ARTIST-TO-ARTIST/OPEN BOOKS
Project Director: Valerie Martinez
Affiliate Artists: Carlos Contreras, Erin Forrest, Kimberly Mathes and Maureen Burdock
Sponsor: The Global Fund for Education
The ARTIST-TO-ARTIST (2011-2012) and OPEN BOOKS (2010) projects engage 16-21 year old youth in foster care or independent living programs with the Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) of the State of New Mexico. Between June and December of 2010, New Mexico youth created personal sketchbooks (writing, poetry, drawing, collage, photography, etc.) that encouraged them to explore their particular struggles, successes, dreams and imaginings. In December of 2010, an anthology of their artwork and poetry was published, Ask Me Who I Am: Writing and Art by CYFD Youth (Littleglobe Productions).
In 2011 and 2012, the project pairs CYFD youth artists and writers with professional artists to nurture their creative development, encourage new work, and engage in a conversation about college/university art and writing programs and/or life as a practicing artist. Please join us for a celebration of the Artist-to-Artist mentoring program and the youth anthology:
Artist-to-Artist & Ask Me Who I Am Reading and Exhibition--
with CYFD Youth and their Mentors
Sunday, February 5, 2012
2-3:30 p.m.
Free and Open to the Public
from Ask Me Who I Am: Writing and Art by New Mexico CYFD Youth
THE THRIVE TO MOVE FORWARD ALONE
by C.H.
Coming out the womb with an un-balled
fist. Not knowing enough to remember
the little fist will have a hard time
building herself a handful of cement in life.
Fighting through my own battles without
a mother or a father. Walk in my shoes!
I am destroyed. Tear drops cry out so much,
leaving the ground I walk on everyday moist.
I am in my own space, keep knocking
because you can’t come in. Traumatized?
I am only eighteen. Where do I go from here?
I mean, even Obama had a mother to hold him,
giving him the encouragement, the want to succeed.
I am a foster child, aged out, but afraid
to be left alone. I started out alone.
My brain still had a rock to it. That began
a molestation of the mind. Those words
you could never take back.
We are the future, the grown folks had their turn.
Now it’s ours, and you want to complain
about the youth not succeeding.
It starts with the ones before us within all of you,
but here I go not knowing anything, walking
all alone till my shoes no longer have a soul.
And yet, I thrive to move forward, ALONE.