Start with art: Jeff Pye honors family's legacy while empowering community

LORAIN — Jeff Pye's career as an artist started with a picture of The Beatles. While in the first grade he painted the Fab Four — something that sent his teacher "beserk" he said, leaning back in his chair and smiling wide at the thought more than 50 years later. "I never felt so good," he said. "I didn't realize that I was making someone happy, so that's what I use my art for is as a service to make others happy. And if it means helping them with their picture, or doing pictures for them that they like — I don't look to get rich, make money and all that." Pye, now 63, may have progressed in his craft since the first grade, but he's never lost the idea of his art as service and now an outlet for youths of central Lorain. Trailblazers Pye followed in his parents' footsteps. His father, James Pye, was a self-taught artist from Woodland, Georgia. Growing up on a farm in the 1940s, a woman had taken notice of James' Pye's art when he was a child — the same way Jeff's teacher had noticed his talents in the first grade. James Pye moved north to Lorain in search of work in the then-industrial powerhouse. His wife, Martha, soon followed. James Pye was also a self-taught artist, drawing and painting in the family's basement after work and passing his skill onto his seven children. Jeff Pye was one of the few who kept it up into adulthood. His mother got involved in politics. She founded Direct Action for Central Lorain, which pushed for affordable housing for the long-blighted area. Years spent with his father in his basement studio, and watching his mother's political happenings, art became like any other family business — passed from father to son and steeped in a need to better the community. "He didn't intend to do it like 'You're going to be an artist for the rest of your life' ... but indirectly, after his passing I was like 'Wow, how can you honor your parents? Whose shoulders do you stand on?' You hear people talk about all the people in history like Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, all the (trailblazers) who gave us the opportunity to vote, right to use the restrooms, stuff like that and then in my own home, my own dad. This is something unique he did, so take what he did and use that. "African Americans, going way back, we lost our sense of ... our great-great-great (ancestors) because of slavery," he said. "So we lost our identity of who our family was, what actual tribe did they derive from, we didn't have proof. So to offset that, why don't we honor what we do have?" 'Take care of these kids' Growing up, Jeff Pye's art got noticed by more than just his teachers. While at Masson Junior High, students used to paint window displays for Broadway businesses around Halloween, remembering how the "cool" kids always wanted to be in his group as an excuse to go downtown and eat doughnuts. After graduating from Lorain High School in 1976, Pye attended the University of Cincinnati for a short time, before coming back to Lorain to work at U.S. Steel — though layoffs came soon thereafter. When asked what he wanted to do for a living by a counselor, she "chewed him out" when he said he wanted to be an artist. "That was my dream, to be an artist," he said. "I read about them and all that, but seeing myself I said wow because you'd don't see that many African Americans doing art. That's why my dad got noticed, because you didn't see nobody in Lorain, Black (artists). ... You didn't see that many artists. Or if they did do it, they didn't try to push it." Countless murals and projects later, he is an established artist in the International City. He began working at Pressley Ridge Schools and later, Lorain Schools, connecting with students via art for more than 30 years there. Soon, his reach expanded to kids caught up in the court system or sent to LCADA. He also works with adults at the Nord Center Group Home. "We've got to take care of these kids," he said. "Whatever I can give, whatever anybody can give to instill a little bit of that positive, whatever can be useful to them — pass it on. I want them to know art is not dead." Healing In 2016, Pye received a grant from the Community Foundation of Lorain County for the artworks ringing the outside of the Harrison Cultural Center. What was once blank plywood covering vacant windows now immortalize figures in Black history, from Maya Angelou to Malcolm X. At the Lorain Arts Council, his students' works fill the space for Black History Month — portraits of Black and Latino icons, and other works. At the head of the gallery, work by his colleague Christopher Wade focuses on the history of lynchings, inviting a dialogue on those darker parts of humanity, Pye said. "It's sad to say, but it just shows us how far we've come," he said. "We're still here and we don't accept it — (Wade)'s even got a white man in there hanging. People were just doing terrible stuff, injustice, but we didn't know about this. We've been lied to, we've been bamboozled. And some things, our parents didn't want us to know — they were like hiding it, shielding us from it, because it was embarrassing." Prior generations did what they had to do to survive, he said. They didn't argue with white people, didn't look them in the face, all for the safety of their children. Now, the younger generations like those Pye works with at Harrison don't see a connection with that history — they don't care about Martin Luther King Jr., he said, they don't know the struggle. But that doesn't mean racism is gone. While it has been decades since Pye and his friends were stopped for walking on the city's east side simply for their skin color, or outright called the n-word by classmates or officers, there are still games being played, he said. Sometimes it's a police K-9 barking at Pye when he is walking to the store or trying to wash his car alone at night, or white women purposely locking the doors of their idling cars at intersections when Black men pass by. "It's the little things, it tells me it's still there," he said. "It's not as blatant, they don't wear sheets, they wear suits. So it's like a whole different game — you'd rather for them to be straight up with you ... at least you know who you're dealing with than to be secretive, smile in your face and that kind of stuff." Society is slowly starting to change, he said. Recognizing the rights of human beings, and the right to live in peace. For Pye, standing on the shoulders of those who came before, and standing up for those who historically had no voice, it starts with art. "The thing with Black history is its really a time to teach kids, with this program, who they are so they can know themselves and know they have some self pride because ... at their age, it's so easy for them to get beat down and thinking 'I'm lower, or I'm no better or I can't do' and putting limitations, keeping you from enjoying the world," he said. "This right here art class will give them a little room for an expression ... and it's going to be healing at the same time." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.