Creating ripples & connections in a troubled world
Alice Sims & Art for the People
By Bruce Johansen
Photos by Julie Wiatt
 You might not know Alice Sims, but if you've ever traveled past the Savory
Café on Carroll Avenue, you've undoubtedly seen some of her animals,
the bear, tiger, and kangaroo, scattered about her family's front yard.
The long-time Takoma Park resident says that her life-sized sculptures
catch a lot of people's eyes, that it's not uncommon to see passersby
stop and snap a few photos.
Sims' animals are but one of many ways that she shares art and the creative
process with the wider community. They are also a very public expression
of her belief that we are all interconnected, including people and animals.
As founder and president of Art for the People (AFTP), Sims' primary
aim is to bring art education, projects, and events to communities with
little access to the arts and few opportunities for self-expression. To
date, AFTP has provided support and encouragement for creative explorations
to teens, senior citizens, and people who are homeless.
Sims traces the inspiration for AFTP to her lifelong love of art and
a desire to share it with others. "Art was really important for me when
I was younger; well, throughout my life I guess it's been the thread." She
finds art to be "healing," which is something the groups she works with
tend to need.
Sims' main hope is that by doing something locally, she and her organization
are creating ripple effects in a world that too often seems to be "going
to hell in a hand basket."
Laundry paper, easels, and the birth of an artist
Before moving to Takoma Park--she thinks it was 17 years ago--Alice Sims
had never lived in this part of the country. Her childhood was spent in
rural North Carolina, outside the small college town of Davidson, where
her father was a history professor. With degrees from Harvard and Columbia,
her dad encouraged Alice to read broadly. As a teacher and scholar he
had great interest in a wide range of subjects, including Southern culture,
fiction, architecture, and the arts in general. She recalls sharing his
fondness for books. From the library, he would bring Alice four books
at a time: books by Russian novelists, Southern writers of note, women,
British writers, and nonfiction books as well as novels. Their agreement
was that Alice had to read at least two and report back to him, before
being given any new ones. Often, she devoured all four.
 Alice also relished looking at art books. "I always liked looking at
different artists in books, and I liked almost everything. I was like
a sponge." Matisse, the Impressionists, still lifes of flowers, Greek
sculptures, she was drawn to them all. However, Alice wasn't just looking at
illustrations. She was jumping in and doing her own art.
"Women could do art and teach," Sims remarks, explaining the support
she received from her parents, products of a traditional Southern culture.
At one point she illustrated some of her father's history books.
Of her mother, Sims says, "She was a Southern homemaker and she looked
lovely; that's what she did." The house Alice was raised in was "lovely
and full of antiques." Her mother's attention to those antiques was meticulous,
as it was to everything related to her home and personal appearance. Silver
had to be washed right after it was used, Sims remembers. "And you ironed
things." Sheets, underwear, everything. "The house looked good. She got
her hair done." This emphasis on "looking right," which Sims says is characteristic
of the South, is something with which she now takes issue.
While her older brother went the traditional route for a Southern man--he
became a banker--Alice felt free to pursue art. For science class, she
enjoyed making models of bodies and body parts, livers and hearts. She
liked drawing bugs and copying from books. Summers were spent in the mountains
of North Carolina with her family. Mostly as something to keep her occupied,
Alice's grandmother provided the young girl with large sheets of laundry
paper, from which she made life-sized people that she would talk to and
move around. "Because I was lonely," Sims explains.
A second grade teacher noticed Alice's talent and the intense concentration
she gave to her art. Sims describes the teacher setting up three easels
in the back of the room so that she could just paint, which is exactly
what she wanted to do. "I don't know how she knew that....And the other
kids would say, 'how come she's not doing, whatever?' And she'd say, 'don't
worry about it.' That really gave me something." Sims' appreciation for
these special privileges has never waned. When she heard that the
teacher died, Sims wrote to her sister, expressing how important she had
been in her life. The sister wrote back, telling Sims, "You were important
to her, too. She had your picture on her dresser when she died."
Having had those early experiences, it's easy to understand Sims' disappointment
when her father got her a scholarship to a college that did not offer
art. Instead of the University of Hawaii or Pratt, two schools she'd applied
to, Sims found herself at a women's college in South Carolina.
After graduating, Sims was married, and she and her husband, Bill, spent
time in Germany, then Charleston. With a certificate in teaching, she
taught art to preschool children, but knew that that wasn't what she wanted
to be doing. She wanted to teach at a college. With that realization,
Sims pursued a graduate degree from the University of South Carolina,
where she finally got to focus on nothing but art.
There was one downside to the program, however. "No woman had ever been
allowed to be a graduate student in sculpture." During her time in Germany,
Sims had discovered that sculpture was her real passion. For a long time,
she explains, she had wanted to paint the things she saw--buildings, landscapes,
towers--but "sculpture seemed more real to me." Happy doing ceramics, drawing,
and print-making, Sims, at the same time, was frustrated that the school
was gender restrictive when it came to sculpture. "I should have sued
them," she laughs.
Finding fertile ground in Takoma Park
 A native of New York, Sims' husband Bill eventually wanted to leave South
Carolina for points farther north. He took a job in D.C. and Alice followed,
living first in Virginia and then Takoma Park. "I love Takoma Park," she
exclaims, comparing it to Virginia and South Carolina. Those places, she
says, "look beautiful," especially if you are privileged and subscribe
to cultural norms. "If you're a 'have' and not a 'have-not' and you sort
of follow the lines of being a lot of things that they want you to be,
you do great there. But if you want to fight for things that you like,
like some diversity and things that are a little different...then you're
in trouble." Takoma Park, by contrast, "is a really wonderful place. Even
though people discuss everything and nobody agrees on anything...at least
they can discuss everything."
Takoma Park has proven to be fertile ground for Sims' work as an artist
and her current venture, Art for the People. It was 2003 when the organization
was incorporated, a point at which Sims had grown weary of spending so
much time alone. She had built a studio onto her family's house, "and
I loved it, but it was lonely." Her mother had died and her son, Bo, was
off to college.
A chapter ended when the preschool where she taught, Allegheny Learning
Center, closed, leaving Sims feeling even more isolated. "I'd
go have coffee with people, but people had jobs.... I wanted something
to do, and I think art is important. 'Maybe I'll do art with people,'" was
her thought.
By that point, Sims had gained experience working with senior citizens
in Takoma Park and had written grants with Stephanie Nye, one of AFTP's
teachers and a board member, for the Blue Mongoose, a program for children
with special needs. Cherie Schultz, another AFTP board member, encouraged
Sims to follow her vision of a new arts organization that would do outreach
to underserved populations, and to incorporate.
In the midst of taking courses on how to set up as a 501(c)(3) non-profit,
working with Schultz on a description of the project, and filing other
necessary papers, Sims was meeting regularly with friend and fellow artist
Karen Gallant (See profile of Gallant and Art for the Heart in this issue.) "Karen
and I were vision buddies. She was starting Art for the Heart and I was
starting Art for the People." Sims says that because of their comfort
level, the two were able to be honest with each other about their insecurities,
while at the same time setting goals and keeping each other to their commitments. "I
could say to her, 'I don't even really know what a non-profit is. Really!
And she would say, 'I'll never be able to... whatever she was trying to
do." At the end of each weekly meeting, Sims and Gallant would state their
goal for the coming week, keeping one another focused on each step.
Eventually both ventures were up and running. Among AFTP's sources of
support are the Montgomery County Arts & Humanities Council, the Maryland
State Arts Council, the Freeman Foundation, individual donors, and the
Takoma Foundation. Other supporters include, Jerry Easom-Syniverse Technologies,
the Ruth McCormick Tankersley Charitable Trust, Community Ministries,
Seekers Church, and Rep. Albert Wynn. Art for the People also has a scholarship
fund, the Judith Graebner Educational Fund.
Sims is inspired by the other AFTP teachers and enjoys the collaboration. Sims
says that the process of teaching with others is a stimulating one, exposing
her to various ways of doing things that she wouldn't have thought of
by herself.
She compares the teaching styles of Karen Gallant, Stephanie Nye, and
Marilyn Banner. "Karen thinks of projects I don't think of. Stephanie
is very meticulous. She works different from Karen. Marilyn works different
from both of them. She's more liable to just pack up paints and brushes
and go into a women's shelter and just chat and talk and nurture and let
everybody paint together." Of her own teaching style, Sims says that it
is "changing."
Her own tendency, Sims observes, is to be more academic. "I would push
people to try to do really good art, art that was sellable. Which now,
I think, is not such a great idea anyway; but that would have been my
tendency, to clean things up."
These kinds of differences in approach fascinate Sims. She recounts a
pivotal learning experience from an encounter with her daughter, Ariel: "She
was going to do a quilt one time and I said, 'the way you do a quilt is
you put your interesting things in the middle and then you have a border
and that's the way you do a quilt.' She didn't have that idea. She did
this dark shape in the middle and it went all the way to the edge and
she hardly had a border. It looked like a box of chocolates. The whole
thing was very dense. I would never have done that, but it was great." Ariel
is currently studying interior design, while son Bo is a graphic designer
in Colorado.
Helping others dream a better life
Because the populations AFTP works with are often disenfranchised, the
most important thing to Sims is that participants be engaged creatively. "What
you don't want is for them to do nothing," something that she sees happen
with depressed people, and often with teens. She adds that depression
is something that touches all of the groups AFTP works with. Therefore,
a central part of AFTP's mission is "to match a caring group of artists,
who are also experienced teachers, with people who are deprived of the
life-enhancing benefits that come with making art." The teachers who work
for Sims are all skilled at "making a safe space for everyone," comments
Sims.
 AFTP is typically well received when Sims approaches schools that are
so often starved for the arts in this "No Child Left Behind" era. The
same holds true for community centers, shelters, and senior facilities.
Sims describes one experience at a school designed for at risk teens. "They
didn't have any art. It surprised me." All of the classes were remedial.
The teens were not doing well academically, and because the curriculum
didn't include physical education, art, or music, they weren't enjoying
school.
"It seemed to me that they, particularly, needed art." Sims wanted to
witness the teens doing something creative instead of destructive. She
quickly discovered that some were good at art and enjoyed it.
Since AFTP had received a grant for the program, its art classes didn't
cost the school anything. And because Sims and Nye, who accompanied her
to this school, were able to spend an entire year there, they got to know
the kids well. Forming relationships with people is what can make all
the difference, according to Sims. "Getting a lot of money is good, but
the heart connections are really the good things, the best things. Sometimes
they're so good I have to go take naps afterwards."
Driving AFTP is one firmly grounded belief. "I think we are, everybody
is connected," explains Sims. "We're connected with the poor people, we're
connected with the homeless, we're connected with the old people, we're
connected with the old, poor people. And to deny that connection is a
mistake."
Art for the People teaches Sims the lessons of interconnectedness over
and over again, often in challenging environments. She describes working
with another group of teens where their participation was mandated by
Montgomery County Police. Sims notes that while she appreciates the powerlessness
and anger the teens exhibited, the experience was frequently difficult
for her and fellow teacher Karen Gallant. She recalls a time Gallant asked
students to complete the prompt, "I am, I feel, I like" before getting
started on their artwork. " One kid said, 'I am 18, I feel good, and I
like to blow things up.'"
Not all encounters are like that. Sims tells of seniors in subsidized
housing, delighting in opportunities to be creative. "They like practical
art...They want to make ceramic mugs and vases and they use them. Picture
frames, my goodness, they loved picture frames. And I took pictures of
them with my digital camera and printed them out, and they put those pictures
in their picture frames."
Those experiences are gratifying, as are many that take place in area
homeless facilities. Alvin Thomas, a Community Vision day program participant,
has had his own art show at Kefa Café and is currently taking classes
at Montgomery College. He was given a scholarship by AFTP and the Judith
Graebner Educational Fund. Thomas also volunteers at Pyramid Atlantic
and is talking with Sims about assisting AFTP in the teaching of classes. "It
would be easy to say that Alvin is the best thing, but there are so many
good things," Sims says.
As an example, Sims describes the reaction of another person from Community
Vision upon seeing her art displayed at Mayorga Coffee Factory in June. "She
said, 'look at that picture on the wall. I want to have a house so that
I can have a picture like that up. I want to put that picture on the wall
in my house.' She's a young woman." The case worker told Sims that she
thinks the person is turning a corner. "That was very touching for me." The
lesson it teaches, Sims observes, is that, "Before you can change your
life, you have to dream a better life.... Art helps you to dream a better
life." On the other hand, some of the people from the shelters disappear,
and that is hard for her and other teachers.
For all of its satisfactions, Sims finds that being president of a non-profit
does take her away from her own creative practice, a source of some regret.
Her goal is to find more balance, planning time for her own art--especially
her new interest, casting glass--into her daily routine. Even though the
administrative tasks are time-consuming, Sims says that given the state
of the world, she sees value in what she is doing: "I look around and
I see what I think is a difficulty or not working well and then I see
if I can think about something to do about it, rather than, 'Oh my God,
we're going to hell in a hand basket, George Bush is going to start bombing
any minute,' whatever. What can I do? That's way too big. You get kind
of shut down if you go down that track. You can't dwell there. You do
what you can do, locally, and think that there will be a ripple effect,
hopefully."
Miracles Happen
"Joy" and "healing" are two words that AFTP board members and teachers
associate with Alice Sims. Says board member Amie Friestedt of Sims: "She
is realizing her vision to keep art flowing to the people who can least
afford it; who might otherwise not have an opportunity to let their creative
spirits soar. In this way, she brings joy to the people."
Longtime friend and collaborator Stephanie Nye reflects: "Alice trusts
in art. She sees it as a means to bring good things to
our community. She has known this to be true in her own
life and she has seen the joy and healing brought to people she's reached
through AFTP. I know that this belief shapes her artwork and that it motivated
her creation of AFTP as well. I so admire her commitment. I know the patience
and stamina required as she sets up classes for people who live in chaotic
and troubled circumstances. Nothing goes as planned! This is where Alice
excels-- gently,
kindly, tenaciously, she tries again and again until she
finds a way. Miracles happen."
For more information on Art for the People, go to: www.artforthepeople.org.
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