Budding artists brighten their futures and Seaton House 

November 2008

At 4 p.m. on a Saturday, Izzy Rashid is putting the finishing touches, grey highlights, on Batman’s mask. Behind him, Jessey Pacho fills in blocks of colour in the word ‘hope,’ spelled out beneath a contemplative pose of Barack Obama.

The four “youths with promise” from the RBC Financial-funded, Harbourfront Community Centre (HCC) mural project team have been painting the residents’ heroes on the walls of Seaton House’s fourth floor since 10 a.m. in the morning.

It’s only their second day of painting at the city-run hostel for homeless men located near Jarvis and Gerrard Street East, but already this hallway looks less institutional, more inspirational, and a lot livelier than it was when the walls were just a uniform pastel yellow.

Residents of the fourth floor are, for the most part, older men suffering from mental health or addiction issues. Some residents will only live on the floor for a few weeks while others call the place home after years of living there.

The residents pause in front of the works in progress to compliment the young artists. Some residents point, stare, then chat about the choice of Bugs Bunny as a hero.  Another resident, on his way outside, slows to a stop in front of the Jimi Hendrix wall. Daniel Adoot, 17, is working on the rocker’s portrait with Michael Brown, contemporary artist and coordinator of the HCC’s Mural Project. The resident offers to help with the art when he returns. 

This is exactly what the mural project team and Seaton House were hoping for: “An opportunity to influence and mentor. It’s also reversed. It’s about kids having that ability to shine and to show. It’s a win-win situation,” says Kristen Ireland, a recreation therapist at Seaton House.

Ireland refers to activities like the mural project as “intergenerational programming.” Through it, she says, “The residents here are becoming role models. It’s motivation for them to kind of change.”

For Rashid, 18, Pacho,20, Yu Ri Li,18, and Adoot, the mural project allows them to spend their Thursday evenings and Saturdays doing what they love – making art – while earning $9.20 an hour.

In the lexicon of the HCC, they are “youths with promise”, not at-risk youth. The artists come from all over the city. The City of Toronto wants to engage these youths, some of whom have a history of graffiti-related crime, in the legal “beautification of the city.”

Rashid, a grade 12 student at Central Tech – a high school renowned for its strong art program – is debating between entering York University’s graphic design program and OCAD’s environmental design program.

Li is also a grade 12 student at Central Tech. She emigrated from China eight years ago, is a competitive dancer, and plans to study architecture. 

Adoot is a skateboarder, photographer, and graffiti artist who lives in North York but commutes to the HCC’s alternative high school for students in grades 11 and 12. After the program sparked his interest in fine art and broadened his horizons, he began customizing sneakers with graffiti and images of Bob Marley. “I use very contrasting, bright colours. I kind of have a Jamaican theme going”. He hopes to turn his sneaker art into a business in the near future.

Pacho, the oldest member of the mural project, was promoted to program facilitator earlier this year. Handling some of the administrative work for the mural project has been instrumental to the success of the business that he co-owns and operates with a friend. Like the city’s mural project, Pacho’s business aims to provide lasting, artistic solutions to unwanted, illegal graffiti on the side of small businesses.

All four youths hope to make careers out of their passion for art. And judging by past participants of the program, they will be well equipped with the tools for success.

Brown can name several past participants from his eight years as program coordinator who have produced and shown their work in the city, work at art galleries, and won arts grants. “You hear from people and it’s all really positive and they are moving into different things. A lot of them are still involved in the arts in some way…They are all really success stories.”

Paul Aloisi, a multi-disciplinary artist and Summer 2001 participant in the mural project, is one of them. Aloisi created a community art project Open Canvas which enables pedestrians to pick up a paintbrush and paint street corners alongside him. The products are murals formed through the spontaneous collaboration of community members. In May 2007 he was awarded an Ontario Arts Council grant of more than $5,000 to expand Open Canvas, his community art project, into area high schools.

Aloisi spent last summer strolling unannounced into art galleries in Dusseldorf, Rome and Prague. He slept and created an installation in a Dusseldorf gallery and surfed the couches of artists. He is currently on a quest for international gallery representation. He’s off to Berlin, Barcelona, Milan and Paris in May, once he finishes a nine-month stint at OCAD, teaching 26 first-year students “From Graffiti to …” at the Ontario College of Art and Design, his alma mater. 

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) echoes Brown’s sentiments on the success of the program’s participants. He says the mural project is “tapping into the natural talent that young people have. It is a service and it is a business model and young people can be taught to market that skill.”

While city council continues to fund the 6-week summertime mural projects at 18 community centres throughout the city, the HCC’s unique fall and spring programs have primarily relied on private funding each year.

With funding from RBC Financial ending in the coming months, Brown is currently in the process of searching for private funds to ensure that the HCC’s mural projects continue to touch lives.