In June of 2020, I saw a post on a social media site that was directed to an arts group that I had joined. Deb S Kent was soliciting participation from the Eastside Arts Collective to help a family repaint their fence. The fence had been “defaced… with hate speech,” presumably because of the message the family had painted on it: “Black Lives Matter.”
I did not know Deb Kent, but the vandalized fence was two blocks North of where I lived on University Drive near Arlington Avenue. I walked up to the home and took pictures of the fence; I emailed Kori Williamson, the homeowner, and she responded that her husband, Brent Williamson, would call me. His call, and my interview with the two of them resulted in “Not On The Fence,” which was published in the Weekly View on June 18th, 2020.
My interactions with Deb Kent, whose clarion call to the Eastside Arts Collective got an answer from me, continued when I started to attend sessions at the Magpie Artspace, a creative space operated by Deb and Jamie Willis on S. Audubon Road in Irvington. I remember being aware of Jamie – a superb artist – as she hovered quietly near me while I sketched a picture of my youngest granddaughter. Sometime in December 2025, I got a notification from Deb about the “Feral Tweens Makers Lab,” a gathering at the Red Barn Arts Collective where those tweens could gather to make art. I contacted Deb, and begged her to allow my granddaughter, 7-year-old Myah, to attend the sessions. (“Tween” is generally defined as a child between the ages of 8 and 12 years.) Deb let the kid in, and Myah has been eagerly attending the sessions and bringing home creative works, including a representation of a graveyard, with moss and plastic skeletons.
In March of this year (2026), Myah wanted to have a lemonade stand, so her mother and her artsy-fartsy grandfather tricked out a table and made a sign: “Myah’s Super Amazing Lemonade,” and set up on the corner of North Hawthorne Lane and E. St. Joseph’s streets. My neighbors pitched in to subsidize Myah’s enterprise, while I scurried about the stand, trying to instill in the kid the need for cleanliness when dealing with public consumption of her product. In April, the Magpie sent out a call for kids to set up lemonade stands in front of the gallery. I responded immediately, and when I sent Deb a picture of Myah’s “Super Amazing” lemonade stand, she responded that she was “not at all surprised” that Myah was “an experienced entrepreneur.”
I have heard of a trivia game that challenges players to “connect any film actor to Kevin Bacon” in as few links as possible. Though I enjoy participating in trivia events, I’ve not played “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” When I ruminate on “degrees of separation” I think of my youth, when I listened to the R&B group, “The Three Degrees,” formed in 1963, and whose 1974 hit “When Will I See You Again,” was a chart-topper.
I learned of Deb Kent when she searched for artists to help the Williamson family (first degree) and established a connection with her when I attended her gathering of creatives. The second degree was when Myah was able to attend her “Feral Tween” sessions, where her creativity was given free reign; the third degree was the lemonade stand. I prefer to think of “the degrees,” not as measures of temperature or separation, but of connection. The three connections noted above make me happy, and I say this:
Hi, Deb.
cjon3acd@att.net