TOUGH, ANGRY ART BY YOUNG ADDICTS

Sculpture Depicts Dangers Of Street Life

EDMONTON - Their art is as tough as the streets where they live.

The 40 or so young people who have documented their lives with frightening
realism in a collaborative project in a rundown inner-city building live
tough lives, make no mistake.

The centrepiece of their artwork project is a sculpture, standing about
11/2 metres high. It consists of lengths of metal rod, woven together like
the mesh of a giant fence.

The paraphernalia of street life is attached to the frame, looking at first
like a bunch of junk: worn shoes, old bandannas, screwdrivers, hatchets,
machetes and pry bars.

They are tools of the trade for the regulars at the centre.

The shoes, because these 14- to 24-year-olds have to keep walking to find
enough to steal to support their drug habits. The bandannas, in various
shades, proclaim their affiliation with different "families" on the street.

The tools are both weapons and "keys to the city" that allow them to enter
locked buildings and cars, almost at will, to scratch up enough money to
support their habits.

Perhaps most chilling are pointed clear plastic shards, designed to look
similar to crystal meth, the drug of choice for most. Buried within the
acrylic are knifes, drug pipes, pepper spray, spoons for freebasing
cocaine, condoms, cellphones, counterfeit money, syringes (called rigs)
filled with liquid cocaine and actual packets of meth itself.

"They all wanted to do something to express their addictions," says Wallis
Kendal, whose iHuman Society organized the art project. He is perhaps most
widely known as one of the artists who crafted the controversial Gun
Sculpture, but for decades he has also devoted most of his time to helping
troubled young people.

Get them to tell their stories any way they can, he says, and you've at
least started a conversation.

"This is like a dirty fence or a fence with all of the (crap) thrown
against it," Kendal says. "And the idea of the shards came from a drawing
one of the kids did when he was on meth ... you'd have to use a jackhammer
to get this stuff out, it is really safe in there."

The 40 to 50 young people who show up at the graffiti-covered centre, the
ones who tell their sad, angry stories on aluminum plaques meant to
accompany the sculpture, have not put their troubles behind them --
although some are trying.

"Most of these kids started drugs at 12 or 13 years of age," Kendal says,
while rap music pounds in the background. "And we have a United Nations
here. There are people here from the best families of Edmonton."

The centre is visited by white, black, aboriginal and Asian youth. Some
bring their own small children. Others try to hide their weepy, red-rimmed
eyes by looking away, but the effects of recent drug use is obvious. They
aren't ready for help yet, but who knows, when they are, they'll be in the
right place.

The iHuman Society has two paid social workers on hand at the centre to get
young addicts into rehab or to help recovering addicts find therapy or
decent places to live.

Carla, 19, has lived on the street for six years. She doesn't use drugs as
much as she used to, but still likes to "party it up" occasionally.

"I moved downtown and met some people and we were like one big family and
we looked after each other," she says. "We'll always be part of a big
family but I don't go out on the streets anymore, because I can't handle it."

A friend first brought her to the centre and, so far, she keeps coming back.

Her friend Gabrielle Rodgers, 19, was an addict for 41/2 years before
giving up drugs last December. While in rehab, she made a papier mache
death mask signed with her street name, Scary Keri -- a violent persona she
hopes is laid to rest forever.

"When you are high on meth, usually you hurt a lot of people because you
are really angry," she says. "So I kicked a lot of windows in."

She has lived in doorways, parkades, and abandoned buildings. When she
needed money, she broke into cars or vending machines.

"I walked long distances, every day, everything was crime to me," she says.
"I've been in jail."

Rodgers now has her own place in a building run by a social services
agency, and is trying to put her life together.

"After I dropped out in Grade 10, I started doing drugs," she says. "Not
necessarily crystal meth, but weed and alcohol, I believe, are the gateway."

While she has made progress, she's still not ready for the middle-class
life she once had.

"When you get off drugs you can't just move back into normal life," she
says. "My mom used to try to get me back home but there was nothing she
could do."

That's a tough message for a parent to hear. But no tougher than the art
Rodgers helped create.

SEEKING HOME

I want to go home but I honestly don't know where home is. I remember when
I was high and helpless, I'd wish for home. When I went through withdrawal
I screamed for home. I thought I was disillusioned then and now, when I
have stood my ground, accepted and pushed my limits, I still stand here
looking for home. I've looked in all the familiar places, changed and lost
to me. How long ago was it that home came easy? Where am I going now? What
am I hungering for? Did I bring this on myself? My whole life I've always
taken the other road; sure the road home would always be there. Now it
appears that with so many bends, forks, backtracking, I'm lost.

- -- from one of many plaques accompanying the latest iHuman youth art project