Concrete Walls

Sitting idly at my desk at work, I was struck by a sudden, indelible need to do something worthwhile, to give something of myself. Armed with a few days off over the course of the week and a love of the arts, I landed on volunteering at an art gallery.

This particular gallery was quite unique in that its main mission is to serve those experiencing homelessness or in transitional periods, providing a place for such people not only to visit but to actually create, store, and sell art of their own.

All this I already knew before the orientation tour began. I was more than eager to buy the cards sold by such artists, locate the locales where the originals were being sold, and volunteer to keep the studio in tip-top shape.

But as the tour progressed and we stood within the fortress-like courtyard, another new volunteer began to question the structure of the building. This structure, painted top to bottom in murals, stood like a waycastle in a war that had been brewing since this old American city was new, a war of clashing cultures and classes. In this place a person lived out of a plastic tent on the doorstep of a trendy coffee shop. People slept on the wet pavement of the parking lot while steps away others drank champagne while chatting about sculpture. She questioned the truth of their mission. Was the concrete barricade around this building not a ward to very people it claimed to serve?

The tour guide did not deny the fact, stating that this building was simply always this way, long before it was a gallery. The work to change it would be immense.

Afterward I wandered to that coffee shop and passed the man living in the tent. I was afraid. I quickened my step and avoided eye contact to get to the safety of the familiar walls of the cafe. I sipped my latte, nervous about leaving.

Sitting there, admiring the mural streaked by the rain people were sleeping under just beyond the door, I was ashamed. I came here to serve these people, to clean the space for them, to welcome them to gallery openings, to be part of a place that welcomes everyone. Why speed walk past like they are beneath me, like they are anything beyond what I am? They are my neighbors now, after all.

On my return to my car, I did my damndest to be at ease. I knocked the tension form my shoulders, took on a leasurly gate, and met every soul I passed on the street with a nod and a smile. I won't pretend like a changed the world. But I changed one very tiny thing: how I thought about the world and how I met it. I didn't flip every preconception I'd ever had on its head. I didn't become a saint over brunch. Even for me, it was far, far from enough.

What I did do is I looked at the concrete walls in my mind, the ones that had been slowly laid by being raised in white, middle class America, the ones that had always been there. I have always been this way, long before I was an artist. The work to change would be immense.

As the year begins anew and I return to the gallery to prep for each new opening, each class, each evelope-stuffing session, my pledge is to dismantle my mental fortress brick by brick. The people that live in the tents in the alleyways are not my enemies and they are not obstacles. They are the people I need to serve, that I need to work to make the world better for. I need to meet them eye to eye as my equals. I am ashamed that it is a goal I even need to work toward. But even if I cannot take a sledgehammer to the very real concrete walls that keep certain folk out, I can decimate into dust the imagined ones that keep me from doing what is right.