Geronimo

Part of a mural that a friend and I worked on with groups of incarcerated youth. Some kids are locked up there for a year, some for a month, a week, or just a couple of days. The result is that the classes that we worked with were never the same group twice. Someone might have drawn something, then he or she'd be gone the following week, other kids were usually finishing the work of their predecessors. This resulted in some interesting juxtapostions of style and theme. One guy had just learned about Geronimo and so sketched him out on the mural. Then he was gone and it was up to somebody else to paint him in. Words were added, then more words. In the end the contradictions of having the words "no violence" painted above a theoretical rifle-toting "problem child" were amended by sticking a flower into the barrel of Geronimo's gun.