POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE
August 2006
Spectrum Youth Photo Exhibit
For artist and viewer alike, art can offer sanctuary. Art can bridge gaps and create a place where artist and viewer feel safe. Spectrum Youth Services, which provides a sanctuary for marginalized youth, spends its time making kids feel safe and welcome. Burlington residents might be familiar with the Spectrum Youth and Family Services center on Pearl Street. Many are familiar with the First Friday Art Walk as well. Each First Friday Art Walk, Spectrum puts on a photo exhibit by its young artists
Experiencing the show is a vibrant and raw experience. Both black and white and color prints taken by the young artists hang from the walls as if in a darkroom. Prints seem to bob to the reggae music suffusing the small space. Kids are cooking in the small kitchen; conversations continue as if a reviewer weren’t staring at their or their friend’s work on display. On an early July day, incredibly tasty homemade croutons are for sale along with the original photography.
Untitled and anonymous, over sixty prints display the work of a dozen or more young artists. The photos themselves provide a window through which we can view the city and its surroundings with different eyes. A gritty alley slouches toward a forgotten parking lot in the Old North End. By angle and arrangement of submerged grass poking above water, the causeway to North Hero could be on the Gulf Coast. Condominium rooftops surge against the Adirondacks on the city’s skyline. The viewer’s perspective on something as simple as the highway bridge to Winooski is turned on its head. Who knew Lisa Simpson, Stewie, and a chimerical creature run graffito-tag rampant below our everyday commute?
The photography program of Spectrum Youth and Family Services Center is one of many ways it reaches out to homeless and runaway youth. “Come to the city” is the message that the Center has for kids who feel they’ve run out of options. It’s a resource for young people who don’t feel empowered by the status quo and need alternative outlets for their lifestyles or creative urges. Brian Plisko, an endearing guy with dreadlocks and an earnest desire to help out kids, runs the program. Working with local businesses like Photogarden, Brian and his bosses come up with cameras, film, and developing services to bring these prints to Art Walk. Brian takes the kids out on “school trips” looking for subjects to shoot, helping beginners and more savvy junior photogs alike bring their work to the public.
Besides netting yourself some sweet outsider, site-specific art, buying a print helps both the program and the artist. Each get half of the affordable twenty bucks. You get a crisp, well-composed photo that shows a new angle of the Queen City. You get to contribute to a truly altruistic local micro-business. And, as the envelope containing your new picture tells you, you get “Love”.
LEE T. FREEMAN
Art Map Burlington is a publication of Kasini House, Inc. info@kasinihouse.com
Copyright © 2006 Kasini House. All Rights Reserved