Creating ripples & connections in a troubled world
Alice Sims & Art for the People

BY BRUCE JOHANSON
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."

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.

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.

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. 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."

"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."

Takoma/Silver Spring Voice
September 2006