting to be discovered.
