Breaking Frames - Shy'he Ennals
This was a piece I made for a really cool art event called Breaking Frames, which paired artists across the country with high school students from Baltimore. The students provided information about themselves - their lives, their dreams and heroes, the way they were perceived vs who they actually were. Then the artists made pieces about those students. The art was to be auctioned to raise money for the Renaissance Academy in Baltimore, the high school many of the students attended. Learning about them was heartbreaking and inspiring. Renaissance Academy is located in a troubled area of the city, about a mile from where the Freddie Gray riots occurred in 2015. The school had lost three students to violence the past year. Reading about some of the students, you heard stories of lost friends, shut off power, fears of violence, and a bunch of other things that high school students shouldn't have to go through. But you could also see ambition, personality and drive. It was cool learning about Shy'he - that he hoped for an end to violence and had ambitions for financial success; that he looked up to activist and Black Panther Party member George Jackson; that he cared about the people he met and the people he'd lost. I was honored to be able to participate in this. I hope it helped a little. It can't do enough.