Humble, timid, quiet… I am no more!
Yup!
Too long overlooked and too long overdue. Hence, in the long run, it all paid off.
I could now afford to purchase my own building and create my own gallery and a theater.
As Bishop Desmond Tutu reminded us, “to pray and to dream with our eyes wide open.” I’ve since learned such could lead to an artist’s independence from a system designed to enslave the hungered, the vulnerable, stifling their creative minds.
Although for far too many times, I have freely loaned out my talent to uplift and foster church programs, humanitarian relief efforts, volunteered to lecture at inner-city, impoverished after-school programs, inner cities homeless programs, without ever receiving a dollar in return, including sharing my contacts, and resources with richly, well established, prestigious colleges and universities.
Those who have obtained grants to conduct their artistic tutoring programs, yet their leaders, who actually sat at my table to eat, drink, thus shared laughter, have ignored to open their doors to invite me in… while I watched them repeatedly aggrandize their egos and further enrich themselves.
I have long learned that the ugly adage, “starving artist,” used to describe struggling artists, was indeed a real thing. And that’s the reason why I kept my day job, invested my earnings wisely, while I let the creative juices continued to flow freely, like flowing rivers down the mountain… with far fewer stressors to build and continuously create.
Today, I own the rights to every single piece of all my artwork. Each and every sculpture and scrap of furniture designed, every painting, sketched, and every published poem, books now written… song lyric or music, composed and produced. Alike my stage and screenplays, together with my opera that’s on the way, including the 2 novelas soon to be completed!
Feeling great. I didn’t settle, given up, nor sold out. But boy did I had doors slammed in my face! Enough rejection letters to pace a New York apartment building inside, and outer walls, thus published in a new book. Dear God, you saw my struggle; you know the story behind my glory!
“An artist must elect to fight for slavery or freedom. I made my choice; I had no objectives.” Paul Robeson.
Long story short, my art, my contributions to the arts, my lectures, stage plays, and musical productions, extends all the way from:
Hartford, CT, Martin Luther King, Jr. school and Sarah Rossow after school tutoring programs, sponsored by the West Indian Foundation, to the Honduran Relief Committee of Connecticut, humanitarian efforts, to the Contribution of my exhibit at the United Nations, sponsoring the independence and the economic empowerment of Garinagu \ Garifuna women, in Honduras and throughout other Central American Caribbean region.
As well as being part of the group of organizing activist, for now, state-run, Connecticut Anti Homeless, Anti Hunger Coalition, to creating stage art productions, preventing the closing of homeless shelters in southern New England to my work as a playwright with the Middlesex AIDS Buddy Network, fundraisers, where my play opened for Mr. Donny Harper and the New Jersey Mass Choir, to sponsoring and producing a gala extravaganza, with all proceeds going to benefit halfway homes and centers throughout the West Indies and other Caribbean islands, with children’s suffering from HIV AIDS. All while taking care of my children, studying, writing, and holding down a day job.
Most recently, my volunteer work with Puerto Rico. Although not artistic in short, but monies earned from my last art exhibit 2019, New York City also sponsored our church’s book bag drive, CAM, and other humanitarian projects on the island nation.
So… All in all, it could be said that I’ve helped out a little bit here and there. After all, I’ve been rather blessed, what talent I do not possess; I’m great at researching and finding the way. As a lifelong mariner, I walk these streets unrecognized, for my work remains in my heart. Much is not given to the brothers, but the negative sides, when they’ve done wrong.
As Mariner, I’m not afraid to speak up. If recognition isn’t given and my work ignored by all, I have no problem celebrating myself, my work while increasing my value and my self-worth.
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