The Path from Poverty to Prosperity

The John K. Gutierrez Memorial Fireplace

Listen to John’s Legacy on the Marc Steiner Show

On March 19, the Baltimore community stepped out to ignite a new flame, and commitment to support the spanning of our community through a bridge for which Master Craftsman, John Gutierrez laid the foundation.

“Skills Solve Ills”, John would echo with bellowing, baritone insistence. The depth of this simple message is revealed more powerfully with each passing day. To bring about any kind of change requires imagination. But what we can imagine is born out of what we see, encounter, and hold in our hands. What do we offer as images to the generations growing up in poverty in our urban environments such as Oldtown where this project will finds its home? There are few examples of locally-owned enterprise, there are few individuals earning a viable living, and most of all, there are few models for turning raw material into exquisite artifacts that serve the community.

John’s powerful message resounds through his words. We must offer individuals access to developing skills worth living for, and the tools to manifest those skills into self-sustaining, family-strenghtening, and community-supporting enterprises. When we can create something out of nothing – something tangible, something useful, something beautiful – worthy of our pride – we learn that it is not something external that shapes our lives, it is the internal image we hold in our hearts of who we are and what we are capable of that yields our capacity to live enriched lives that build community. This was John’s Legacy, and the enduring gift of Gutierrez Studios. It is a flame that calls individuals from every walk of life to understand not only what John was capable of, but what we are all called to be if we are blessed to have examples that teach us, if  we have the passion, the persistence and the will to shape our lives, as the bench that symbolizes this project was shaped.

The Gutierrez Memorial Fund, created in memory of this Master Craftsman, has just selected the Ingoma Foundation’s project, the Ingoma/Gutierrez Craftsman Apprenticeship, to be the recipient of its funding and support to launch the first class of artisans from East Baltimore, to learn this trade, and this lesson. What will result is not a job for a handful of individuals, but the confidence that one can create a life, a livelihood, and a sense of one’s own capacity that can never be taken away.

We thank Roya Golpira, John’s life and business partner, and now the steward of John’s legacy, for her continued commitment to this project. We also thank the Gutierrez Memorial Fund for seeing the depth of the vision of this project, and supporting its successful launch this year. We invite you to add your resources, your passion and your gifts to help ignite this dream.

From the hole to the WHOLE
Our urban communities are suffering. Even more now that the bottom of our economy has dropped out. And for those who were at the bottom, the hole has gotten so deep, there is too little light at the end of the tunnel to see the way clear to even subsistence, no less prosperity. Simply replying to the problem of poverty with some form of the adage, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” has become such an absurd notion, that we as a country are called to look at the challenge from a wholly different perspective. As lawyer and economic visionary John Morris reminds us, “One person can’t do it alone.” But how do we as a community, as a nation, begin to approach this challenge as a unified whole? This is the challenge that drove the creation of the John K. Gutierrez Fabrication Apprenticeship.

Skills Solve Ills
When I presented this challenge some three years ago to John Gutierrez, master fabricator of some of the world’s most beautiful objects, his response was clearly and simply, “Skills solve ills.” I then asked John if he was willing to teach people from communities far removed from access to tools and knowledge that he and the Guti crew of talented craftsmen and craftswomen weave into magic each day. His reply was, “We will teach them what we know.”

Embedded in John’s answer was not only an admirable gesture, it is the core of what it will take to solve the problems that are plaguing not only Baltimore, but every urban environment in our nation. Morris explains, “The easy old way is to ask how do I win ~ the new way is to ask how do WE win.” Why would a successful entrepreneur who made his mark by creating exclusive, stunning, difficult to create, and expensive objects, purchased by those with the personal and corporate resources to afford such things, offer to give away his “secret recipe” to individuals with scarce opportunity of replicating what he has created? This is a question that holds the key to moving us as a nation beyond the divisions that are severing the country. The answer is that this visionary builder understood that he is not an individual, and that communities are not simply collections of individuals responsible for taking care of their own. John lived the new way. He saw himself as an integral component of his community, and saw the other components, no matter which side of town they lived in, also as integral components of the community. If we are all not healthy and thriving, how could he view himself as healthy and thriving. “At the end of the day”, John said smiling,”the more people who are doing well in the community, the more people there will be out there who can afford my work.” This win~win perspective epitomizes enlightened self interest. John, as well as all the partners on this project, understand SELF to be a collective, rather than an individual notion. In addition, John understood that his secret was not a trick. He had the confidence and understanding of his craft to know that the secret is knowing that if you dedicate yourself to your work, your work becomes a fingerprint of you, therefore it is unique and not stealable ~ at least in a sustained way.

The Birth of a Dream
It is fitting that the first product to be born of this partnership with Gutierrez Studios is The Community Bench. John’s sense of community created this opportunity, it enabled this stunning design, and it created the community confidence that has provided the support necessary to launch this daring and inspired endeavor. Sadly yet powerfully, The Community Bench was formed on John’s last day on earth. It is in honor of John’s amazing spirit of community that we have named this project in his memory. Thank you John for putting your shoulder into this project and breathing life into this dream for a community, so long in the shadow of poverty, to at last prosper. Deepest thanks goes also to Roya Golpira, Johns loving partner in business and in life, who is carrying on the leadership at Gutierrez Studios, and the commitment to this project.

The Power of a Symbol
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