'It shows that everyone has a purpose': Youth from Lori Gramling's 26th Street Project share love, hope in art project

In a studio behind Lori Gramling’s house, 13-year-old JJ Vega carefully runs her paintbrush along a ceramic tile.

Vega, one of Gramling's student teachers, shows younger children how to paint the underglaze, glaze and color onto ceramic works.

“I teach them painting, how to put on the glaze, make sure it’s the right amount,” she explained. "I just like trying new things."

Vega is one of 22 students from Milwaukee's south side who have helped Gramling create more than 1,500 colored, glazed tiles with inspirational messages etched into their faces.

Since Feb. 1, they have been crafting an installation scheduled to go up Saturday. In the finished project, tiles will be wired to 100 feet of the cyclone fencing along South 27th Street.

Estafania Hernandez, 12, said she is excited about the project's potential to heal the community.

“This project helps communities become one again because sometimes, something will happen that tears the community apart,” she said.

The messages in the artwork, she said, can bring it back together.

Hernandez said her favorite tile reads, “You matter.”

“It shows that everyone has a purpose, even if someone else says you don’t," she explained. “I like it because everyone is here for a reason and their life matters.”

Twelve-year-old Joseph McCrea agreed.

He said he wants to be an art designer when he grows up or have any career that can make the world a happier place.

As he examines a new tile pulled from the kiln, the excitement is all over his face.

“It’s so hot — it’s like holding a furnace in my hand!” McCrea said, holding up in the palm of his hand a tile the size of a floppy disk and glazed with purple swells.

It’s moments like these Gramling said she never thought would happen.

“It’s way beyond anything I can imagine,” she said.

Spurred by Pulse shootings

Gramling, 69, started out as a ceramics artist before going back to grad school, earning a doctorate and practicing psychology for 40 years, along with raising six children in between.

As she put it, art had to go on the back burner.

But when the Pulse nightclub shootings occurred in 2016, Gramling found her passion for ceramics resurfacing along with a desire to share it with others.

In honor of the Pulse nightclub victims, Gramling and her students created 49 doves, one for each victim, sporting a rainbow and the words “Courage” and “Full heart.”

As the project has expanded, Gramling realized art could help alleviate the contentious political climate.

“You hear all this talk about building a wall,” she said. “Well, we wanted to build a wall of courage, love and hope.”

Brick by brick, Gramling began laying the foundation for her wall by starting the 26th Street Project, which aims to help children from her neighborhood on Milwaukee’s south side learn and heal through art.

Gramling pays her young students $3.50 an hour, her student teachers $7.50 and the adults $15. 

Gramling said she wanted to lead by example by providing the adults a living wage. She said she also wanted to pay the youngsters to help dispel the notion that artists can’t make money.

“A lot of them say, 'You don’t have to pay us,’ ” she said. “But it’s very skilled work.”

Recently, Gramling brought students to Neighborhood House for a project that helps refugees and provides aftercare for their children.

When the students returned, they did so with tiles full of messages in different languages.

Gramling said projects like these, which give the voiceless a platform, are what the 26th Street Project is all about.

“We like to go to the people who aren’t asked. We’re saying the wisdom of your heart matters.”

Contact Talis Shelbourne at (414) 223-5261 or tshelbourn@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @talisseer and Facebook at @talisseer.