Kaitlin: [00:00:00] Hey there, do you think of yourself as a creative person? If you found yourself here and you're curious, you are. This is Creative Portland, the podcast made for you by the all volunteer team who organized the Creative Mornings Speaker Series in Portland, Oregon. I'm your host, Kaitlin, and I'm really glad you're here.
Each episode, we are going to share a talk from one of the most generous, inspiring, and inspiring and creative people in this city. You'll hear from people doing things you probably already think of as creative, people who paint, write books, illustrate comics, style photo shoots, make music, even sing opera.
There are others who run companies.[00:01:00]
I'm confident you'll take away something different from every person on this show. Each of these talks was originally recorded in front of a live audience, so sometimes they mention things that are on a screen, but those are pretty minor. Will Kendall has worked with youth experiencing homelessness and has championed marginalized communities for more than three decades.
He gave this talk in the Artist Mentorship Program space in downtown Portland in May, 2023. You can find links in the show notes and at amppdx. org. Good
Will Kendall: morning. I'd like to start today. By recognizing that we are currently on land owned by the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kafflamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, [00:02:00] Tualatin, Kalapuya, Malala, and many other tribes who made their homes through this region and along the Columbia River. Along with AMP's endeavors to make this space for youth experiencing homelessness, we ask everyone who shares this space with us to take with them on their journey the historical knowledge of past genocides and cultural appropriations of Native and Indigenous communities and commit to recognizing these injustices in perpetuity.
We want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here, and we respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities Past, present, and future. And we're grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence. This, this, preparing for this talk this morning has been a real journey for me.
And I will, I will fully own the fact that there is a pole somewhere in the middle of our conversation. that will or will not make sound when someone upstairs flushes it. Um, it's just where we're at. I'll start [00:03:00] with introducing myself. I am Will Kendall, and I am the Executive Director for the Artist Mentorship Program.
But I am, I'm thrilled to speak here today, , about acceptance. And about my journey, just trying to do this presentation. Um, has been a, a battle with self reflection. It has been a battle with facing some historical stuff for me. And I will talk a little bit about that. The violence that I saw as a child, the, the love of art and, and at some point I'm going to get really emotional and, uh, I apologize in advance, but I will say this, if you found parking in old town, your day has already been a success.
So congratulations to you. This is my mother and me in 1971. I was born on a gurney in Middlesex hospital in London, England to a dark room technician who did commercial work. , for Coca Cola and, and Disney and other companies, and my father was a hairdresser. So growing up, we constantly had [00:04:00] books of graphic design and beauty products all around the house.
And it really inspired my sense of composition and really helped me to fall in love, uh, with graphic design. This is on her wedding day. And you will notice that the lady in the back there is my grandmother, Keena Sanders, my mother, Tanya Kendall. And my father, who's half in the picture in this, and also half in the picture now, is Joseph Kendall.
My grandmother, uh, Sonia Keena Sanders, was a Holocaust survivor. She lost most of her family. She was part of the resistance. And is and will always be my greatest hero. She was outlandish, and creative, and aggressive, and sweet, and kind. And when I spent the night at her house when I was about six years old, she said to me, If you get hungry in the middle of the night, I will make you a sandwich.
Just wake me up. And I remember thinking that that, as I'm older now, I think [00:05:00] that is the moment I started to understand what compassion and love feels like. If you want me to wake you up in the middle of the night so you can make me a sandwich, she's a badass. And, and when her first husband was killed by the Nazis in Poland, she, she lost her sense and walked into a Gestapo headquarters and started screaming, I'm a Jew, and so I'm gonna say today I'm a Jew just like her.
You know, in 1979, my dad heard about Barbara Streisand marrying a hairdresser. And so my dad got excited and we packed all our bags and we left London. for Los Angeles. And so on July 14th, 1979, uh, with my, with the hopes of my dad being some sort of Warren Beatty character from the movie shampoo, we arrived in Los Angeles.
I was wearing a red track suit. We were on a TWA plane, July 14th, 1979. I walked off the [00:06:00] plane and it was like when Dorothy lands in Oz, everything was in Technicolor. There was a lot of TV. there were pools. There was sun. London was gray. We had a garbage strike during that year and uh, it, it was a pivotal time for me.
I came along with these two. This is my brother and sister on the left hand side. , I spent most of my childhood in a headlock from this guy, but I would, I would say that these are my two biggest cheerleaders that I've ever had in my life. We survived a lot of violent trauma together. And so we are forever bonded through that crucible of fire.
They think I'm smart, and I just think they're too dumb to know better. So, it kind of evens out in the mix. This is gonna make me so emotional, I apologize already. , my brother and my sister and my father were, had a high propensity towards being creative. And, and making art and music. And, um, I don't know if my mother and me actually shared that.
But, , there was a moment when I was a kid and I'm going to do this embarrassingly. [00:07:00] Uh, that my brother, um, received a guitar. And, uh, my mom thought that my brother was more creative and wanted to support him. So she got him a guitar. And then as I was skateboarding out in front of the house, he came up to me and said, Hey, I want to show you something.
, and I had to do exactly what my brother said, and he sat me down in the garage and he looked at me and he went,
Bella.
And that was like horrifying to me because he would've pummeled me if I didn't like it. And at that moment I realized that I had, . Probably the ability to be a musician and an artist. And, uh, if you can do that, I can probably say this is them now. Dear sweet family, right? My sister's a pain in the ass, though, I'll be honest.
Um, so, around the time of 14, living in Los Angeles, I [00:08:00] got involved in drugs quite heavily. And my parents, uh, after me being kicked out of multiple schools, , decided to send me to a reform school in northern Arizona called Oak Creek Ranch School. When I googled it, It just came up. Oak Creek, Oak Creek, , school death.
It was a violent place filled with, , trailer homes and kids beating up on each other. But it was the first place I ever felt community outside of my family. there was a collection of heavy metal kids on that campus. And, uh, when I pulled into the school, I saw three dudes in. Cut off jean jackets, standing in the middle of a dilapidated basketball court, doing air guitar.
And it was riveting to me. And I found my place within a community of metal heads. And that's me surrounded by those metal heads. We fell in love with music from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica, Slayer, because it spoke to people that had no people. It spoke to us that were [00:09:00] creative, but we had no communities.
And we became a community of metalheads. We just, we just fell in love with each other. And then in 1988, I went to a concert. And I saw Metallica for the first time at the LA Coliseum at the Monsters of Rock Festival. And I may or may not have caused a riot that Damaged about a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment, but but it changed my life I saw this guy on stage and I thought Kirk Hammett.
I want to be a I want to be him That was my that was my goal in life Drugs continued and I went into rehab when I was 18 years old soon as I got sober. I started playing guitar seriously And I left Los Angeles for San Francisco and became a bike messenger and that is my official Western messenger jacket While there, I started playing in bands.
And, , I was in a band called Drop the Fish. Anyone hear of it? Of course not, it was garbage. The [00:10:00] Hero Makers, the Hammer Bombs. No, not the Hammer Bombs, who else did I play with? Her Majesty the Baby. That's right. Her Majesty the Baby. I joined a band called Her Majesty the Baby and I was dedicated to playing music and I found some people that were a little bit older than me that understood what it took to be successful in a creative art form.
And so. Uh, the good people of Her Majesty the Baby took me in and made me a member of their band, and it was funded by this lady in the center, Lee Paiva, and the lady just over to the left of her, who is Terry Winston. They taught me about work ethic. They taught me about how to be creative, how to market a product.
And how to play in a band and how much practice it takes to get the set, right. We played all over San Francisco. We opened for the Flaming Lips and PJ Harvey. And I learned everything about what it takes to achieve something by hanging out with these people who were a little bit older than me and a lot [00:11:00] more talented.
But they made me work hard and we flyered everywhere in San Francisco. We used to play gigs in San Francisco and all the sound engineers were men. And Terry, , in the very back of this picture, wrote every song in Her Majesty the Baby, recorded every song in Her Majesty the Baby, and told us exactly what the rest of us needed to do.
It was her band. But every time we went into a gig, they'd walk up to me, the sound engineer, and they'd say, How do you want the monitors? And I'd go, I don't know, ask Terry, I'm in charge. And then they'd turn to Terry, and Terry would take a swing at them. Because she was not messing around. And she was sick of the sexism that exists in that industry.
So when the band ended, she started an organization called women's audio mission, it is in San Francisco and it trains young women, how to be sound engineers and recording engineers. If you get a chance to look it up, uh, Lee Paiva. Uh, went on to form No Means No Worldwide, which is an organization that is working to eradicate [00:12:00] sexual violence, and then created Empower United, which is working in the same vein to eradicate sexual violence, and I am thrilled to serve as the board chair for that organization, so if you get the chance, look up Empower United and Women's Audio Mission.
And I will, I will, uh, hopefully Kaitlin can send out some information about those amazing organizations. Um, but they taught me a lot about how to be, uh, civic minded. And, uh, Lee's husband was Dr. Jake Sinclair. He founded an organization called Youth Industry. He was a pediatric doctor and he was the man who came up with the concept of AMP.
He was also an adrenaline junkie. Like he would take outlandish risks. He was traumatized. In the most violent way as a child, and he barely survived. And when he did, he went to college, became a doctor, and decided that he was going to work to save every single kid on the street. And he taught me, you know, when we made our things today, and we thought, [00:13:00] let's talk about the people that were the mentors that moved us forward.
We do volunteer trainings in this room. And I, and Teresa will attest to this, I start every training off with I am here today because this man turned to me 30 years ago and said, you're good at this. And I believed him and I hadn't heard that a lot in my life. And it changed me on the inside. It empowered me.
I stood taller. I made more eye contact. I felt connected to people. I was skateboarding around my neighborhood in the mission district in San Francisco. In the early nineties, and I came across this store where Lee from the band and Jake were in there and they were setting up a shop to, uh, employee youth experiencing homelessness and to train them on how to have job training skills and how to work in customer service and how to make a living.
And as I skateboarded by, I saw them in there and I walked in and I said, Hey, what are you guys doing? And they explained, and I said, you should give me a job. I have retail experience and this is a block [00:14:00] away from my house. And, , he said, no, we've already hired a manager. Sorry. And I left. And then two days later, I got a call and the phone call went like this.
Do you want the job or not? And I said, yeah, I'll take the job. And so that's how I got into social work. A lot of people have to go get MSWs, I apologize, I skipped the line, but, but this space is, is significantly special to me because it has like a magical vibe. It just, something happened and I, and I immediately shifted.
Having grown up with a family that was obsessed with Hollywood and fame and making money and celebrity, things shifted for me where I saw the value of interacting with one person in a way that helps them at a critical time in their life. And that changed me. And then Jake asked me, about two weeks after that, if I would start a music program called AMP.
Because without a way to express ourselves creatively, we are only half the story. And of course I said yes. [00:15:00] And that changed me again. So, my first day at AMP, a 16 year old kid walked in. Uh, he had been sleeping in the parks. His stepmother had ostracized him. He was addicted to meth and he, , he and I shared a love for Nirvana.
And so we learned a couple songs and we sat down and we connected. And, , I am friends with this man to this day. He serves on our board of directors. He works for Meta, uh, he is an Oculus designer. He has a food blog called Feast Meets West, which is amazing. He is a MBA statistician, and he can tell you anything you need to know about any of the scores.
But he's also my dear, dear friend. And, and when we think about young people who are experiencing homelessness, and how much they need community, we need to think of it from this concept. Our goal is not to put a Band Aid on [00:16:00] this. These are young people who have been ostracized who need community. And what I learned from meeting Nick Wu was that I needed community too.
He is much became a part of my life and benefited me and enriched my life in every possible way. , and I love him dearly and, and you never expect that because so much of traditional social work is about putting a bandaid on something or here's a bowl of soup that'll get you through to tomorrow, but by becoming.
Partners with him, friends with him. He has, he's enriched my life in countless ways. I also met my wife at that thrift store after being there for a year and a half, they hired an assistant manager and I was immediately, immediately smitten and in love, and I knew the day that I met her, that I would marry her and we would have.
kids and live happily ever after. And unfortunately that happened. We got married at the Church of Graceland, , and she [00:17:00] went on to become a artist of great merit. She started tattooing after our first son was born. That's our first son over there in the yellow shirt. She works from morning to night. For the last 20 plus years, drawing, creating, crafting, caring.
She is a stunning artist and her work is heralded. And I'm sure there's people in this room who have pieces of art. , But what I learned from, , falling in love with this amazing human being was that. To make art, you have to really be dedicated, and that didn't work for me. My attention span is short. I have no focus.
I have a haphazard way of making art. Um, but we have two amazing kids. Uh, we, we made some pretty creative Christmas cards. Uh, and our kids went along with it. And despite all of our terrible decisions, mostly my terrible decisions as a parent, they turned out to be amazing, caring, kind, and beautiful human beings.[00:18:00]
And I'm so proud of them. My daughter FaceTimed me today from the French Alps and my son is here. Teaching music and art to homeless youth three times a week. So, kudos to him.
This is my first, like, I'm sharing this, it's so embarrassing. This is absolute garbage, but this is my first piece of art that I ever tried to do. And it's just rubbish. And then I met Jesse Reno. And, who knows Jesse Reno? Does anyone know him? Yeah. Yeah. He is, um, he's a wizard. Who lives in, who lived in Southeast Portland when I met him.
And he, uh, went there to solicit art for a donation for an AMP fundraiser. And then we started talking and we talked for hours and he was creative and when he makes art, he has to make art. He's passionate. He's focused. He's dedicated. He works every day. He's working on five pieces at once. [00:19:00] And I realized that his soul, his trauma needs him to make art constantly.
So I started taking workshops from Jesse. I started emulating Jesse's work. , I started, I got called out on social media, by the way, for someone said, Hey, that really looks like a Jesse Reno piece. You should probably stop. And I called Jesse. I'm like, I'm so sorry, dude. And he said, uh, it's okay. It doesn't look anything like it.
Cause cause where we're coming from and our soul of art is different. And he saw that, but to other people, it didn't look that way. So I started to push in my own direction, in a way. And then I eventually did this collaboration piece with Jesse, which, , is, is one of my favorite pieces I've ever done.
He taught me two things. One, push. If you are struggling, if you don't think it's done, if you have to ask if it's done, push through it. And this metaphor is something that I've used ever since he told me this, , for the kids. Push through, push through, keep going, keep pushing, never stop. If you don't think it's done, keep going.
You're not finished. The second part was [00:20:00] attack. , when you're, when you're approaching your art, one of the things Jesse taught me is, uh, and I think this is true in a lot of my art heroes, Basquiat included, that if you are in, if you are tight, if you're not being your real you, if you're not attacking with the right purpose, it's not the right thing.
So there's a way to go about it. And so we have this conversation all the time in our space, push through. And if you're going to record a track and you're in the studio with Watts, attack the microphone. Come at it with all your energy and all your soul and give it 150 cents. A couple other real quick things.
Mark Blackburn was my childhood friend. He was a creative force. He is a creative force. I don't know why I keep talking about people like that past. Yeah. And so he taught me about graffiti art and pop art and some really creative stuff. And he did our original, uh, one of our original amp logos for us. , and we, and, and he was that guy for me, you know, when you're growing up, you're like, Oh, that guy's so cool.
He plays guitar and he does art. And he made it okay for me to want to be an artist. Andrew Salgado, [00:21:00] probably my biggest, like, you know, influence at this point in my life. Absolutely genius artist. And of course, my mom, who inexplicably at 40 years old, after a divorce from my dad, decided that she would, become an artist.
And she was my hero. She passed away in, in, uh, 2019. Uh, she had struggled with dementia. I, you know, my mom at 14 years old, when my father and her started getting into it a lot, there was a lot of physical violence and we started to see a decay in her functionality, I would call her and say, you know, 14 years old mom.
Hey, can you come pick me up from, from my friend Trey's house? She said, who's this? And I say, it's Will. And she'd say. Will's not here, and then she'd hang up. And I noticed this functionality started to slip. She, by the time she passed, she was in, you know, dementia had taken over. But this is connected to violence, this is connected to trauma, uh, it's connected to, the [00:22:00] trauma her mother went through in the Holocaust, and how DNA, there's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score that talks about, we all know about this, about how that stuff is passed down.
And it comes through the DNA code. And my mother, and the violence she saw, Changed her, but she used art as a way to heal. And she would say to me, use it. If you're, you know, you're struggling, you're having a tough day, use it. Make some art. This is, this is a weird picture I found in the box. It was all stuck together with other pictures, but, , she did an art show in Los Angeles and I flew from San Francisco and surprised her.
And if you look at the look on my mother's face, you can tell that this is the look of a mother who has just been pleasantly surprised by her son. Yeah, she needed me there. This was during a time of great upheaval and she needed me there and I was able to be there for her as she was for me. I studied art at PNCA.
Uh, and got a certificate in graphic design, and then I went and started putting art [00:23:00] on the street, and I learned that from the youth that come through this program, and I learned that from Mark Blackburn and Jesse Reno to go make stuff and put it out in the world. So, I made this mural. And I was really proud of myself because I love the jam, and I love Paul Weller.
And then I took it, and I put it out in the street, in the middle of the night, with the help of Nick Wu. Don't tell anyone, he's not liable for that, is he? And then someone graffitied all over the front of it. So I took it home, and I redid it, uh, with my tribute to my favorite metalhead, Lemmy Kilmeister.
, this was just after he passed. And then someone went over it again. So I took it home and I painted it again to look more like graffiti. And then someone stole all three panels except for that one. So I took it home and what I learned from Jesse Reno is about process and about keep working your art and keep functioning and keep doing stuff.
And I kept working it and inevitably it ended up looking like this piece on the far right. , and I put it in a [00:24:00] gallery show at Gallery 114 which is an amazing place. And it didn't sell, so I left it on the street. So this is just a series of slides of some of the pieces that I've done, and I've put out in the world, and left alone.
It's been an enriching experience to make art, and to learn about myself through this process. But most of this art I have left on street corners, and given away, because the process of making it was so valuable to my soul. The process of, of, just like this presentation, to go through and, and try and figure out who I am.
And how I present myself to people, , and, and that process is so enriching that I just wanted to leave them on the side of the street and whoever finds it is going to have a good day. So there's a lot of art. That stuff is actually in Bishop's Barbershop. So I don't know why that, but this one, I just want to give a shout out for a second.
The human being that helped me build this space and build this organization and the new drop in center you're in is a advocate for no guns for men. [00:25:00] And I'm going to say that in front of all of you, it hasn't worked out. It's not working out. And I don't think we should have them. So I'm going to say that statement right now.
Anyway. Yeah.
But they had me make these signs for them and it was a really great experience. Yeah, so more art out in the world. This is my grandfather, a painting I did of him. Closest thing to a self portrait. That's the other grandfather. And just a lot of art that I've just been making and producing. And the process is the key to everything.
And then this isn't my art. And then while doing this for almost 25 years, I found out about Sister Corita Kent. Is anyone familiar with Sister Corita Kent? Yeah. She ran the Immaculate Heart Art College in Los Angeles. And made some great silkscreens and beautiful art within her art college. She had rules, 10 rules to live by and, and eventually she [00:26:00] ended up leaving the church.
And it wasn't really something she connected with anymore. The policies and things had changed and she had these 10 rules. And if you do nothing today, look up these 10 rules. The number one rule is find a place you trust. And then try trusting it for a while. I would like to welcome you to a place where people trust and are going to be trusted for a while.
This is, this is, this is what we, this is the philosophy on how we operate. Every one of these is, is a goldmine for how to operate an art institute. And we have adopted them wholly, specifically rule number seven. That's me again, out in the middle of the street. Uh, rule number seven is the only rule is work, uh, which I learned from watching Alice Kendall do tattoos for the last 30 years.
You guys showed up today and I'm, and I'm, after talking to a few of you, I know you showed up because of what we do with kids and because what we do is important and because art matters and because we are connected as a [00:27:00] community of artists. Since the day we started this organization in 1994, we have been supported and funded by musicians and artists every step of the way.
You show up every single time. There are two people that work in this organization and a hundred different volunteers that show up because they know the power of music and they know the power of art and they love it and they understand what's happening with these kids. Is something that they can push through.
Thank you for showing up here today. We know music heals the brain, and art soothes the soul. If you are spending every single day of your life trying to survive, to not be assaulted, to not be drug affected, to not be stabbed, to come in here and put down your backpack, and to paint, and just focus, and breathe, and meditate, and move through.
That's all we want. We just want these kids to be able to sit still for five seconds. Every year, more than 4. 2 million kids in America will face a period of homelessness. , and how that [00:28:00] translates for our city is that 2, 000 youth every night, we have jumped from this number. This number is not up to date.
We have a 23 percent increase in this state as a result of the last three years in homelessness. 43 percent identify as BIPOC. Um, I will say this, 71 percent of the kids that come in here identify as being part of a sexual minority. In addition, 47. 9 percent of youth were unsheltered, whereas 52. 1 percent were in emergency shelter or transitional housing.
What that tells you is, is that 50 percent of the people that are experiencing homelessness are not engaging in services. So why? Traditional social work is not working. We have to be relationship focused. We have to connect with people on a very deep level and build trust to people that have been institutionalized and they go through the process of standing in line, taking a train, moving down.
What does that remind you of? It reminds you of jail. There was a guy who said, let's make the jail into a homeless shelter. If you are truly [00:29:00] trauma informed and you think about where people who are coming and experiencing homelessness and you want them to go into a space where they probably incurred trauma, how is that trauma informed?
You can't do that. So to be really truly trauma informed and engage folks so that they feel comfortable enough to advocate for their own safety, that is what we have to think about. And that starts with This is, this is, this is where I get on a little tangent. I'm going to say this. You can get somebody an apartment and you can get somebody an ID and you can get somebody job training skills.
And I've done all three of those things in my career, but you cannot understand anything until you know what love feels like. It defines all of us. We wake up in the morning, and we think about how we're gonna face the day, and it starts with love. It starts with my grandmother making me a sandwich in the middle of the night, which I never took her up on, and I should've.
But that's where we start. We start by understanding what it's like to know that when I show up [00:30:00] somewhere, like Amp, Will's gonna stand there and go, Hey, how are you? So, I will say this, this, this, this is the important bullet points about this, Oregon is, Uh, one of the top three states with the highest rate of homelessness in the U. S. We are one of the top four states of people living unsheltered. And we are number one in the nation, for families that are unsheltered. And that's where we're at as a place. But this is Amp, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do here and some of the creative cool things that are happening.
Uh, we provide individual music instruction, art lessons, workshops , professional recording studio time, performance opportunities. How about V? Yeah? Alright. Um, we're doing some training in live sound and recording engineers. We do group jam sessions, art. Today we're going to go to the Chinese gardens and we're going to sit and we're going to sketch.
That's what we're going to do. , we do meals every day. Uh, we do hygiene, first aid support, and we have a whole bunch of clothes over there. And then we work with a ton of different organizations to [00:31:00] refer kids out. So once they've built that trust and they're connected to us, then we can say, Hey, you know, there's a pretty cool housing program over there.
You want me to go with you over there? We'll go take a walk. We'll get you connected. Once we have that relationship, we can help connect kids to the resources that they need. That's what we do here. This is the very first performance we ever did with AMP. That's, my mentor, Dr. Jake Sinclair, embracing me after we did a performance with some lovely youth, super talented kids.
And, yeah, it's been, kind of the honor of my life to spend the last 30 years With these courageous, beautiful, talented human beings to spend every morning I come in here, I'm going to be surrounded by somebody that's overcome something so devastating just to get in the door. I know I'm going to be surrounded by heroes.
Like, I'm surrounded by heroes all day long in here. And if you volunteered here, you'd be surrounded by heroes too. [00:32:00] And they change you. We always think about people experiencing homelessness in that they need something from us. I'm telling you right now, when we think about how we're looking at this issue of homelessness, you need something from them.
You need to learn how to survive the way they survive. The courage, the tenacity, the drive of these young kids that come through our space. I get to make art with kids. I get to take them to special events, connect, and go to art museums. And I'm going to close with this, , Brian Eno, does everyone know Brian Eno, creative genius producer.
He has this philosophy that, we've all been inspired by creative genius somewhere along the line. , and that person, whether it be Kurt Cobain, whether it be, , Rembrandt, whether it be Picasso, whether it be Basquiat, all came from a scene. A community of artists that they were the product of the Lower East Side of Manhattan produced Jean Michel Basquiat and he [00:33:00] changed my life, but he was part of a community as we are part of a community.
We are a creative community that accepts each other, embraces each other, and shows up for each other. You showed up this morning. And you came into Old Town. This is a tough neighborhood, because we are a scene of artists, we're a community of artists. So he coined the phrase, the creative intelligence of a community.
And I hope that you take that with you today and look up the concept of that, because it's really a rich idea that one of us Is going to benefit from all of us. , , thank you so much. I do want to say a couple of quick things. Kaitlin, thank you for pushing me to do this conversation. I showed up here today to do this conversation because I wanted to engage people to fall in love with what we do here at AMP and see the value of it.
But when I was asked to talk about acceptance, I went on a terrible journey of self reflection. And it got really intense, but like most of my art, I hit failure and I had to push through and create something. I want to thank everyone that came in and especially, [00:34:00] I want to give a shout out to, , Teresa.
Who has worked 12 hours a day for the last two months to make AMP a reality for kids.
Kaitlin: This podcast is produced by the all volunteer crew who bring you creative mornings events in Portland, Oregon. You can reach us at morningsportland at gmail. com and watch the videos of all the talks that are featured on this podcast plus others.
to the Regional Arts and Culture Council, whose 2024 grant funding helped us launch this podcast. Thank you also to our sustaining partner, Wacom, who make each of these original events possible, and to Kova Coffee, who caffeinate everyone who attends. Thank you to Johnny and Simon of Weird Wonderful for their audio production and podcast wizardry.
And [00:35:00] just a huge hug to each person who's been part of the Creative Mornings Portland volunteer team over the years. Thank you to Antha, Rogan, Shemisa, Charlie, Chelsea, Christopher, Crystal, Elizabeth, Hannah, Yvonne. Joan, Julia, Kavir, Laura M, Laura N, Leah, Lucy, Sarah, Sumit, Tyler, and Vinny.
Each episode, we are going to share a talk from one of the most generous, inspiring, and inspiring and creative people in this city. You'll hear from people doing things you probably already think of as creative, people who paint, write books, illustrate comics, style photo shoots, make music, even sing opera.
There are others who run companies.[00:01:00]
I'm confident you'll take away something different from every person on this show. Each of these talks was originally recorded in front of a live audience, so sometimes they mention things that are on a screen, but those are pretty minor. Will Kendall has worked with youth experiencing homelessness and has championed marginalized communities for more than three decades.
He gave this talk in the Artist Mentorship Program space in downtown Portland in May, 2023. You can find links in the show notes and at amppdx. org. Good
Will Kendall: morning. I'd like to start today. By recognizing that we are currently on land owned by the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kafflamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, [00:02:00] Tualatin, Kalapuya, Malala, and many other tribes who made their homes through this region and along the Columbia River. Along with AMP's endeavors to make this space for youth experiencing homelessness, we ask everyone who shares this space with us to take with them on their journey the historical knowledge of past genocides and cultural appropriations of Native and Indigenous communities and commit to recognizing these injustices in perpetuity.
We want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here, and we respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities Past, present, and future. And we're grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence. This, this, preparing for this talk this morning has been a real journey for me.
And I will, I will fully own the fact that there is a pole somewhere in the middle of our conversation. that will or will not make sound when someone upstairs flushes it. Um, it's just where we're at. I'll start [00:03:00] with introducing myself. I am Will Kendall, and I am the Executive Director for the Artist Mentorship Program.
But I am, I'm thrilled to speak here today, , about acceptance. And about my journey, just trying to do this presentation. Um, has been a, a battle with self reflection. It has been a battle with facing some historical stuff for me. And I will talk a little bit about that. The violence that I saw as a child, the, the love of art and, and at some point I'm going to get really emotional and, uh, I apologize in advance, but I will say this, if you found parking in old town, your day has already been a success.
So congratulations to you. This is my mother and me in 1971. I was born on a gurney in Middlesex hospital in London, England to a dark room technician who did commercial work. , for Coca Cola and, and Disney and other companies, and my father was a hairdresser. So growing up, we constantly had [00:04:00] books of graphic design and beauty products all around the house.
And it really inspired my sense of composition and really helped me to fall in love, uh, with graphic design. This is on her wedding day. And you will notice that the lady in the back there is my grandmother, Keena Sanders, my mother, Tanya Kendall. And my father, who's half in the picture in this, and also half in the picture now, is Joseph Kendall.
My grandmother, uh, Sonia Keena Sanders, was a Holocaust survivor. She lost most of her family. She was part of the resistance. And is and will always be my greatest hero. She was outlandish, and creative, and aggressive, and sweet, and kind. And when I spent the night at her house when I was about six years old, she said to me, If you get hungry in the middle of the night, I will make you a sandwich.
Just wake me up. And I remember thinking that that, as I'm older now, I think [00:05:00] that is the moment I started to understand what compassion and love feels like. If you want me to wake you up in the middle of the night so you can make me a sandwich, she's a badass. And, and when her first husband was killed by the Nazis in Poland, she, she lost her sense and walked into a Gestapo headquarters and started screaming, I'm a Jew, and so I'm gonna say today I'm a Jew just like her.
You know, in 1979, my dad heard about Barbara Streisand marrying a hairdresser. And so my dad got excited and we packed all our bags and we left London. for Los Angeles. And so on July 14th, 1979, uh, with my, with the hopes of my dad being some sort of Warren Beatty character from the movie shampoo, we arrived in Los Angeles.
I was wearing a red track suit. We were on a TWA plane, July 14th, 1979. I walked off the [00:06:00] plane and it was like when Dorothy lands in Oz, everything was in Technicolor. There was a lot of TV. there were pools. There was sun. London was gray. We had a garbage strike during that year and uh, it, it was a pivotal time for me.
I came along with these two. This is my brother and sister on the left hand side. , I spent most of my childhood in a headlock from this guy, but I would, I would say that these are my two biggest cheerleaders that I've ever had in my life. We survived a lot of violent trauma together. And so we are forever bonded through that crucible of fire.
They think I'm smart, and I just think they're too dumb to know better. So, it kind of evens out in the mix. This is gonna make me so emotional, I apologize already. , my brother and my sister and my father were, had a high propensity towards being creative. And, and making art and music. And, um, I don't know if my mother and me actually shared that.
But, , there was a moment when I was a kid and I'm going to do this embarrassingly. [00:07:00] Uh, that my brother, um, received a guitar. And, uh, my mom thought that my brother was more creative and wanted to support him. So she got him a guitar. And then as I was skateboarding out in front of the house, he came up to me and said, Hey, I want to show you something.
, and I had to do exactly what my brother said, and he sat me down in the garage and he looked at me and he went,
Bella.
And that was like horrifying to me because he would've pummeled me if I didn't like it. And at that moment I realized that I had, . Probably the ability to be a musician and an artist. And, uh, if you can do that, I can probably say this is them now. Dear sweet family, right? My sister's a pain in the ass, though, I'll be honest.
Um, so, around the time of 14, living in Los Angeles, I [00:08:00] got involved in drugs quite heavily. And my parents, uh, after me being kicked out of multiple schools, , decided to send me to a reform school in northern Arizona called Oak Creek Ranch School. When I googled it, It just came up. Oak Creek, Oak Creek, , school death.
It was a violent place filled with, , trailer homes and kids beating up on each other. But it was the first place I ever felt community outside of my family. there was a collection of heavy metal kids on that campus. And, uh, when I pulled into the school, I saw three dudes in. Cut off jean jackets, standing in the middle of a dilapidated basketball court, doing air guitar.
And it was riveting to me. And I found my place within a community of metal heads. And that's me surrounded by those metal heads. We fell in love with music from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica, Slayer, because it spoke to people that had no people. It spoke to us that were [00:09:00] creative, but we had no communities.
And we became a community of metalheads. We just, we just fell in love with each other. And then in 1988, I went to a concert. And I saw Metallica for the first time at the LA Coliseum at the Monsters of Rock Festival. And I may or may not have caused a riot that Damaged about a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment, but but it changed my life I saw this guy on stage and I thought Kirk Hammett.
I want to be a I want to be him That was my that was my goal in life Drugs continued and I went into rehab when I was 18 years old soon as I got sober. I started playing guitar seriously And I left Los Angeles for San Francisco and became a bike messenger and that is my official Western messenger jacket While there, I started playing in bands.
And, , I was in a band called Drop the Fish. Anyone hear of it? Of course not, it was garbage. The [00:10:00] Hero Makers, the Hammer Bombs. No, not the Hammer Bombs, who else did I play with? Her Majesty the Baby. That's right. Her Majesty the Baby. I joined a band called Her Majesty the Baby and I was dedicated to playing music and I found some people that were a little bit older than me that understood what it took to be successful in a creative art form.
And so. Uh, the good people of Her Majesty the Baby took me in and made me a member of their band, and it was funded by this lady in the center, Lee Paiva, and the lady just over to the left of her, who is Terry Winston. They taught me about work ethic. They taught me about how to be creative, how to market a product.
And how to play in a band and how much practice it takes to get the set, right. We played all over San Francisco. We opened for the Flaming Lips and PJ Harvey. And I learned everything about what it takes to achieve something by hanging out with these people who were a little bit older than me and a lot [00:11:00] more talented.
But they made me work hard and we flyered everywhere in San Francisco. We used to play gigs in San Francisco and all the sound engineers were men. And Terry, , in the very back of this picture, wrote every song in Her Majesty the Baby, recorded every song in Her Majesty the Baby, and told us exactly what the rest of us needed to do.
It was her band. But every time we went into a gig, they'd walk up to me, the sound engineer, and they'd say, How do you want the monitors? And I'd go, I don't know, ask Terry, I'm in charge. And then they'd turn to Terry, and Terry would take a swing at them. Because she was not messing around. And she was sick of the sexism that exists in that industry.
So when the band ended, she started an organization called women's audio mission, it is in San Francisco and it trains young women, how to be sound engineers and recording engineers. If you get a chance to look it up, uh, Lee Paiva. Uh, went on to form No Means No Worldwide, which is an organization that is working to eradicate [00:12:00] sexual violence, and then created Empower United, which is working in the same vein to eradicate sexual violence, and I am thrilled to serve as the board chair for that organization, so if you get the chance, look up Empower United and Women's Audio Mission.
And I will, I will, uh, hopefully Kaitlin can send out some information about those amazing organizations. Um, but they taught me a lot about how to be, uh, civic minded. And, uh, Lee's husband was Dr. Jake Sinclair. He founded an organization called Youth Industry. He was a pediatric doctor and he was the man who came up with the concept of AMP.
He was also an adrenaline junkie. Like he would take outlandish risks. He was traumatized. In the most violent way as a child, and he barely survived. And when he did, he went to college, became a doctor, and decided that he was going to work to save every single kid on the street. And he taught me, you know, when we made our things today, and we thought, [00:13:00] let's talk about the people that were the mentors that moved us forward.
We do volunteer trainings in this room. And I, and Teresa will attest to this, I start every training off with I am here today because this man turned to me 30 years ago and said, you're good at this. And I believed him and I hadn't heard that a lot in my life. And it changed me on the inside. It empowered me.
I stood taller. I made more eye contact. I felt connected to people. I was skateboarding around my neighborhood in the mission district in San Francisco. In the early nineties, and I came across this store where Lee from the band and Jake were in there and they were setting up a shop to, uh, employee youth experiencing homelessness and to train them on how to have job training skills and how to work in customer service and how to make a living.
And as I skateboarded by, I saw them in there and I walked in and I said, Hey, what are you guys doing? And they explained, and I said, you should give me a job. I have retail experience and this is a block [00:14:00] away from my house. And, , he said, no, we've already hired a manager. Sorry. And I left. And then two days later, I got a call and the phone call went like this.
Do you want the job or not? And I said, yeah, I'll take the job. And so that's how I got into social work. A lot of people have to go get MSWs, I apologize, I skipped the line, but, but this space is, is significantly special to me because it has like a magical vibe. It just, something happened and I, and I immediately shifted.
Having grown up with a family that was obsessed with Hollywood and fame and making money and celebrity, things shifted for me where I saw the value of interacting with one person in a way that helps them at a critical time in their life. And that changed me. And then Jake asked me, about two weeks after that, if I would start a music program called AMP.
Because without a way to express ourselves creatively, we are only half the story. And of course I said yes. [00:15:00] And that changed me again. So, my first day at AMP, a 16 year old kid walked in. Uh, he had been sleeping in the parks. His stepmother had ostracized him. He was addicted to meth and he, , he and I shared a love for Nirvana.
And so we learned a couple songs and we sat down and we connected. And, , I am friends with this man to this day. He serves on our board of directors. He works for Meta, uh, he is an Oculus designer. He has a food blog called Feast Meets West, which is amazing. He is a MBA statistician, and he can tell you anything you need to know about any of the scores.
But he's also my dear, dear friend. And, and when we think about young people who are experiencing homelessness, and how much they need community, we need to think of it from this concept. Our goal is not to put a Band Aid on [00:16:00] this. These are young people who have been ostracized who need community. And what I learned from meeting Nick Wu was that I needed community too.
He is much became a part of my life and benefited me and enriched my life in every possible way. , and I love him dearly and, and you never expect that because so much of traditional social work is about putting a bandaid on something or here's a bowl of soup that'll get you through to tomorrow, but by becoming.
Partners with him, friends with him. He has, he's enriched my life in countless ways. I also met my wife at that thrift store after being there for a year and a half, they hired an assistant manager and I was immediately, immediately smitten and in love, and I knew the day that I met her, that I would marry her and we would have.
kids and live happily ever after. And unfortunately that happened. We got married at the Church of Graceland, , and she [00:17:00] went on to become a artist of great merit. She started tattooing after our first son was born. That's our first son over there in the yellow shirt. She works from morning to night. For the last 20 plus years, drawing, creating, crafting, caring.
She is a stunning artist and her work is heralded. And I'm sure there's people in this room who have pieces of art. , But what I learned from, , falling in love with this amazing human being was that. To make art, you have to really be dedicated, and that didn't work for me. My attention span is short. I have no focus.
I have a haphazard way of making art. Um, but we have two amazing kids. Uh, we, we made some pretty creative Christmas cards. Uh, and our kids went along with it. And despite all of our terrible decisions, mostly my terrible decisions as a parent, they turned out to be amazing, caring, kind, and beautiful human beings.[00:18:00]
And I'm so proud of them. My daughter FaceTimed me today from the French Alps and my son is here. Teaching music and art to homeless youth three times a week. So, kudos to him.
This is my first, like, I'm sharing this, it's so embarrassing. This is absolute garbage, but this is my first piece of art that I ever tried to do. And it's just rubbish. And then I met Jesse Reno. And, who knows Jesse Reno? Does anyone know him? Yeah. Yeah. He is, um, he's a wizard. Who lives in, who lived in Southeast Portland when I met him.
And he, uh, went there to solicit art for a donation for an AMP fundraiser. And then we started talking and we talked for hours and he was creative and when he makes art, he has to make art. He's passionate. He's focused. He's dedicated. He works every day. He's working on five pieces at once. [00:19:00] And I realized that his soul, his trauma needs him to make art constantly.
So I started taking workshops from Jesse. I started emulating Jesse's work. , I started, I got called out on social media, by the way, for someone said, Hey, that really looks like a Jesse Reno piece. You should probably stop. And I called Jesse. I'm like, I'm so sorry, dude. And he said, uh, it's okay. It doesn't look anything like it.
Cause cause where we're coming from and our soul of art is different. And he saw that, but to other people, it didn't look that way. So I started to push in my own direction, in a way. And then I eventually did this collaboration piece with Jesse, which, , is, is one of my favorite pieces I've ever done.
He taught me two things. One, push. If you are struggling, if you don't think it's done, if you have to ask if it's done, push through it. And this metaphor is something that I've used ever since he told me this, , for the kids. Push through, push through, keep going, keep pushing, never stop. If you don't think it's done, keep going.
You're not finished. The second part was [00:20:00] attack. , when you're, when you're approaching your art, one of the things Jesse taught me is, uh, and I think this is true in a lot of my art heroes, Basquiat included, that if you are in, if you are tight, if you're not being your real you, if you're not attacking with the right purpose, it's not the right thing.
So there's a way to go about it. And so we have this conversation all the time in our space, push through. And if you're going to record a track and you're in the studio with Watts, attack the microphone. Come at it with all your energy and all your soul and give it 150 cents. A couple other real quick things.
Mark Blackburn was my childhood friend. He was a creative force. He is a creative force. I don't know why I keep talking about people like that past. Yeah. And so he taught me about graffiti art and pop art and some really creative stuff. And he did our original, uh, one of our original amp logos for us. , and we, and, and he was that guy for me, you know, when you're growing up, you're like, Oh, that guy's so cool.
He plays guitar and he does art. And he made it okay for me to want to be an artist. Andrew Salgado, [00:21:00] probably my biggest, like, you know, influence at this point in my life. Absolutely genius artist. And of course, my mom, who inexplicably at 40 years old, after a divorce from my dad, decided that she would, become an artist.
And she was my hero. She passed away in, in, uh, 2019. Uh, she had struggled with dementia. I, you know, my mom at 14 years old, when my father and her started getting into it a lot, there was a lot of physical violence and we started to see a decay in her functionality, I would call her and say, you know, 14 years old mom.
Hey, can you come pick me up from, from my friend Trey's house? She said, who's this? And I say, it's Will. And she'd say. Will's not here, and then she'd hang up. And I noticed this functionality started to slip. She, by the time she passed, she was in, you know, dementia had taken over. But this is connected to violence, this is connected to trauma, uh, it's connected to, the [00:22:00] trauma her mother went through in the Holocaust, and how DNA, there's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score that talks about, we all know about this, about how that stuff is passed down.
And it comes through the DNA code. And my mother, and the violence she saw, Changed her, but she used art as a way to heal. And she would say to me, use it. If you're, you know, you're struggling, you're having a tough day, use it. Make some art. This is, this is a weird picture I found in the box. It was all stuck together with other pictures, but, , she did an art show in Los Angeles and I flew from San Francisco and surprised her.
And if you look at the look on my mother's face, you can tell that this is the look of a mother who has just been pleasantly surprised by her son. Yeah, she needed me there. This was during a time of great upheaval and she needed me there and I was able to be there for her as she was for me. I studied art at PNCA.
Uh, and got a certificate in graphic design, and then I went and started putting art [00:23:00] on the street, and I learned that from the youth that come through this program, and I learned that from Mark Blackburn and Jesse Reno to go make stuff and put it out in the world. So, I made this mural. And I was really proud of myself because I love the jam, and I love Paul Weller.
And then I took it, and I put it out in the street, in the middle of the night, with the help of Nick Wu. Don't tell anyone, he's not liable for that, is he? And then someone graffitied all over the front of it. So I took it home, and I redid it, uh, with my tribute to my favorite metalhead, Lemmy Kilmeister.
, this was just after he passed. And then someone went over it again. So I took it home and I painted it again to look more like graffiti. And then someone stole all three panels except for that one. So I took it home and what I learned from Jesse Reno is about process and about keep working your art and keep functioning and keep doing stuff.
And I kept working it and inevitably it ended up looking like this piece on the far right. , and I put it in a [00:24:00] gallery show at Gallery 114 which is an amazing place. And it didn't sell, so I left it on the street. So this is just a series of slides of some of the pieces that I've done, and I've put out in the world, and left alone.
It's been an enriching experience to make art, and to learn about myself through this process. But most of this art I have left on street corners, and given away, because the process of making it was so valuable to my soul. The process of, of, just like this presentation, to go through and, and try and figure out who I am.
And how I present myself to people, , and, and that process is so enriching that I just wanted to leave them on the side of the street and whoever finds it is going to have a good day. So there's a lot of art. That stuff is actually in Bishop's Barbershop. So I don't know why that, but this one, I just want to give a shout out for a second.
The human being that helped me build this space and build this organization and the new drop in center you're in is a advocate for no guns for men. [00:25:00] And I'm going to say that in front of all of you, it hasn't worked out. It's not working out. And I don't think we should have them. So I'm going to say that statement right now.
Anyway. Yeah.
But they had me make these signs for them and it was a really great experience. Yeah, so more art out in the world. This is my grandfather, a painting I did of him. Closest thing to a self portrait. That's the other grandfather. And just a lot of art that I've just been making and producing. And the process is the key to everything.
And then this isn't my art. And then while doing this for almost 25 years, I found out about Sister Corita Kent. Is anyone familiar with Sister Corita Kent? Yeah. She ran the Immaculate Heart Art College in Los Angeles. And made some great silkscreens and beautiful art within her art college. She had rules, 10 rules to live by and, and eventually she [00:26:00] ended up leaving the church.
And it wasn't really something she connected with anymore. The policies and things had changed and she had these 10 rules. And if you do nothing today, look up these 10 rules. The number one rule is find a place you trust. And then try trusting it for a while. I would like to welcome you to a place where people trust and are going to be trusted for a while.
This is, this is, this is what we, this is the philosophy on how we operate. Every one of these is, is a goldmine for how to operate an art institute. And we have adopted them wholly, specifically rule number seven. That's me again, out in the middle of the street. Uh, rule number seven is the only rule is work, uh, which I learned from watching Alice Kendall do tattoos for the last 30 years.
You guys showed up today and I'm, and I'm, after talking to a few of you, I know you showed up because of what we do with kids and because what we do is important and because art matters and because we are connected as a [00:27:00] community of artists. Since the day we started this organization in 1994, we have been supported and funded by musicians and artists every step of the way.
You show up every single time. There are two people that work in this organization and a hundred different volunteers that show up because they know the power of music and they know the power of art and they love it and they understand what's happening with these kids. Is something that they can push through.
Thank you for showing up here today. We know music heals the brain, and art soothes the soul. If you are spending every single day of your life trying to survive, to not be assaulted, to not be drug affected, to not be stabbed, to come in here and put down your backpack, and to paint, and just focus, and breathe, and meditate, and move through.
That's all we want. We just want these kids to be able to sit still for five seconds. Every year, more than 4. 2 million kids in America will face a period of homelessness. , and how that [00:28:00] translates for our city is that 2, 000 youth every night, we have jumped from this number. This number is not up to date.
We have a 23 percent increase in this state as a result of the last three years in homelessness. 43 percent identify as BIPOC. Um, I will say this, 71 percent of the kids that come in here identify as being part of a sexual minority. In addition, 47. 9 percent of youth were unsheltered, whereas 52. 1 percent were in emergency shelter or transitional housing.
What that tells you is, is that 50 percent of the people that are experiencing homelessness are not engaging in services. So why? Traditional social work is not working. We have to be relationship focused. We have to connect with people on a very deep level and build trust to people that have been institutionalized and they go through the process of standing in line, taking a train, moving down.
What does that remind you of? It reminds you of jail. There was a guy who said, let's make the jail into a homeless shelter. If you are truly [00:29:00] trauma informed and you think about where people who are coming and experiencing homelessness and you want them to go into a space where they probably incurred trauma, how is that trauma informed?
You can't do that. So to be really truly trauma informed and engage folks so that they feel comfortable enough to advocate for their own safety, that is what we have to think about. And that starts with This is, this is, this is where I get on a little tangent. I'm going to say this. You can get somebody an apartment and you can get somebody an ID and you can get somebody job training skills.
And I've done all three of those things in my career, but you cannot understand anything until you know what love feels like. It defines all of us. We wake up in the morning, and we think about how we're gonna face the day, and it starts with love. It starts with my grandmother making me a sandwich in the middle of the night, which I never took her up on, and I should've.
But that's where we start. We start by understanding what it's like to know that when I show up [00:30:00] somewhere, like Amp, Will's gonna stand there and go, Hey, how are you? So, I will say this, this, this, this is the important bullet points about this, Oregon is, Uh, one of the top three states with the highest rate of homelessness in the U. S. We are one of the top four states of people living unsheltered. And we are number one in the nation, for families that are unsheltered. And that's where we're at as a place. But this is Amp, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do here and some of the creative cool things that are happening.
Uh, we provide individual music instruction, art lessons, workshops , professional recording studio time, performance opportunities. How about V? Yeah? Alright. Um, we're doing some training in live sound and recording engineers. We do group jam sessions, art. Today we're going to go to the Chinese gardens and we're going to sit and we're going to sketch.
That's what we're going to do. , we do meals every day. Uh, we do hygiene, first aid support, and we have a whole bunch of clothes over there. And then we work with a ton of different organizations to [00:31:00] refer kids out. So once they've built that trust and they're connected to us, then we can say, Hey, you know, there's a pretty cool housing program over there.
You want me to go with you over there? We'll go take a walk. We'll get you connected. Once we have that relationship, we can help connect kids to the resources that they need. That's what we do here. This is the very first performance we ever did with AMP. That's, my mentor, Dr. Jake Sinclair, embracing me after we did a performance with some lovely youth, super talented kids.
And, yeah, it's been, kind of the honor of my life to spend the last 30 years With these courageous, beautiful, talented human beings to spend every morning I come in here, I'm going to be surrounded by somebody that's overcome something so devastating just to get in the door. I know I'm going to be surrounded by heroes.
Like, I'm surrounded by heroes all day long in here. And if you volunteered here, you'd be surrounded by heroes too. [00:32:00] And they change you. We always think about people experiencing homelessness in that they need something from us. I'm telling you right now, when we think about how we're looking at this issue of homelessness, you need something from them.
You need to learn how to survive the way they survive. The courage, the tenacity, the drive of these young kids that come through our space. I get to make art with kids. I get to take them to special events, connect, and go to art museums. And I'm going to close with this, , Brian Eno, does everyone know Brian Eno, creative genius producer.
He has this philosophy that, we've all been inspired by creative genius somewhere along the line. , and that person, whether it be Kurt Cobain, whether it be, , Rembrandt, whether it be Picasso, whether it be Basquiat, all came from a scene. A community of artists that they were the product of the Lower East Side of Manhattan produced Jean Michel Basquiat and he [00:33:00] changed my life, but he was part of a community as we are part of a community.
We are a creative community that accepts each other, embraces each other, and shows up for each other. You showed up this morning. And you came into Old Town. This is a tough neighborhood, because we are a scene of artists, we're a community of artists. So he coined the phrase, the creative intelligence of a community.
And I hope that you take that with you today and look up the concept of that, because it's really a rich idea that one of us Is going to benefit from all of us. , , thank you so much. I do want to say a couple of quick things. Kaitlin, thank you for pushing me to do this conversation. I showed up here today to do this conversation because I wanted to engage people to fall in love with what we do here at AMP and see the value of it.
But when I was asked to talk about acceptance, I went on a terrible journey of self reflection. And it got really intense, but like most of my art, I hit failure and I had to push through and create something. I want to thank everyone that came in and especially, [00:34:00] I want to give a shout out to, , Teresa.
Who has worked 12 hours a day for the last two months to make AMP a reality for kids.
Kaitlin: This podcast is produced by the all volunteer crew who bring you creative mornings events in Portland, Oregon. You can reach us at morningsportland at gmail. com and watch the videos of all the talks that are featured on this podcast plus others.
to the Regional Arts and Culture Council, whose 2024 grant funding helped us launch this podcast. Thank you also to our sustaining partner, Wacom, who make each of these original events possible, and to Kova Coffee, who caffeinate everyone who attends. Thank you to Johnny and Simon of Weird Wonderful for their audio production and podcast wizardry.
And [00:35:00] just a huge hug to each person who's been part of the Creative Mornings Portland volunteer team over the years. Thank you to Antha, Rogan, Shemisa, Charlie, Chelsea, Christopher, Crystal, Elizabeth, Hannah, Yvonne. Joan, Julia, Kavir, Laura M, Laura N, Leah, Lucy, Sarah, Sumit, Tyler, and Vinny.
