On December 3, students and faculty were joined in virtual Hall by Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs, a celebrated visual artist who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991. Growing up in Roxbury during hip-hop’s Golden Age, Mr. Gibbs saw the power of graffiti as a form of self expression. The medium became a tool for him to chronicle and immortalize his community’s culture and history—a way to document, pay homage to, and beautify the City’s underserved neighborhoods. His remarkable artwork has brought him much notice and acclaim. Mr. Gibbs was featured last spring on the cover of Boston Globe Magazine for an issue titled “Why Art Matters.” In the spring, Mr. Gibbs also partnered with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts as an artist-in-residence, in part creating a mural in his Breathe Life series at a vocational high school in Roxbury, not far from the Museum grounds.

In Hall, Mr. Gibbs began with a brief video of him and fellow street artist Marka27 completing a large-scale production beneath a bridge in Boston’s Ink Block, titled “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The clip of ProBlak and Marka27 creating that mural offered students a sense of the scale, paint application, and intention behind the artistic piece.

Mr. Gibbs went on to answer questions from both students and adults, speaking about his start as an artist; his process; the challenges inherent in his medium; his inspirations and collaborations with fellow artists; and how his work has evolved over decades. The next day, Mr. Gibbs joined RL art classes, via Zoom, meeting with students from Class VI to Class I in Studio Art, Art & Technology, and Digital Design courses.

Beyond his artistic practice, Mr. Gibbs is also co-founder of Boston’s Artists For Humanity, a non-profit that hires and teaches young people creative skills—from painting to screen printing to 3-D model making. For the past 29 years, Mr. Gibbs has mentored and guided countless burgeoning, young artists through the organization, and continues today as its Paint Studio Director.

In his mentor role, he explained, one of the key lessons he hopes to impart is “how to honor a commitment. No matter what [these young people] commit themselves toward, that’s a transferable skill that they can put toward anything. If you have the will to sit in front of a painting, or a piece of paper, you can put that drive toward finishing school work, studying, staying focused. I want [these kids] to be better than they were when they came in, as human beings.”

With a focus on arts education, Mr. Gibbs has conducted mentoring workshops for Girls, Inc., The Boston Foundation, Boston Housing Authority, and Youth Build, Washington, DC. He served as a guest lecturer at Northeastern for their “Foundations of Black Culture: Hip-Hop” course. He was the curator for BAMS Fest’s “Rep Your City” exhibition in 2019.

Mr. Gibbs is the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2006 Graffiti Artist of the Year award from the Mass Industry Committee, and the Goodnight Initiative’s Civic Artist Award. In 2020, he was honored with the Hero Among Us award by the Boston Celtics. His work has been featured by NBC, WBUR, the Boston Art Review, and Boston Magazine, among many other outlets.

View the entirety of Mr. Gibbs’s Hall presentation.

While the pandemic prevents guests from coming to campus this year, it also prevents the student artwork that reliably lines the halls from benefitting a broader audience. Arts Department Chair Brian Buckley and Headmaster Kerry Brennan were intent that the school still share students’ impressive work, despite the logistical constraints. With the helpful cooperation of art faculty members, students from all classes, and other colleagues, Roxbury Latin launched today its online art gallery, ART@RL. We hope that virtual visitors will enjoy the various class galleries, which include works—paintings, drawings, sculptures—created by students from Class I through Class VI.

At Roxbury Latin, the ultimate goal of the Arts Department isn’t to make artists, but to make art lovers. The intention is not to make masters, but rather students who are sophisticated at looking, and appreciating, and accessing meaning in art—all important skills in a complex world.

And yet, each year students choose to take their artistic interests and talents to great heights, creating true masterpieces—delighting in both the frustrations and rewards of committing to a work of art and bringing it to its full potential. Boys routinely win regional and national honors for their paintings and drawings.

Through the Visual Arts, Roxbury Latin faculty also teach boys about the history of art and the masters who have come before them: They give students a historical sense of the technologies and techniques employed by artists, architects, and engineers over time—and through which those individuals responded to practical or creative problems.

​Visit ART@RL today, and check back frequently.

Senior Miguel Rincon has been playing soccer since he can remember: his father is a coach, and the sport is big in Colombia, where his family is originally from. Miguel lives in East Boston, home of LoPresti Park—the focus of a short documentary film Miguel produced that won a People’s Choice Award this year at the New England Film Festival. LoPresti Park is the locus for a rich tradition of pick-up soccer competition that spans ages and backgrounds, and which, according to Miguel, has “created a very close sense of togetherness within that community.”

Miguel has been playing soccer at LoPresti in the summers for the last four years or so. (The youngest players are about 15 or 16 years old; most of the players are in their 20s, and a few players are even in their 40s, according to Miguel.) In terms of soccer, Miguel’s favorite part of playing at LoPresti are the smaller-sided games (versus the 11 v. 11 played in the ISL). “I enjoy the small games because you get to touch the ball a lot more,” he says. “You get the ball at your feet quicker. But really, my favorite thing about playing at LoPresti is the passion that everyone there feels. Everyone knows it’s friendly and pick-up, and we’re all doing it for fun, but sometimes it feels like we’re playing in a World Cup final—it gets so intense!”

“I love that so many people just know to come at a certain time, know there are going to be teams already, know the rules. People come from very far away to play there—it feels liberating, being with so many people with the same passion as you. When I step on the field there is no pressure, my problems seem to fade away.”

Miguel’s idea to create a short documentary film about this place and experience that he loves was prompted by his involvement in SuccessLink—a program sponsored by the City of Boston that helps employ Boston’s young people. This summer was Miguel’s second year taking part in the program. Through SuccessLink he landed a videography job with All Aces, Inc., which in partnership with BridgeBuilders Cinematic Arts, paired students with instructors—high profile and accomplished professional directors, actors, producers—who taught these young people how to create their own stories through the medium of videography.                   

“I’ve been interested in photography, which I worked on in Studio with Mr. Buckley, and he was encouraging us to try new media,” says Miguel. “This project was the perfect opportunity to try videography, which I’d never done before, and I’ve fallen in love with both photography and videography.”

Miguel says it felt important for him to capture the diversity of individuals who play at LoPresti—across ages, home countries, ethnicities, languages—a collection of people, perspectives and stories that he showcases well in the film. “The hardest part of my project was probably translating Arabic,” laughs Miguel. “That was REALLY hard. I also wanted to make sure I interviewed the right people. Having to conduct all of my interviews in basically two days was really stressful.”

Through his mentors at BridgeBuilders, Miguel was encouraged to submit his documentary to the New England Film Festival, where it was selected for screening and is a contender for a People’s Choice Award. His work garnered attention from WBUR’s The ARTery, where Miguel and several of his fellow amateur filmmakers were featured.

“Overall, my goal was to share one aspect of my life that’s really important to me,” he says. “And I think it reflected my community well. I think it reflected who I am as a person. Because not only did it reflect my community and where I grew up, but it also reflected one of my passions, which is soccer. The opportunity to share with the world one of the places that makes me most happy felt unique.”

View Miguel’s short documentary film “LoPresti Soccer” in its entirety.