Terrie Ford

MollyOlga, currently known as Locust Street Neighborhood Art Classes, will forever be my childhood’s saving grace. It was there that I learned the fundamentals of visual art and what it meant to be an integral part of a nurturing environment outside of the home. The school began more than 40 years ago in 1959 when Molly Bethel, a young painter, began teaching fine art classes throughout the city of Buffalo. For a time she was coordinator of an Albright-Knox Art Gallery program that traveled throughout Buffalo’s many ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhoods. Molly received most of her training as a painter and teacher in Washington D.C. at the Cornelia Yuditski School of Creative Art for Children and Young People. The Cornelia Yuditski School was an outgrowth of the Works Progress Administration. Molly credits her experience there as the model for her teaching style. She firmly believes that publicly funded art programs, like the WPA, have positive long-term effects on neighborhood communities and the larger art world.

When the children in her predominately African-American neighborhood discovered that Molly was an art teacher, they began to ask her to host what they called "paint parties." She rarely turned them down. With her own money she bought art supplies to stock her porch and kitchen paint parties, and never asked the children or their families for payment. Offering free classes has always been an important and defining characteristic of Locust Street. Eventually the number of children wanting to participate in the paint parties grew so much that she needed a larger space. She began teaching more neighborhood children at St. Phillips Episcopal Church in the late 1960’s during a period when money for urban development was more plentiful. It was at this point that Olga Lownie, then a student teacher at Buffalo State College, began teaching with Molly. In 1971, the city of Buffalo began a mass demolition of Catholic churches. Had it not been for the tearing down of St. Boniface, Locust Street may never have acquired the three-story red brick building that it has occupied for almost 20 years. This building, a former nunnery, is located in an area of the city known as the "Fruit Belt," which is a cluster of winding one-way streets named after various kinds of fruit. In Buffalo, streets such as Orange, Peach, and Mulberry conjure up murky images of gang violence, drugs, and poverty. Even today it seems the least likely place to cultivate the mastery of fine art materials and the appreciation of the visual arts. Nevertheless, for a decade Molly rented the two front rooms of the nunnery to hold art classes.

Most thought the gangs would drive the well-intentioned white teachers out of the neighborhood, but instead they were welcomed. Local gang members actually protected the building from rival gangs. It became a center of pride for the neighborhood. In 1981, the building went up for sale at the modest cost of $2,500. Neighborhood families and the church parish of St. Boniface donated $2,000, and Molly was able to purchase the building outright with no mortgage. No mortgage made it much easier for her to continue offering free classes in photography, painting, ceramic arts, and sculpture.

From its inception, Locust Street Neighborhood Art Classes has relied on the moral and financial support of the community to keep it running. Grass roots fundraisers, anonymous donors, the New York State Council on the Arts, private foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts are only some of the means by which Locust Street has stayed afloat. Molly believes that the consistency of the kinds of classes offered and the times they are offered has sustained the school during times of lean funding. By expanding only these basic classes and shying away from more technically advanced forms of art-making, Locust Street has been able to maintain its role in the community as an important cultural resource. One of Molly’s primary goals for Locust Street has been to embrace children and adults from diverse cultural backgrounds and show them that art isn’t just for an elite. She continues to prove, through encouragement and careful attention, that art can be accessible to everyone.

It was there, in an enormous red brick building in the heart of the Fruit Belt, that my desire to make art was also affirmed. In 1981, I was a twelve-year-old struggling to find a place in a single parent household of four and in a neighborhood that couldn’t always imagine value in the occasional square peg. From early on I knew I would be an artist. Art for me was a refuge, a secret place where I could escape the nightmarish circumstances of alienation, poverty, and abuse. My family and my community were tolerant of my ambition, but firmly suggested that I should instead put my energy into endeavors that would produce greater sums of money than making art ever could. After all, there was always time to paint on the weekends. Quite by accident, I found a listing in the yellow pages for an art school. I called and timidly asked if they had art classes for kids and how much they cost. The voice at the other end said, yes, they did have classes and that the classes were free. I got the address and enrolled the following weekend. After that there were few weekends when I wasn’t painting.

During my time at Locust Street there were many teachers. Some teachers had professional degrees in art and some were former students. I worked most closely with Molly Bethel. She was something of a magician in my eyes. The soft, gentle way she spoke charmed me into letting down my guard and opening up to the secrets of art-making. She taught me the basic elements of painting and encouraged me to make them my own. Locust Street introduced me to people from many different ethnic backgrounds as well. My first and best friend there was Lenore Bethel, Molly and Leonard Bethel’s daughter. Shortly after we met we became inseparable in the way that only teenage girls can be. We spent most Saturdays during our teen years painting on the second floor of Locust Street and giggling to jokes that only we could understand. And though I knew our parents were from different backgrounds, it never occurred to me that this might be an issue of contention in the outside world. At that age, I never realized that the various people I spent so much of my time with at Locust Street were categorized in the outside world in ways that intended to pre-determine their value.

Molly introduced me to the concepts of portfolio preparation, exhibition planning, installation, and publicity without ever using those terms. Molly pushed, prodded, and encouraged me to reach and then go beyond my goals and expectations by never allowing me to create anything half-heartedly. A painting wasn’t finished until I had exhausted every possible visual option. Her favorite phrase back then—and I’m sure it still is—was, "Just one more thing." That "one more thing" ethic helped me to successfully enter and complete high school, college, and graduate school. That "one more thing" ethic has allowed me to give children positive art-making experiences in environments that are less than conducive to art and learning in general.

In college and graduate school I marveled at the lack of commitment I saw in many of the students. I couldn’t understand why it was such a chore for them to paint beyond the required classroom hours. Back at Locust Street we had rearranged our lives to have more time to paint. After spending so much of my life in an environment of people who never questioned why they made art or whether they would continue to make art, I found it difficult to relate to students whose first priority wasn’t making art. When it was time to leave college, the students were required to plan a thesis exhibition of their work, hang a solo exhibition, design and distribute invitations, procure free publicity, and hold an opening reception. Many of the students felt that this was too much work for each of them to do individually. I felt the exact opposite because at Locust Street planning and facilitating an exhibition was a natural progression of the art-making process.

During my time in graduate school, I began to think about the huge role that Locust Street had played in the development of my self-esteem, sense of responsibility to others, and specifically my responsibility to communities like the one that had produced me. After graduation it dawned on me that art had been a tool that had allowed me to see beyond my personal circumstances, my neighborhood, and my city. This realization made me immensely grateful, and I decided I could give that "tool" to others. Even if the children I taught never became artists, I knew that their experiences in art could literally change their lives. For children struggling academically, art could be the one area in which they received praise and positive reinforcement. For children lacking self-control and discipline, art could be an incentive for them to take responsibility for their behavior. For children who rarely left their neighborhoods, making art and visiting art museums and other cultural institutions could expand their sense of community and their relations to a larger society.

To say that Locust Street influenced my decision to become involved in community outreach is an understatement. Working now with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo as the Education department Assistant for Community Programs, I can be for others what Molly was for me. As co-coordinator and teacher of the Gallery’s ART ATTACK! Program, which is much like the one designed by Molly so many years ago, I participate directly in a cycle of communal empowerment. From Cornelia Yuditski to ART ATTACK!, the life altering effects of art education and community outreach are inarguably evident.

Terrie Ford participated in MollyOlga [Locust Street] Neighborhood Art Classes from 1982 to 1991. She works at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY.