2010: The Accidental Journey Continues

Pepsi and Pearl relaxing at their new home in Austin

It has been six months since my last blog post. That in itself is a statement on how my life became consumed with work as soon as I returned from Ghana. We hit the ground running in Mart for nearly two months trying to get the Mart Community Project launched and before I knew it, a new semester was before me with the added responsibilities of co-teaching and bringing students to Mart to work on community projects. As I write these words they unfold like a swift, even brush stroke; however, it was anything but.

I would be hard pressed to describe what actually happened inside me during 2010. Events can be chronicled, placed in a template of some kind, categorized, and accomplishments noted. It might even be impressive once the tally is complete. A grueling first year and a half of my PhD program behind me, three funded grants for projects in Mart, UT students from two classes working in Mart, developing and applying innovative methods to my research, writing a first solo article for submission, juggling two TA assignments, making collage portraits with my students, and my first ever 4.0 semester. For me; however, crawling along the surface of those “accomplishments” is a more complex reality, accompanied by a sense of holding on for dear life, slippery slope after slippery slope.

If I were a person of science, I could provide an analogy involving molecules and atoms that represent intricate and complicated pathways to explain the human experience in a compact and sophisticated way. However, I am relegated to wrestling with words and colors and images, traversing the deep dark emotive tunnels underground, in the hope that I may bring some of this struggle to light – and ultimately find a modicum of peace. It is elusive and momentary at best, and that is a good day. What ends up being our salvation is often the biggest surprise of all.

I left my home of twenty years, packed up my car with the doggies and my most valued possessions – art and a few personal items and documents. It was a brutal drive, with only one night stopover and driving 20 hours straight through to get to Austin. Pepsi, Pearl and I were road warriors, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it was the beginning of a trio, the three of us against the world. Not so many years before, the trio consisted of Rena, Jonathan and I in the house in Pinole, a young mother growing up with her kids. I vowed to be graceful about letting them go, and perhaps the best way for me to release my daily grip was to journey to my own new life. Looking in the rear view mirror and seeing my children wave goodbye that July morning was like glancing over my shoulder and seeing thirty years of my life fade behind a bend in the road.

Life got busy quick. Struggling to stay afloat in a sea of data analysis, theory, research methods, papers and exams absorbed my being. I was diagnosed with ADHD, not a big surprise; however, when your fears are confirmed, another boom is lowered and my tentative confidence was further shaken. There were times I thought the whole thing was a huge mistake yet I had no idea what else I would do with my life if I failed at this program. I could not bear another minute spent in a miss-matched job living a divided life. I refused to be licked by multiple regression, the constraints of academic writing, and being deferential when it was not deserved. My tenacity is formidable, and can be an asset or a liability depending on the circumstances. In this instance, I am not sure I would have survived without it.

In the frenetic pace of daily life we often forsake reflection. During the summer rush to roll out programs in Mart, I found myself caught in a cross fire of race, class, and the conflicting responsibility of multiple roles. I was forced to confront my inner turmoil and for the first time in two years I questioned the viability of the project, and my own sanity in believing art and social change stood a change in this racially polarized, class entrenched, impoverished town. I wanted to run, not walk, as fast as I could out of town to Austin, my little house and doggies. One early morning when sleep was elusive, I lay in bed and wrote a series of poems I sent via text to Gene – mainly because he rarely reads text messages. When the sun began to rise I braved the stifling heat and moved outside to the porch in what is known as “black folks town” in my pajamas and continued to write and send texts, five in total, from a raw uncensored part of my soul.

Those text poems, originally meant to remain buried along with my feelings, became the inspiration for five collage portraits I created for a course project. I was cautious to share the poems, and selectively showed them to colleagues who encouraged me to document the full range of my experiences in Mart, and reminded me of their value as a teaching tool among other purposes in furthering the development of meaningful community engagement. The misstep of bypassing reflection in my haste to “get things done” was a cautionary tale as I prepared my students for their work in Mart, and we could not shortchange the process with a single minded focus on action and outcomes.

Text Poem Collage


The concept of reflective practice, reflexivity, and reflective practitioner are found in abundance in academic literature. The value of reflection is well documented; however, the time required to practice and live a reflective life can be difficult to find or support. How to build reflection into our hectic lives or the artificial time frame of a semester when the list of things to do steadily multiplies is a constant challenge. My students grappled with reflection and process, explored alternative definitions of research and learning, and in the end concluded the experience of working with the community using a new approach had been extremely valuable and eye opening. The four hour round trip to Mart that at first was thought to be an major inconvenience proved to be an important part of the learning experience, allowing us to plan on the way there and process on the way back to Austin. Listening to the students discuss their impressions, epiphanies, and pose questions to each other and myself as I drove the van along I-35, the move to Austin and decision to pursue my PhD was affirmed.

UT students and Mart residents at the Nancy Nail Library


During a presentation to the Writing for Nonprofit class, a student asked me, “Why Mart, what is special about Mart?” I paused for a moment and smiled at the thought of being a teacher and doctoral student, transitioning from instigator of an art installation to discussing Mart in a classroom brimming with University of Texas students. My response to the question went along these lines: Actually nothing is special about Mart, it represents the fate of countless towns in the American South whose economic fortunes dissolved when the railroad service discontinued, factories were shut down, and ConAgra style land grabs made local farming no longer profitable. I wish there was something special about Mart, that it represented an aberration rather than a carbon copy of other small towns with abandoned homes, empty commercial buildings, a decaying built and social environment, and a lingering legacy of a segregated past.

Why Mart? Perhaps I ought to have said this - the truth is Mart was chosen as the site for student projects because it is special to me; it is where my husband was born and raised, and where my family still lives. Mart cuts to the heart of America’s racial past with terms like black and white folk’s town freely used to this day, the absence of a black teacher or bank teller, the empty storefronts now carved out remains of power and privilege where those who amassed wealth from control labor pools ride out the decay in relative comfort not afforded to those who helped create their cushion. Why Mart? Because rural poverty is off the grid, and some roads are like driving on the moon’s craters, and because of the shame I felt when during a first visit to Mart an American born friend who lives in West Africa said she could not believe that people in America still live like this.

Rena, Jonathan and Uncle Rob Davis


And yet, in the vacancy that is prevalent in towns like Mart or cities like Detroit that have been left to crumble, the possibility to imagine and create is enormous. In these vast vacant spaces we can insert possibility with a mosaic mural so beautiful that residents driving rolled down their windows to tell the artist how wonderful it is, and a grandmother who expressed skepticism about the whole art and mural idea stood before it with her grandson for an hour because it took that long to appreciate the details. As the owner of the building told Muhsana when he saw the finished mural for the first time, “It’s not what I thought it would be but I like it”.

Artist Muhsana Ali working on the mosaic mural at the Mart Art Co-op



Mart offers abundant opportunity to create reciprocal university-community relationships and continue to refine this work in progress called public scholarship. Community engagement and service learning projects that include reflection, reciprocity, and mutuality continue to challenge us as we are compelled to acknowledge that what we don’t know can be more telling than what we do know, and that questions are more important than answers. As we upend traditional scholarly approaches to develop and improve existing models better suited for the messy and unpredictable community work we engage in, we must not avoid doubt and darkness, rather create a space for candid and authentic expression knowing it is an integral part of the journey. And remind ourselves that we are blazing trails, opening the door to new schools of thought, practice and research.

When I think of the crazy making chaos and frenzy to implement a too tall order of programs last summer, the constant expectation and demands leveled at me from all directions, and the hours logged in Mart and Austin with thousands of miles traveled between both locations, I have more than good reason to pause and ask why Mart, as the student in the WFNP class did. What would an authentic answer reveal? Everything I suppose, the full gambit of joy and sorrow, my surprise when desperation was the beginning of a breakthrough, and the walls I hit were actually openings in disguise. That is the magic of the work, being willing to follow a vision with no absolutes, tolerating chaos and mucking around in the muck, and being crazy enough to try and teach the process to others when you are still learning yourself. In essence, my accidental journey becomes yours.

Here is to our wonderous convergent and divergent journeys in 2011 and beyond!

Rena, 103 year old Mrs. Handy and I in Mart