LilMtnCbn
04-18-2004, 04:47 AM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/04/18/LVGDQ6445V1.DTL
Images of foster life
Teenagers express what it's like to be raised by someone else's parents
Joshunda Sanders, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 18, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Tamisha started her life with huge obstacles to overcome. She was exposed to
drugs in utero and so sick that doctors didn't expect her to live. But when she
was 4 days old, she went straight into foster care, where her foster mother
nursed her back to health. Most people have heard stories about foster youth
who are placed in one home after another, but Tamisha stayed in the same home
her whole life. When she was 4 years old, her foster mother adopted her.
Today, she is a giddy 17-year-old with perfectly manicured nails. She loves to
tell the story of how people used to call her the "miracle baby," but her
expression turns more serious when she talks about people's perceptions of her.
Inevitably, people have questions, she says: "Don't you miss your family? Why
not a black home? Why is your family white?"
Nationally, there are half a million youths in foster care -- many of whom are
stigmatized as hardened miscreants. That attitude may keep some adults from
adopting youths from foster care, and some foster youths see adoption as an
undesirable option. But being adopted was "the best thing that could ever
happen to me," Tamisha wrote in a new exhibition at the Zeum children's museum.
(The last names of the artists featured in the show have been withheld at their
request.)
That's what she tells prospective adoptive parents at seminars in San Mateo,
where she now lives. By sharing her perspective on what it's like to be a
former foster child through a videotape she made with Fostering Art -- a local
program that teaches foster youth about photography -- Tamisha hopes to change
some of the negative attitudes toward foster youth.
"Just looking at the video we made ... even me, coming from foster care and
being adopted, it still touched me and it does every time,'' Tamisha said.
Fostering Art is an arts-based project affiliated with A Home Within, a
nonprofit organization that has been offering free therapy to foster youth for
10 years. When A Home Within's founder, Toni Heineman, started the program, she
was working with a caseload of young people who had been shuffled from
therapist to therapist, and it was taking a toll on them. Because "often,
there's not a single person who is not being paid to care for them," Heineman
created the Children's Psychotherapy Project that matched therapists who agreed
to volunteer their services with one youth for as long as therapy would take.
The project was so successful offering free confidential services to dozens of
youth in the Bay Area -- that Heineman began A Home Within as a nonprofit in
San Francisco. Since 1994, the program has been duplicated in 14 other cities
nationwide.
Now, A Home Within has started Fostering Art as another outlet for foster youth
to express their feelings about the world they live in. "There will be some
horrible story in Newsweek and then everyone is thinking about foster kids for
a while," Heineman said, "but it's hard over time to understand what it's like
to be raised by someone else's parents."
Fostering Art helps foster youth empower themselves while at the same time
educating the community about the day-to-day realities of foster care that are
rarely seen. "We wanted to find a way to tell people who foster care kids are
because foster kids feel embarrassed and very often, we just don't think about
who foster kids are," she said. "And if you can show people foster kids through
art, they can stop and look at it, and it stays with them longer. "
Plus, young people often asked her for a mental health approach that wasn't
just "50 minutes sitting in a room talking to someone," Heineman added.
Fostering Art began officially last September when Jessica Ingram, a 26-
year-old artist and teacher at California College of the Arts, started working
at A Home Within. Ingram, who speaks with a slight Nashville accent, patiently
guides the youth through the fundamentals of photography each Wednesday
afternoon in the basement of the Harvey Milk Recreational Arts Building.
Since it began in September 2003, the Fostering Art group has produced a
booklet, videotape and exhibition at Zeum that has been so popular it's been
extended through the beginning of May. On a mustard yellow wall at Zeum, two
white pages explain Fostering Art's mission:
"We're special and unique. We are: foster kids ... intelligent ... human beings
.... not the people who become outcasts of the world, hoodlums or drug dealers
.... people with a deeper understanding of the world because we've been through
things many people haven't."
The exhibition provides a literal window into their collective world with
photographs and a multimedia display that includes a videotape of the group as
they read their poetry and musings about home, life and who they are -- as well
as notepads for young people to write their responses on at the end of the
exhibition.
"This group is a gateway to freedom, a way to express yourself without someone
judging," another sheet reads. "Our hope for the show is to be a messenger, to
tell people about ourselves and what we do, to tell our stories. We hope you
will get to know who we really are."
Each photographer has a sunken box containing their portraits and artifacts.
Tamisha's box includes a picture of her smiling at the center, her braces still
on. On the left side of the installation there's a cluster of photographs from
her childhood; on the right, pictures of her now, with her family and friends.
"We're invisible to the media and just about everybody else out there," writes
Delpheanea, 16. No matter, she does well for herself and lists, beside her
picture, a long group of positive accomplishments. She gets good grades, she's
engaged and she's only been late to class twice this year. And she also has, if
she does say so herself, a beautiful smile.
"I am still missing my childhood that was taken from me," writes Ghita, an
18-year-old petite Moroccan girl. "I had to be my own parents because nobody
was ever around to take care of me." Although Gio doesn't say a lot in his
writing, he has memorial pictures of deceased friends and small placards
bearing the image of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in his box. There is also a
stuffed animal with a red bandanna around its head. At the center of Jillian's
portrait, she juxtaposes a former life of drug addiction with her new
beginning: The date she gave up her old life -- June 11, 2003 -- is printed in
large type.
Each of the students seems to have something of a new beginning through the
Fostering Art program, Ingram said. Initially, "they were kind of distant, some
of them had their headphones on in class," she said. "They've really opened up
to each other."
Fostering Art will continue through the end of the summer and will exhibit more
work in San Francisco this fall.
These six students will take their Canon cameras with them as they go on to
college, another placement or possibly, a permanent home. And a new three-
month class will begin early this summer.
Tamisha, as she writes in the exhibition, is "moving on with my life, living it
to the fullest I possibly can." She graduates from high school in a few months
and plans to go to college in the Bay Area. She still has some challenges --
she reads at a seventh grade level and has trouble spelling and typing.
"If I could complain about something, it would be my mom doing drugs while
pregnant and me having so many learning disabilities," Tamisha said. "I can't
do anything about it now," she added. All her experiences, like her art, just
"shows that I can still make it.".
"Spotlight on Youth Art: Fostering Art" runs through May 3 at Zeum at Yerba
Buena Gardens, 221 Fourth Street (at Howard) in San Francisco. Zeum is open 11
a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Call (415)777-2800 or go to
www.zeum.org, www.fosteringart.org or ahomewithin.org for more information.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Images of foster life
Teenagers express what it's like to be raised by someone else's parents
Joshunda Sanders, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 18, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Tamisha started her life with huge obstacles to overcome. She was exposed to
drugs in utero and so sick that doctors didn't expect her to live. But when she
was 4 days old, she went straight into foster care, where her foster mother
nursed her back to health. Most people have heard stories about foster youth
who are placed in one home after another, but Tamisha stayed in the same home
her whole life. When she was 4 years old, her foster mother adopted her.
Today, she is a giddy 17-year-old with perfectly manicured nails. She loves to
tell the story of how people used to call her the "miracle baby," but her
expression turns more serious when she talks about people's perceptions of her.
Inevitably, people have questions, she says: "Don't you miss your family? Why
not a black home? Why is your family white?"
Nationally, there are half a million youths in foster care -- many of whom are
stigmatized as hardened miscreants. That attitude may keep some adults from
adopting youths from foster care, and some foster youths see adoption as an
undesirable option. But being adopted was "the best thing that could ever
happen to me," Tamisha wrote in a new exhibition at the Zeum children's museum.
(The last names of the artists featured in the show have been withheld at their
request.)
That's what she tells prospective adoptive parents at seminars in San Mateo,
where she now lives. By sharing her perspective on what it's like to be a
former foster child through a videotape she made with Fostering Art -- a local
program that teaches foster youth about photography -- Tamisha hopes to change
some of the negative attitudes toward foster youth.
"Just looking at the video we made ... even me, coming from foster care and
being adopted, it still touched me and it does every time,'' Tamisha said.
Fostering Art is an arts-based project affiliated with A Home Within, a
nonprofit organization that has been offering free therapy to foster youth for
10 years. When A Home Within's founder, Toni Heineman, started the program, she
was working with a caseload of young people who had been shuffled from
therapist to therapist, and it was taking a toll on them. Because "often,
there's not a single person who is not being paid to care for them," Heineman
created the Children's Psychotherapy Project that matched therapists who agreed
to volunteer their services with one youth for as long as therapy would take.
The project was so successful offering free confidential services to dozens of
youth in the Bay Area -- that Heineman began A Home Within as a nonprofit in
San Francisco. Since 1994, the program has been duplicated in 14 other cities
nationwide.
Now, A Home Within has started Fostering Art as another outlet for foster youth
to express their feelings about the world they live in. "There will be some
horrible story in Newsweek and then everyone is thinking about foster kids for
a while," Heineman said, "but it's hard over time to understand what it's like
to be raised by someone else's parents."
Fostering Art helps foster youth empower themselves while at the same time
educating the community about the day-to-day realities of foster care that are
rarely seen. "We wanted to find a way to tell people who foster care kids are
because foster kids feel embarrassed and very often, we just don't think about
who foster kids are," she said. "And if you can show people foster kids through
art, they can stop and look at it, and it stays with them longer. "
Plus, young people often asked her for a mental health approach that wasn't
just "50 minutes sitting in a room talking to someone," Heineman added.
Fostering Art began officially last September when Jessica Ingram, a 26-
year-old artist and teacher at California College of the Arts, started working
at A Home Within. Ingram, who speaks with a slight Nashville accent, patiently
guides the youth through the fundamentals of photography each Wednesday
afternoon in the basement of the Harvey Milk Recreational Arts Building.
Since it began in September 2003, the Fostering Art group has produced a
booklet, videotape and exhibition at Zeum that has been so popular it's been
extended through the beginning of May. On a mustard yellow wall at Zeum, two
white pages explain Fostering Art's mission:
"We're special and unique. We are: foster kids ... intelligent ... human beings
.... not the people who become outcasts of the world, hoodlums or drug dealers
.... people with a deeper understanding of the world because we've been through
things many people haven't."
The exhibition provides a literal window into their collective world with
photographs and a multimedia display that includes a videotape of the group as
they read their poetry and musings about home, life and who they are -- as well
as notepads for young people to write their responses on at the end of the
exhibition.
"This group is a gateway to freedom, a way to express yourself without someone
judging," another sheet reads. "Our hope for the show is to be a messenger, to
tell people about ourselves and what we do, to tell our stories. We hope you
will get to know who we really are."
Each photographer has a sunken box containing their portraits and artifacts.
Tamisha's box includes a picture of her smiling at the center, her braces still
on. On the left side of the installation there's a cluster of photographs from
her childhood; on the right, pictures of her now, with her family and friends.
"We're invisible to the media and just about everybody else out there," writes
Delpheanea, 16. No matter, she does well for herself and lists, beside her
picture, a long group of positive accomplishments. She gets good grades, she's
engaged and she's only been late to class twice this year. And she also has, if
she does say so herself, a beautiful smile.
"I am still missing my childhood that was taken from me," writes Ghita, an
18-year-old petite Moroccan girl. "I had to be my own parents because nobody
was ever around to take care of me." Although Gio doesn't say a lot in his
writing, he has memorial pictures of deceased friends and small placards
bearing the image of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in his box. There is also a
stuffed animal with a red bandanna around its head. At the center of Jillian's
portrait, she juxtaposes a former life of drug addiction with her new
beginning: The date she gave up her old life -- June 11, 2003 -- is printed in
large type.
Each of the students seems to have something of a new beginning through the
Fostering Art program, Ingram said. Initially, "they were kind of distant, some
of them had their headphones on in class," she said. "They've really opened up
to each other."
Fostering Art will continue through the end of the summer and will exhibit more
work in San Francisco this fall.
These six students will take their Canon cameras with them as they go on to
college, another placement or possibly, a permanent home. And a new three-
month class will begin early this summer.
Tamisha, as she writes in the exhibition, is "moving on with my life, living it
to the fullest I possibly can." She graduates from high school in a few months
and plans to go to college in the Bay Area. She still has some challenges --
she reads at a seventh grade level and has trouble spelling and typing.
"If I could complain about something, it would be my mom doing drugs while
pregnant and me having so many learning disabilities," Tamisha said. "I can't
do anything about it now," she added. All her experiences, like her art, just
"shows that I can still make it.".
"Spotlight on Youth Art: Fostering Art" runs through May 3 at Zeum at Yerba
Buena Gardens, 221 Fourth Street (at Howard) in San Francisco. Zeum is open 11
a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Call (415)777-2800 or go to
www.zeum.org, www.fosteringart.org or ahomewithin.org for more information.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
