Wild Style Woman

Juxtaposition Arts is a non-profit youth focused visual arts organization engaging audiences through its community collaborations, studio arts workshops, public mural programs and special festivals and art exhibitions. Two visual artists [and one Hip Hop wife] founded the organization in 1995 as a means to engage artistically inclined urban youth in high quality creative experiences in ways that are practical, relevant, and life-changing. Juxtaposition Arts exists to nurture and channel creativity by providing community outlets for young people to create and show fine art.

I met DeAnna Cummings through our collective advisory board for B-Girl Be. DeAnna was co-curating the gallery exhibition, which is now open at Intermedia Arts, and I didn’t know much about her except that she’d done a great job gathering together art from women all over the world. One day after a meeting at Intermedia, we hooked up with DeAnna and made our way over to her organization’s spot on the Northside of Minneapolis. Like all cities, Minneapolis is divided, segregated and subjugated. Intermedia Arts, which is a wonderful organization, is located in the “nice” part of Minneapolis.

Juxtaposition Arts, however, is in the ‘hood, deep in the Northside. But it’s all good. That’s what it is. Juxta’s for the kids. DeAnna, who is the Executive Director of Juxtaposition, her husband Roger, and his artistic partner Peyton do amazing, inspiring work in the community, educating the youth and giving them space to move, groove, create and devastate while taking in Graffiti, Hip Hop music, Breakdancing and the history of the movement and culture. But the thing that struck and impressed me most about Juxtaposition Arts, besides being a safe space for youth to create, is that they’re giving young people ways to make a living doing Graffiti art, murals, customizing sneakers with Graf designs, airbrushing clothing, and finding myriad ways for creativity and commerce to coexist.

So I wanted to share with you this excerpt from DeAnna Cummings’ memoir-in-progress, A HIP HOP KIDS GUIDE TO CHANGING THE WORLD. The words following are her own, and as DeAnna states, “some may argue with the dates or other details of this piece. They can feel free to tell it their way when they tell it but This Is My Story.”

I first met Hip Hop like so many people living in Middle America, through “Rappers Delight” the first ever Top 40 rap hit by the Sugar Hill Gang. KPRS radio in Kansas City, KS was giving the cut mad spins – like every other radio station across the country in 1979. I was 9 years old in 4th grade at Stony Point North elementary. I now know that rap (I didn’t know of the word Hip Hop yet) was 5-10 years old by then. Popping and B-Boying was developing on both coasts. Aerosol writing had been around for a decade plus. But for me—a country girl from Kansas City it all started with “Rappers Delight”.

Article Author: Miranda Jane

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