Through 12 black boxes, young artists speak

Twelve black boxes sit in two neat rows in Logan Square, looking like Vine Street's private cemetery.

Light pours through their transparent tops, illuminating full-sized photographs of 12 of the 14 Philadelphia teenagers who worked on the installation.

Students in the ArtWorks! department of the Mural Arts Program worked with New York-based artist Dread Scott to create the project, titled . . . Or does it Explode?

The title is the last line of "Harlem," a poem by Langston Hughes that is most famous for the lines: "What happens to a dream deferred/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

"The kids are rarely photographed or shown in public," Scott said, referring to a large portion of Philadelphia's youth. "When they are, it's in mug shots."

Scott already had conceived the project before it had a name.

"I was thinking about this situation where there are millions and millions of kids in this country who don't really have a future but who are beautiful and deserving of a bright future," he said.

Scott then had to find a way to explain his concept to the ArtWorks! students and win them over.

"I knew of the poem - and thought back to it [that] this would be a good way to talk about the idea with the kids. The last line isn't as well known, but it says a lot," said the 44-year-old mohawked artist, who spent eight weeks commuting between New York and Philadelphia last summer.

Like any intricate venture, it had its share of difficulties.

Ombray Grigsby, 19, who worked on the project, said: "At the beginning, we didn't really get along as well as we hoped." But soon, he said, people began to understand what Scott meant by his art and began to work together.

They worked three days a week from last June to August at the Mural Arts headquarters on Mount Vernon Street, brainstorming, interviewing one another, and taking part in a photo shoot.

For the shoot, Scott searched around for the biggest, baddest camera he could find - a Phase One P45 Plus - to show the student artists in a whole different light.

"I did like the way he took our photographs because the fact is that they seem like we're more out there than anybody thinks," said Grigsby, who lives in Logan. Now a first-year student at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, he said the photos showed that "we're there, with new ideas, instead of us doing stuff wrong, getting ourselves in trouble, and committing crimes."

The resulting images look like something out of a high-end magazine spread - 12 images of teenagers posing in front of a glowing, honey-gold backdrop.

The students - ages 14 to 19 - introduced an audio component as well. They created a list of questions, then sat down for a 20-minute recorded interview with Scott. Those interviews will be projected from the boxes with their corresponding photos. They will play three at a time, creating a din of hopes, dreams, and reality.

Depending upon the listener's location, one of the three audios will be distinct at any given time.

In an excerpt from one of the recordings, Daniel Lopez, 18, of Hunting Park, says: "Don't ever give up. Everyone my age needs to keep going. We are the future. We will change the world."

Some of the recordings tell of more specific ambitions. In part of his interview, Korrie Santiago, 17, of Juaniata Park, says: "I'm going to fulfill what I really enjoy doing. . . . My dream before I die is that I want to go on one of the billboards, you know, where you're driving, and I'm gonna put my big graffiti piece on it."

Grigsby said that while the coffin imagery at first was perplexing, it was a powerful statement.

"People would pay more respect to the dead, which is most likely why he [Scott] did it like that," Grigsby said.

Scott said he wanted the art to provoke thought about the American Dream as well.

"There are all these people that are promised 'look, you can do anything; if you work hard, you can succeed' - but for millions of kids, all society can offer is a life of crime."

The Mural Arts Program asked him to create a piece that would specifically talk about the relationship among young people, Philadelphia, and the increasing violence in the city.

This project was also the first of its kind for the Mural Arts Program, said Emily Squires, the group's spokeswoman and assistant program manager.

Squires said the program has expanded beyond mural painting to include mosaics, sculpture, a recently debuted play, culminating in ...Or does it Explode, which will be dedicated at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow.

The installation will remain across from Family Court at 18th and Vine Streets through September.