Artist Statement.
On the very first day at the beginning of the semester, our final projects were introduced. I’ll admit that I was a little intimidated. It was only the first class! It had only been in session for 30 minutes, and we were already talking about a finale for the next sixteen weeks of work. Talk about putting on the pressure.
Despite my intimidation, I started thinking about what I wanted to accomplish for the final project. Through observing and listening to other classmates, as well as insight about the foster care system through Kids Matter, Inc., I decided that I wanted to focus on stereotypes. At this time, I had not narrowed down my topic by what sort of stereotypes I wanted to deal with; I had just decided that stereotypes was a subject that interested me enough to stick with for the entire semester.
I think my impulse to explore the idea of stereotypes and its relation to the foster care system came from my own subjective thoughts about foster care youth. Initially, I think I had it in my mind when I found out that I was going to be working with a foster care program that I was going to be working with a bunch of rowdy, troublemakers. It seemed that I already had a predisposition about foster care, and the people who were placed into foster care. However, the more I started to dig into my thought process, and the research I had found, my ideas really changed. I started to wonder why I initially related trouble and foster care together. I wanted to explore where my predispositions came from; why I had negative thoughts about foster care without really having a basis or justification for my subjectivity. It takes a lot of courage for an artist to admit a flawed opinion. And it takes even more courage to actually explore the real answer to the problem.
When I think about where my predisposition about foster care youth came from, television and movies pop into my head. I have seen numerous movies where foster care youth have been portrayed in a negative light, whether it is troublemakers, bullies, or even drug addicts. I’ve never had a personal experience with foster care, and I have never known anyone in foster care, so I was really basing my own opinions on the closest thing I could relate to: the media. The media has sensationalized the view of many foster care adolescents establishing stereotypes amongst the general public. Even news related material that tend to focus more on negative stories related to foster care youth versus positive stories contribute to the overwhelming amount of stereotypes that these youth face daily.
This project has really helped me as an artist in understanding where the ideas that are already in my head came from. I found a problem with my way of thinking, and through researching and addressing the issue appropriately, I corrected my though process. Reading the perspective of current or former foster care youth that have been victims of these stereotypes helped me understand how my previous opinions were unjustifiable. The only thing I achieved by automatically linking bad behaviors with foster care is just another stereotype that affects these teens.
Mr. Lance Jones.
A portrait of Lance Jones after my interview on Friday, March 20th.
"Lance Jones is a 1989 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He has an extensive background in child welfare and poverty law. Lance taught legal ethics, trial advocacy and child welfare law for three years as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the multidisciplinary Child Advocacy Law Clinic at the University of Michigan. He has also been a staff attorney and interim executive director of the Children's Law Center of Grand Rapids, Michigan and a staff attorney with the Child and Family Law Center of Wayne County Neighborhood Legal Services in Detroit. From 1999 to 2001, Lance was executive director of Community Legal Resources, a pro bono legal assistance program serving nonprofit community development organizations throughout metropolitan Detroit. Lance has also studied pastoral care and counseling in Detroit and Chicago. He is currently a third-year Master of Divinity student at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago." (www.kidsmatterinc.org/about/board.html)
