“When I was smoking crack and everything, I didn’t have money, I was doing crime to get the money…and one time I said, ‘Man, the hell with this stuff. I’m going to go in another direction.’ It was during this time when my friend Frank was telling me about the Hospitality House…I’d been passing by it all the time. Never thought about looking in or going in. Went in and they asked me, could they help me…I said, ‘Yeah I’ve come to do art’…So they gave me some stuff to do a demonstration in there…I got a 2×4 and drew this stuff and painted on the 2×4 and they was really happy. So after about two weeks of going in there every day at 11:00 until 3:30. Now, I would go down on the street and sell me some weed every morning, but I wouldn’t go buy crack no more. So I was in there, maybe about a week, and someone bought one of my images. Hell, that was it then! I had found something that I could do that I liked to do and get paid for it! …So I just started going every day and then they got me to be a volunteer and I volunteered for five years in the Hospitality House Art Department.”
“I think anything is possible [in Civic Center] if you conceive it. But you have to have the energy to go and talk to different people. This person might say ‘No.’ Damn them! You trying to do something? Go to another person. If your idea is worthwhile, then I think they will listen to you. Now how you go about all this – you got to organize.”
