By nature, Marlon is shy and soft-spoken. When we first met, he hesitated to make even the slightest eye contact and always kept a safe distance away from me. After a month of my volunteering, however, he started to say “Goodbye, Steve” when leaving the studio. And after another month he was comfortable enough to ask me if I could help him. Every Thursday since then I've helped Marlon create his work.

Marlon is a great colorist with remarkable intuition for what looks good together. My role is to help translate his sense of color onto canvas. In other words, I do the easy part and he does the tough part. Marlon primarily makes multi-colored grids from complex line drawings on canvas. He carefully selects a swatch from a color chart for each part of the grid. I then try my best to match his choice by mixing acrylic paint and asking whether or not the results meets his approval. Marlon then gets to work. This process has repeated itself for hundreds of times. It never gets old, Marlon never gets impatient and his work gets better and better.

In addition to helping Marlon, I advocate for the Esperanza Art Program as well. I’ve led the initiative to start Esperanza ArtMerch, a line of products featuring the work of Esperanza artists. In cooperation with studio manager, Stephanie McNiel, I co-curate two major annual exhibitions, the Fall Arts Fest and Annual Fundraising Gala.

But the most rewarding has been introducing Esperanza artists to the wider arts community. Most recently, I assisted Ms. McNeil in planning and installing an exhibition for Margaret Knapik, a 91 year old fiber artist, at the Whistler in Chicago.