JP Resident Wants Homeless To Know They Are Loved

JAMAICA PLAIN, MA — Even though you may sometimes forget it, or it doesn't feel like it, you are valuable. That's the message one Jamaica Plain resident is on a mission to help people see. He's painted messages to do just that on the sides of buildings across the country and even traveled to Guatemala for one. He's painted them inside school cafeterias, and in prison community rooms. More than 30 messages to that effect since he started his project in 2014.

And now muralist, artist and musician Alex Cook is hoping to raise enough money to help people see that message in five Boston area homeless shelters, including one at the Dimmock Center and one at Renewal House on Tremont Street in Mission Hill. He's also planning on traveling to Detroit to paint it in five public schools there.

"I feel that maybe the big conflict of our time is a battle of information: a battle of ideas," said Cook, adding that one of the main things people wrestle with is the question of whether or not they're valuable, what it means to be valuable and how that value should be judged.

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This message of love and value promotes health, and he insists it's helped pull people back from the brink of dark places.

"Losing that battle to negative ideas is heartbreaking, ugly and destructive to people's lives and their community. To me, the message that I'm presenting is the ground floor bottom of what makes a healthy individual or community," he told Patch recently.

A number of people say they believe in this mission. So far, 135 people have donated $13,669 on his Hatchfund fundraising website. And with just 10 days left in the fundraising campaign Cook said he can use the extra help to meet the goal of $20,000, which will help pay for supplies and the cost of getting him to Detroit and his time.

"The feeling of having people donate to your project at any level is absolutely humbling. It's a combination of nerves and really incredible joy," he said.

The project's roots

In December 2013, Cook was in New Orleans to perform a concert. He had some extra time and rather than just do "the tourist thing" he decided to fill it by doing what he loved best and create a mural at a local elementary school where he had connections. The principal there mentioned she'd been working on trying to help students feel safe. That mission spoke to him.

Usually his murals were collaborations with schools, worship communities, prisons, homeless shelters and communities who commissioned him to make a beautiful piece of art. This time around it was a gift.

"I think it's the most substantial thing that life can offer. Being open to see your own gifts be useful to others, I don't think it really gets better than that. To me it's the definition of living."

Cook kept the principal's goal in mind as he was working on the mural, asking himself: "How do we make a piece of art that will actually make kids feel safer at school?"

As he was thinking through that, he realized he didn't want to be subtle about the message. He wanted to say just what he meant.

So he thought of all the things he'd been scared of throughout his life, and what messages could be considered the antidote to those fears. He came up with five and he incorporated those into a mosaic mural he created for that school.

Just as he was finishing his mural, a group of about 10 fourth grade girls came in and read the whole list out loud, in unison.

"That was a magical moment," said Cook of seeing his art in action.

"If the hope is that these ideas will become part of the experience of these students, when you see them read it and have it come out of their own mouths it's clear — evidence — that they're noticing it, processing it and experiencing it," he said.

When Cook came back to JP, he decided to make murals of those words, huge plastered across walls:

• You are loved
• You can do it
• You are beautiful
• You are important
• You are needed

And his project was born. The following year he painted a mural that said "You are loved" in the elementary school in New Mexico where his nephews attended. It was about 9 x 30 ft.

The administration made a special curriculum surrounding the project. At a ribbon cutting ceremony students read poems about what it felt like to be loved and the principal got tears in her eyes during a speech about why she was so happy to have this message influence the culture of the school.

Jamaica Plain

Cook has lived in JP since 2003, a year after he moved to town he painted the mural with an organization he directed, Art Builds Community, across from the JP Licks on Starr Lane. Since then, he's painted several murals in the area, including two in Jackson Square and one at the South Street Youth Center on St. Rose Street.

The South Street Youth Center mural reads "You are important" in English and in Spanish.

"When that message lands with someone it achieves my goal as an artist which is to bring about a holy experience - to reach someone in a deep, deep way. It's building a defense against fear and hate in someone's life," said Cook.

How to help:

If you're interested in helping donate check out https://www.hatchfund.org/proj...

Photos: Alex Cook painting a You Are Loved mural courtesy Alex Cook. Next three by Jenna Fisher/ Patch.