EP 14 — FOR REAL · MADE HERE
Kwame Dorsey
Paints the murals on North First Street and teaches kids to do the same
SAMPLE PROFILE — FILM SLOT
His story is coming to the series soon.
Caught Painting
Kwame Dorsey could always draw. Growing up in the North End, that talent had exactly one outlet anybody showed him, and at fifteen he got arrested spray-painting the back wall of a shuttered store.
An art teacher from his middle school years, who'd taught him two years earlier, showed up at his hearing. She told the judge the boy had a gift and she'd vouch for him. He got community service and a sketchbook.
They arrested me at fifteen for painting a wall. Now the city pays me to paint them.
Walls With Permission
He studied art in stages, some classes, some time under a Chicago muralist, mostly ten thousand hours of doing it. The commissions came slow, then steady.
Now his murals run along North First Street and across school walls in both towns, and the city that once charged him for painting hires him to do it. He teaches after-school art programs and always tells the kids his arrest story first. Not to make it sound slick. So they know the line between a charge and a career can be one adult who shows up.