Brook Beatty

Art is the best talent I ever had. I paint pictures, I write poems and I make dolls. The dolls are like my children: there are so many of them, and they make me smile. I name them after people I meet or after famous people. I hope a lot of people see my dolls. I would like people to recognize me for my art, my dolls and my talent. Someone might want to use my dolls in a movie or on TV.

It makes me feel good to make artwork. It shows my ideas; it all comes from me. I like to see other people enjoying my art. That makes me feel like I’ve done something nice for someone

Brook Beatty

Patrick Bowen

When I was little, my mom told me I used pencils and crayons to draw on the walls. One Christmas, my aunt bought me a few sketchpads. Pretty much after that right there, I started copying cartoon characters like Tweety Bird and Sylvester. Then when I was about 15, I stepped up into doing self-portraits and landscapes.

I just stayed with it. I liked doing it. When I’d be painting or drawing at home where I was the oldest of five brothers, no one would mess with me. I’d be in my own little zone. I could create anything that came to mind.

I try to make my art realistic. I like things to be kind of perfect. In the next few years, I would like to have a store with all my paintings on the walls. As soon as someone buys one, I’ll put another in its place, and I’ll keep myself going that way.

My art expresses my feelings. I like the idea that when people look at my art, they get the feelings, too.

Derrick Branch

I was born doing art. I’m the last of ten kids and my brothers and sisters were already drawing pictures, so I picked it up from them. My mother took up architecture in high school. I was inspired a lot, too, by Marvel Comics. The Marvel Comic characters are more dynamic than the DC characters.

I continued to draw in school, and I made a lot of friends through my artwork because I would draw things for all the kids. Basically, I was the most artistic boy in school during my elementary school days.

I grew up and started getting into my own art. I practiced and practiced until I got comfortable drawing anything, like buildings, animals, people, and anything abstract. I have a great love for animals, especially cats, and I always try to incorporate animals in my art and into my writing and poetry.

I feel my art is unique to my perspective. I fall in love with all my art. I have an intimate relationship with all my pictures. At times, I have felt that my art was my only friend.

Diane Clark

I started doing art in 7th grade. Art was more relaxing than my other classes because I could be creative and I could do something that made me feel good. It was open and you could talk with others, kind of like the A-TEAM. I liked to be talented.

I especially liked to sketch. I would look at the outline of a person, and the sketch would just flow out. The first sketch I did was of my mother. I drew a portrait of her that even included her rhinestone earrings. It was beautiful. I didn’t add color; it was just grey and white. My mother told me I was an artist.

Then, I got into music. When I had quiet moments, I sang songs to myself. I took flute classes in school and they made me feel relaxed, too.

I started doing art again years later when some young man invited me to go to the soup kitchen. I noticed the art on the walls and thought, “I can do this.” I’d look in at the A-TEAM and I wanted to be creative so I went in.

Carla Colman

I started doing art in junior high school at art class. I keep doing it because it’s fun. You can mess up the whole room; you can leave the kids at school or home while you go to art class at the soup kitchen.

Doing art makes me feel happy. It comes from my heart. Sometimes my pictures remind me of the outside. Sometimes, they remind me of my nieces and nephews when they were little because then I always brought them with me to the soup kitchen. I especially think of Tareek. He is nice, and he gives me respect. He asks me for money, but he gives me money, too.

I love making collages. I can put a lot of things in them. I get to pick whatever pictures I like, and I can put them together any way I want.

I thank my dad for first bringing me to the soup kitchen. I was about 12 and the soup kitchen was still over on East State Street. My dad passed away many years ago. He was kind, and he made me happy. If people messed with me, he backed me up. I miss him a lot. When I do art, I think about him

Dolores Frails

I don’t have too much to say about my art because I haven’t done that much. All through the years, I did just a little bit at a time because I was working. I’ve done lots of different jobs.

Now that I’ve retired, I have more time. I love to do art and when I start doing it, I enjoy it so much I can’t figure out why I don’t so it more.

It’s so relaxing and challenging. If I’m doing a picture, I try to get the highlights where they should be.

It’s peaceful and I love when people enjoy it. People say, ”Oh, I didn’t know you could do that!” I plan to do more in the future. I’m working more on my art now than I used to.

John Gummere

John Hayes

I was in sixth grade when I first did art. We had art in school, and I liked it. I liked the colors and the things we had to draw, especially still-life like fruit in baskets. I used pastels, and the grapes actually looked like grapes. Then, I just kept going.

I feel like I’m escaping when I do art. I lock myself into whatever picture I’m drawing. The house could be burning down, and I’d still be drawing.

Carol Johnson

I had art class in elementary school in Lambertville and I liked it a lot. I always told my mother that I wanted to be an artist, but she told me there was no money in it. She wanted me to be a hairdresser because there were no black salons in Lambertville and I was very good at doing hair, but I had seven sisters and I always did their hair. I didn’t like it.

I put art in the back of my mind and forgot about it until the earthquake that happened in Haiti in 2009. My ex—husband is from Haiti and two of my children are half Haitian. My granddaughter’s father also lives in Haiti. His leg was broken in the earthquake. I felt a lot of love for the Haitian people and all people.

As a child, I wasn’t hugged a lot. I felt like I was the black sheep of the family. With my artwork, I feel loved. When people enjoy my work it gives me a good feeling, It’s like being loved. It’s overwhelming.

I like making people smile. It makes me feel appreciated and warm inside. Now that I’m on the A-TEAM, I can have that feeling all the time.

Lisa Lewis

My husband inspired me to start doing art. I needed a hobby, and I had dribbled and dabbled with art. I never thought I was good enough, but he told me to never give up, so I kept going.

I was at the soup kitchen to prepare for taking my GED test and I joined the A-TEAM. I started getting creative doing abstract pictures and crafts. Now, I’m weaving baskets from paper like magazines and construction paper. I also go to ARC Mercer once a month with other A-TEAM artists to help the consumers there do art. I really, really enjoy doing it. Helping others puts a smile on my face and on their faces, too.

I’m going to keep doing art in the future. I’s a positive outlet; that’s what I think.
I love being on the A-TEAM because it’s like a big extended family. I never set my alarm clock except for the A-TEAM on Tuesdays.

Ethel Mack

I’ve been doing art ever since I was a little boy. I even did it better when I was small. I used to draw better. Now, I don’t draw at all. I just put colors together – it’s much easier. Really, it’s not that easy because you have to know which colors to put together. I try to match them up using different shapes.

I love art because it’s from the heart. It relaxes you. It’s like you’re in another world. There’s just one thing on your mind – what you feel. I try to make my art happy. I also like to make it match the room. A nice picture is something you can stare at and just feel good.

I would like to paint a really big picture. It would be colors and shapes, and it would cover a whole wall.

Paul Norris

I do art because it shows the creative part of me and allows me to live. My entire being was saved by the creativity I found in myself. I believe God makes all of us creative beings, and you’ll be creative in either a good way or a bad way.

I joined the A-TEAM because I appreciated the atmosphere of enjoyment. I believe that my art will touch people in different ways, and I believe they will always be touched. That’s what makes us human.

Art will always touch someone. That’s what I like about it.

Herman “Shorty” Rose

When I was in jail in my twenties, a white dude on death row taught me how to make frames and even dresses, lampshades and rugs, out of cigarette packs. Now, I also make crosses and boxes. I do my own style.

I use any kind of paper and plastic garbage bags and tape. I sew the frames together with string and a needle I made from a piece of plastic. Glue would mess up the pictures. I pick pictures that I think go well with the frames, and I coat them with clear tape so they last. Making frames lets my mind set on one thing. It keeps me out of trouble.

In about 1998, my sister Annabelle introduced me to the soup kitchen where I helped frame pictures by some of the artists there. Then, those artists and I started getting together once a week at the soup kitchen to do art. When the art was hung up in the main dining room, people wanted to buy it, and that’s when we started the artists’ cooperative named the “A-TEAM Artists of Trenton.”

A few years later, I began to paint and draw pictures when someone told me I could do more than I thought I could do. Now, I can’t stop doing what I do – all kinds of stuff. Sometimes put paint on glass and make prints from it. I learned that these are called monotypes. I also still make my frames and boxes.

By the grace of God, I’m gonna keep doing my art ‘til I can’t do it no more. When I’m doing art, I feel perfect.

Charles “Cha Cha” Smith

My art came to me in 1970. Why it did…that’s the part I can’t figure out. It just popped up. When I was at Junior 5, an art teacher showed me how to do stars and that was that, but by the time I was 19 and trying to learn to read, I started scribbling and scrabbling. I learned to draw just by doing it.

I do space pictures. At first, I did cities, then I caught on to space ideas. I made space ships. I can also make cars and robots. I make some crazy robots – weird faces and crazy hats. I draw robots that look out-of-this-world and cars that could be on the moon.

I was always into space because we’re living on a planet and we’re in space. I’ll always have my space cities. You can’t get no further out than that.

Art makes my mind bigger because it shows me something I’ve never seen before. I’m not getting it from nowhere else than from my head….and God. This art right here, it’s all about God. He’s giving me all the visions I see. One day I’m gonna make a whole world and it’s gonna be a space ship. We’ll have our own sun.

Walter Roberts

Art was always there – since I was born. The first art I remember doing was making wire men out of radio wire and aluminum foil. I had no toys, so I made my own. I had an uncle who drew portraits, and I took ideas from his drawings. I didn’t learn how to do shading until sixth grade when my math teacher Mr. Kessler showed me how to shade as a way of getting me to sit down and do my schoolwork. He was the start of everything.

In junior high school, I liked using black and white, and I still do because it gives more life, more emotion. It’s like you’re right there.

I do art because it’s a challenge. It’s like being able to beat the person you used to be, a competition between the “old” me and the “new” me. The new me is winning because I keep getting better, I need to do art to feel complete. Once I finish drawing, I sit back and feel, “Now I can rest.”

I want to see the A-TEAM artists become something. If we keep turning out good art, eventually somebody is going to like something. If we work hard enough, we will succeed.

Emery Williams

My inspiration is art as a way to relax. When I see something, I just want to draw it. It’s a dream state. A lot of times, my paintings come from my dreams of what I see everyday.

When I go to the library, I look at magazines and at the work of other artists. I get ideas from them, but my pictures always turn out to be something very different. Art is fun. You have to love it to do it well. You put your life and your experience into it.

It was always my dream to draw. I started doing art in 6th grade, and then in the 90’s I was in the hospital and didn’t have anything to do so I drew pictures. All I needed was a pencil and some paper.

When I came to Trenton, people told me about the A-TEAM and that they did good art. When you find other people who like to do what you like to do and have the same visions, you want to be with them. You feel like you’re doing something worthwhile. It’s a motivator.