The Full Story from the Begining

Juxtaposition Arts was the brainchild of Minneapolis-based visual artist Peyton. Peyton spent most of his childhood growing up in North Minneapolis and received his B.F.A. in 1991 from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. While living in Chicago, his screen print and sculpture creations were displayed in several prominent group and individual exhibitions. He also worked with Keith Haring and the Chicago Public Schools on a youth-involved mural project in the city’s Grant Park neighborhood. Peyton returned to Minneapolis in 1993 and opened his own art gallery and studio to begin to establish his professional art career.

Co-founder, Roger Cummings, also grew up in inner-city Minneapolis. Roger first began to think of himself as an artist when he was introduced to the aerosol art movement during the early 1980s as hip hop culture was mass marketed throughout the Midwest. While Roger was in high school, he became known for his "graffiti" influenced artwork. During this time he had steady requests for his designs on photo backdrops, jackets, jeans, and other textiles. In 1987 Central High School commissioned him to paint a mural in the schools’ video editing center. That year, he also created a wearable work of art depicting the film career of actor Danny Glover that was presented to the actor by the Walker Arts Center. In the years following, while attending college at the University of Minnesota, Roger focused his art career on individually commissioned murals, textile work, and illustrations.

Roger and Peyton have been friends since 2nd grade. They reconnected in 1993 after a period of sporadic contact during their college years. They had similar ideas about working in the community through the arts. Both had a desire to give something back and focused on working with kids in the neighborhoods where they grew up.

In 1994 Peyton was hired as the art instructor for the Professional Sports Linkage after school program for kids from the Glenwood/Lyndale community. Peyton designed PSL’s art program as a serious fine arts exposure program in which young people could make and study fine art and learn professional-level technical skills. Peyton asked Roger to join him as PSL’s second art instructor in 1995. Working as a team the two artists developed a partnership that was uniquely tailored to the kids they worked with. The pair presented their arts projects for youth at a variety of Minneapolis parks, social service agencies, and schools. Most kids they worked with were from the Harrison, Hawthorne, and Near North Minneapolis Neighborhoods. Roger and Peyton connected with their students on a personal and honest level. Their workshops focused on the arts as an essential self-building tool for young people. They used a team-teaching model, taught at an advanced level, and had high expectations for their students.

By the spring of 1996, the two artists were realizing the limitations of conducting arts projects as a part of other organizations’ programming. In many of the agencies where they were working, arts funding was the first to be cut when budgets were tight. Paying for kids to frame their artwork and having slides made for public exhibits seemed extravagant and wasteful to many of the partner organizations.

Peyton and Roger decided that the time was right to establish Juxtaposition Arts as an independent nonprofit organization. DeAnna Cummings joined the team as a part-time volunteer charged with the organization’s fund raising and business management duties. That summer the group secured a $1,500 grant from the Minneapolis Arts Commission to fund Juxta’s first project in which eight adolescents participated in an eight week drawing, painting, and collage studio arts workshop. The pilot project took place within a North Minneapolis art gallery, The House of Daskarone, and included hands on creation, portfolio development, and artistic critique and interpretation exercises. Roger and Peyton volunteered their time as instructors and also invited in a variety guest artists to work with the young participants. This first program culminated with an exhibition of the students' artwork, that attracted an audience of over 100 people!

Following this first successful project, North Minneapolis’ Club Fed made a one year commitment to fund the Art Enrichment Program. Additional first year support from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Council on Black Minnesotans, and COMPAS helped Juxta to begin to establish itself.