Blogs

Talent Show this Friday!

Join us this Friday, November 4th from 4 pm to 6pm for a Talent Show featuring some of Charlotte's finest acts!

Come witness the talents that Charlotte's neighbors have to offer. Presented to you by Urban Ministry Center and Davidson College's poverty-fighting studen group, EPIC.

Refreshments will be provided

The Van Gogh Project

ArtWorks945 Blog

How do you define the value of art?

When Davidson College philosophy professor and art-lover Paul Studmann moved into his new house, he decided he needed some art for his walls. But he didn't want just any art. He wanted a Van Gogh.

Remember that story (I think it was in the 80s) of the guy with the red paperclip that traded up for a house? Well...that guy was Paul's inspiration for what he began refering to as "The Van Gogh Project," in which he started with a child's drawing, and set out to make incremental trades for pieces or greater and greater value...and did not plan to quit until he got his Van Gogh. Paul started a blog to keep track of his journey, which you can visit here: http://thevangoghproject.blogspot.com

After about ten trades, something happened that changed the entire course of the project.

This particular trade was for a piece by Charlie Spear called "Falling Down Man." The painting, as you can see below, depicts a marionette crumpling, with a cityscape in the background. Spear says that the painting is a commentary on homelessness, and how it can happen to anyone. When the painting arrived in Davidson, Paul went to the post office to pick it up, where the post office clerk handed him a mangled box and shrugged his shoulders saying "I didn't do it." Paul pulled the painting out of the packaging and found that it was severly warped, and that the damage was irreparable. Paul couldn't believe it...he'd made this far and his journey was completely derailed by a random accident.

Paul called Charlie on the way home from the post office to let him know what had happened. Although he was distraught at first, it did not take long before Charlie told Paul that he believed that the painting was only now complete, and in fact, better than it had been before it was damaged. He believed that this random act of negligence on the part of the USPS helped to illustrate the content of the painting more fully, and that the painting was now MORE VALUABLE than it had previously been. At this point, Paul became exceedingly interested in how people define art's value. He spoke to an art appraiser, who assured him that the painting was worthless. But somehow, he agreed with Charlie, that this painting was much more meaningful, valuable, and complete in its mangled state.

As Paul continued to wrestle with these questions of value, and tried to understand how to continue The Van Gogh Project from this point, he came up with an idea: he would hold an auction and allow people (many of whom were readers of his blog) to weigh in on this question of the piece's value by inviting them to make bids. While this idea was precipitating in his mind, Paul met my husband Brian through a mutual friend. While they were talking, Paul shared about the Van Gogh Project, and about his current predicament. At that point, Brian shared with him about ArtWorks 945 and about how we use the therapeutic process of art-making to connect with individuals who struggle with homelessness...

Paul was incredibly excited by our mission, and at that moment decided that he would hold this auction for "Falling Down Man" and donate the proceeds to ArtWorks 945. After that day, Paul has visited us here at the studio multiple times, and has gotten to know some of out artists.

After careful consideraton, Paul has decided to do a "cumulative auction" for the piece. This means that he has a particular monetary goal in mind, and has invited people to make donations, however small or large, to hopefully reach that goal.

If you are interested in participating in the auction, here's what you can do:

1) Visit the UMC website at www.urbanministrycenter.org

2) Click on the "Donate Online" button in the top right corner of the website

3) Fill in your information and choose how much you'd like to donate. Enter that amount in the "other" amount box.

4) In the comment box at the bottom be sure to type "Art donation, Van Gogh Project"

You will receive an email confirmation of your donation.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this story. Please visit Paul's blog, and if you feel so inclined, make a donation!

Bridges Update 9-23-11

Bridges Updates Blog

Facts to face:

The latest Census report (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/) reveals that in 2010:

the percentage of all Americans living in poverty (15.1%) and the percentage of children living in poverty (22%) were the highest levels in 17 years;
the number of people living in poverty hit 46.2 million, the highest level on record since 1959;
the number of people living in “deep poverty” [incomes below half of the poverty line – below $9,155 for a family of 3, $11,157 for a family of 4] hit a record high of 20.5 million Americans (data goes back to 1975). The graph below comes from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Other studies show that 90 percent of all income gains in the last decade went to the top 10 percent of wage earners, and 40 percent of the increased wealth (assets) went to the top 1 percent. And the Census report shows that the median annual income for a male full-time, year-round worker in 2010 was virtually unchanged from its level in 1973, which means, as University of Michigan professor Sheldon Danziger states, “[they have] made no progress on average.

The US already has higher degrees of poverty and income inequality than most Western industrialized nations. It could have been worse. The Census figures also show that millions more Americans would have fallen into poverty or become uninsured without programs such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, the Earned income Tax Credit (EITC), and Medicaid. For example, unemployment benefits (including federal benefits scheduled to expire in December, 2011, and state benefits already trimmed by a number of states) kept 3.2 million people above the poverty line in 2010.

Most analysts anticipate that unemployment will remain high through 2012. Typically, after recessions, poverty decline slower than unemployment – in each of the last 3 recessions, the poverty rate didn’t begin to fall until at least a year after the unemployment rate began to drop. So we can anticipate that the poverty rate may climb even higher over the next year.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Compass Reading 9-15-11

Compass Readings Blog

In a remarkable column published in the NEW YORK TIMES, David Brooks writes from Nairobi Kenya, “Many Americans go to the developing world to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful. Those that do have often climbed a moral ladder. They start out with certain virtues but then develop more tenacious ones.

The first virtue they possess is courage, the willingness to go off to a strange place…

The second virtue they develop is deference, the willingness to listen and learn from the moral and intellectual storehouses of the people you are trying to help…

The greatest and most essential virtue is thanklessness, the ability to keep serving even when there are no evident rewards — no fame, no admiration, no gratitude..

[The] final virtue is what makes service in the developing world not just an adventure, a spiritual experience or a cinematic moment. It represents a noncontingent commitment to a specific place and purpose…people willing to embrace the perspectives and do the jobs the locals define…

(Read Brooks’ entire column at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/opinion/brooks-the-rugged-altruists.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)

I wish he’d write another column on usefully serving people in poverty here in this country. It might go something like this: Many Americans go to the soup kitchens, shelters, and streets of their cities to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful. Those that do have often climbed a moral ladder. They start out with certain virtues but then develop more tenacious ones.

The first virtue they possess is courage, the willingness to move out of their comfort zone and go to a place which serves people whose lives are very different from their own. They have moved beyond simply writing a check to getting personally involved.

The second virtue they develop is an awareness that they can’t map over from their own assumptions about how the world works to the lives of those they seek to serve, that the actions and attitudes of people in poverty arise from a different worldview than their own. This can lead to suspending judgment and seeking to understand what living in survival mode is actually like. One way to learn is through seminars such as Bridges Out of Poverty; another way to learn is to develop a relationship with someone who is living in poverty and listen with open ears, mind, and heart.

The third virtue they develop is a willingness to serve the other instead of helping or fixing. Rachel Naomi Remen writes, “Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose …When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy.” Serving is centered in relationship, not outcomes. It is soul work, not ego work. It is about you, not me; it is about your needs and dreams as you articulate them, not my solutions. It is about the wholeness and sacredness of life.

The fourth virtue they develop is persistence - a commitment to stay engaged for the long haul. There are few quick fixes for people wanting to move out of homelessness and poverty. It takes a long time for people to become homeless, and it takes at least as long (if not longer) for them to gain and attain economic stability. Effective people stay with the relationship, stay with the process, offering assistance and insistence/encouragement.

The fruits of all these virtues? Patience. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Joy.

Blogs

Talent Show this Friday!

The Van Gogh Project

Bridges Update 9-23-11

Compass Reading 9-15-11

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