Darrell Terrell
Mr. Darrell Terrell was born in 1955. He is a retired art educator from Milwaukee Public Schools with a wide perspective and experience in art education. He explains, “I was teaching more than art.” He draws on this experience to promote a sense of community in his neighborhood. He believes that art can be a great tool to move the community forward and to create communal interactions, that “art isn’t just limited to paint and pencils, but … about connecting with students, raising them; … art is about creating peace and understanding in this world.”
Mr. Terrell grew up around North Avenue and Brown Street, in the Bronzeville neighborhood. He speaks with a sense of loss, when he describes all the changes that has transformed Milwaukee’s landscape. He reminds us the need for preservation explaining, “Milwaukee was a clean city. People will come out of town to see how clean our streets and alleys were. This is the environment I grew up in. In the time I grew up in North and Brown Street, everyone in the neighborhood knew each other. We went to a church that was in the neighborhood. There was a corner grocery store that was owned by a bunch of Germans. We got along in that area … it was a strong community; we always played together and had fun.” Mr. Terrell wants to see a neighborhood where things are “not rundown, but [are] fixed”. He explained, “when I was growing up in Milwaukee, we didn’t have a whole lot of these vacant lots. There need to be houses there [in the vacant lots]. So, if you have homeless people out there and you [also] have these vacant lots, …what is going on that you can’t put houses there?” He describes the street and his porch as part of the commons. Mr. Terrell maintains that his porch not only adds to the beauty of his home, but it is also a place that informs his sense of identity. He proudly shows us what is in that space and what is outside. According to him, the porch offers a setting to connect and interact with his neighbors and with the larger community. He explains that the porch “helps to keep the peace…it helps to get the conversation started.” When he looks at a street and finds that things are being taken care of, he knows that caring people live there, because, “when you do things, and you beautify things—that helps to build a conversation…once you get the conversation started, you can get to proceed forward.” Darrell Terrell loves art, and he sees it in everything he does. He also believes that his purpose in life is to create beauty. So, beautifying his porch can be a source of inspiration to his neighbors. He shares his time with his neighbors to help them grow flowers and decorate their porches too. He is very Afrocentric, and he decorates his home with a collection of artefacts from Africa to mark his connection to the continent and to black history. Darrell Terrell, interviewed by Bernard Apeku $ Tanner Farnham, July 2021. |
Darrell Terrell shares his background and career history
Darrell Terrell talked about the community he grew up in and the city at large
Darrell Terrell described how changes can impact people in the community
Darrell Terrell shares how he mentors people in his community to keep the environment clean and how he practices care for the environment
Darrell Terrell described the things that give him a self of identity
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