Creating Art With the People

By Joy Lawson Jones

Alice Sims is not fooling around. “Art is freedom. Art is balance. Art is... connection!” When you meet Alice Sims, you understand why she’s become synonymous with visual art in Takoma Park.

Sims is president of Art For The People, a Takoma Park nonprofit she started to
provide art experiences and instruction to people who don’t have regular access to art
activities, especially those with low income. Art For The People works with teens at risk, seniors, children and homeless people, and brings art into schools, subsidized housing, senior centers, shelters and public and community spaces.

An artist herself, and a long-time advocate for accessible art, Sims has strong views
and ideas about the value of art and its place in our everyday lives. “The ‘doing’ of art
and the experimentation that happens during the creative process is energizing
in and of itself,” says Sims. “Art helps people with their struggles and with their
isolation. It helps people connect, and helps give people another perspective on
their own lives and the lives of others.”

Sims says she started Art For The People for just these reasons, to help people who perhaps don’t get a lot of chances to express themselves, who don’t see a lot of choice available to them, who often get told what they can’t do, and who aren’t often gifted with acceptance and success in their daily lives.

When she works with at-risk kids, Sims
says, she is often dismayed at how so many equate being smart and being successful with having money. These are usually kids who don't have a lot of money and who don’t get a lot of respect. However, when the same kids
get involved in art projects and begin
to express themselves through the
creative process, Sims says a critical
attitudinal shift occurs. The act of creating
and working on an art project, she says, moves kids from “I can’t...” to “I’ll try...”. “When you are creating, the process takes you to a different place, a deeper, more comfortable place... it’s almost meditative,” says Sims. “Being involved in art allows the kids we work with to come out of themselves and to be giving to others. They get to share their creativity and their dreams without judgments about what’s right or wrong or what’s good or bad. There are no mistakes when you are creating art. Everyone can be successful.”

Sims says the same transformation happens whether she and her teachers are working with kids, older people, people with disabilities or people without fixed addresses.
Sims has observed that people who are homeless are often especially drawn to themes in nature, and easily recognize that art is all around them. When participating in art projects they finally get to share what they have to offer to the world, and to feel that what they do offer is valued.

Instructors hired by Art For The People are artists themselves and often teach at local
institutions like Montgomery College. In addition to working with local talent, Sims
has partnered Art For The People with many groups in Takoma Park and in Metro D.C.,
like the Franklin Apartments Senior Housing in Takoma Park, and the Takoma Park
Recreation Department’s Senior program. Art For The People has also been active with
Art Enables, a D.C. group working with developmentally disabled adults and Community Vision Day Shelter for the Homeless in Silver Spring. Art For The People also designed the beautiful tile backsplash in the art room of the new Takoma Park Community Center, and Sims is currently working on an exhibit that will feature art from the growing Ethiopian community in our area. Sims says bridging cultures and making connections are essential to her philosophy of how art can be used to solve community problems and get people working on areas of commonality rather than concentrating on differences. Sims strongly believes that art helps bring about balance and can actually prevent world dissonance by focusing on harmony.

A former President of the Takoma Artists Guild and a member of the Takoma Foundation’s Advisory Board and the Takoma Park Arts and Humanities Commission, Sims’s own work is right out in the open. Her sculptures of a kangaroo with a human child in its pouch, a rhinoceros, a moose with a woman’s hands for antlers and other wild and domestic things enliven not only her front yard but others along Carroll Avenue. But Sims has been so busy with Art For The People, that these days she has little time for creating her own art, something she acutely misses. Sims says her future plans include finding a way to balance her own creative projects with her leadership of Art For The People.

With all her accomplishments and work with community projects, Alice Sims never
loses touch with her deep reverence for the artistic process. After all, says Sims, “The
greatest thing we create is ourselves. Everyday is a little sketch of who we are and who
we are becoming.”

Takoma Park Newsletter December 2007