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Young Aspirations/Young Artists (YA/YA), Inc., is the phenomenal New Orleans nonprofit arts organization started by the painter Jana Napoli in 1988. It is part school, part community center, part gallery, part working studio. But it is the commercial-art students—primarily African Americans—from nearby L. E. Rabouin Career Magnet High School in the city’s central business district who breathe life into that entity. They are the YA/YAs. The YA/YAs came to the attention of the outside world through their painted chairs. Napoli first had them depict their dreams and fears on secondhand furniture and then arranged an exhibit at Lincoln Center in New York. It was a success that launched the young artists into an upward spiral of fame: coverage in more than eighty publications, including Life, Vogue, Fortune, the New York Times, and New York Magazine; travel to Europe and Japan and throughout the United States for shows, instruction, and jobs; increasingly bigger commercial commissions, such as designing Swatch watches, painting MTV logo desk ornaments, and creating 584 unique slipcovers for the chairs in the United Nations General Assembly Room in honor of the UN’s fiftieth anniversary. In YA/YA!—a combination history, collective memoir, and guidebook—former YA/YA director Claudia Barker conveys with infectious enthusiasm the hip, happening creativity that thrives at YA/YA. She follows the trajectory of eight original YA/YAs from their early doubts and trials to their triumphal status as senior Guild members and mentors to succeeding YA/YA “generations.” The group’s spirit is mirrored in the book’s free-form design: numerous comments from staff and students, including deeply personal statements about their ideas and work, and scores of color photographs that approximate the visual impact of the YA/YAs’ art combine with Barker’s own reflective narrative. By reviewing the path that YA/YA has traveled in raising funds, getting publicity, defining its purpose, and striving for harmony, she outlines a model for similar programs in other communities.
Claudia Barker served as director of Young Aspirations/Young Artists (YA/YA), Inc., from 1990 to 1995. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Michael Tucker, and their daughters, Camille and Lucy.
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