Wallis Kendal’s cell phone never quite makes it back into his pocket. In 15 minutes, the renowned Edmonton artist and youth activist receives (and answers) no less than six calls. He doesn’t apologize for taking the calls, even though he knows they will each require his full attention for several minutes.

This, he assures me, is a typical day. And he’s not being rude — it’s part of his job.

Kendal is a co-founder of the iHuman Youth Society, a non-profit organization that helps high-risk Edmonton youth use art as a means of social integration. His schedule is hectic and unpredictable, usually spanning several hours a day and always spanning seven days a week.

The title on his business card reads “Youth Outreach,” and Kendal does everything that that broad term encompasses: picking kids up from court or jail, making sure the iHuman studio is properly stocked with art supplies, and generally acting as a confidant for hundreds of youth who wouldn’t otherwise have one.

“I’m like a father, in a sense, to all the kids — even the guys,” he says. “Because I’m the guy they can talk to, without any reservation. They feel comfortable because they know I’m not like a social worker, who says, ‘If you hit me, I’m charging you with assault.’ That’s not the way we function here. It’s an equal sport. Kids can tell me if they’re pissed off at me.”

In addition to the long hours he puts in at and around the studio, he makes his cell phone number widely available to its clientele, and they are clearly not shy about using it. That doesn’t leave much personal time for Kendal, who lives alone.

But Kendal is good on the phone. In each of the calls his tone is always warm, his voice even and reassuring. He asks, “So what’s the situation?” Then, after a pause: “With your life?”

Art From The Start

Kendal first got involved working with youth as a teenager, when he worked for the City of Edmonton teaching arts and crafts at playgrounds after school. A gifted artist himself, he attended the University of Alberta, where he pursued art but was also increasingly drawn to education and psychology — specifically the concept of cognitive dissonance.

“It’s a very strange philosophy,” he says. “Dissonance is when you get uncomfortable with an action: you’re walking down the street and you see a dog. You’re afraid of the dog, so you cross to the other side. You avoid the encounter, because that’s dissonance. So if somebody’s got troubles, I can take that dissonance and I can usually flipside it and make it into a creative exercise.”

After receiving an honours degree in education, he became a junior high school teacher in the early 1970s. But it didn’t last: a combination of his overly progressive teaching style and butting heads with the administration led him back to university for a master’s degree — but he eventually abandoned that too, after making similarly vocal protests about the program’s organization.

Throughout, he kept at his art, eventually publishing a novel, writing plays, painting, designing children’s toys, and travelling the world.

In 1999, Kendal and fellow artist Sandra Bromley finished The Gun Sculpture, a massive prison cell-like structure made of 7,000 deactivated guns and other weapons acquired from all over the globe. The project took more than five years to complete — two years planning, two years making contacts, raising funds, as well as gaining police and customs approval, and then a year and change in construction.

The Gun Sculpture has since toured around the world, and has brought Kendal and Bromley international acclaim, as well as the City of Edmonton’s Salute to Excellence Arts Award in 2000. That same year it was shown as part of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Seoul, South Korea, and at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany (where it drew the praise of Prince Edward and Carlos Santana, among others). In 2001, it sat in the lobby of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

It was after the The Gun Sculpture premiered at the Edmonton Art Gallery that Kendal and Bromley were approached by a group of local street youth who had seen their picture in the newspaper. The project’s anti-violence message resonated with them, and they insisted Kendal and Bromley help them get their own project made.

This piece, a collection of first-person stories entitled The Red Tear, was then incorporated into and exhibited alongside The Gun Sculpture.

Kendal says that seeing these youth, with so much passion but lacking the necessary resources and direction, is where the idea for iHuman was born.

A Hive Of Activity

The current iHuman studio is a modest, one-storey brick building on the edge of Chinatown. It’s on a fairly quiet block, but inside is a hive of activity: some kids are using sewing machines, some are making use of the four well-equipped recording studios, and a dozen others are just sitting around, hanging out. A stereo plays at full volume on a nearby table. The painting area, fashion room, and kitchen are empty at the moment, but all show signs of recent activity. The walls are covered with paintings done by iHuman clients, and big signs around the studio announce the only rules: “NO DEALING AND NO VIOLENCE.”

The most popular activity for guys is music — either rapping, singing, or producing. For the gals, it’s fashion. They have access to a roomful of materials, as well as cutting-edge music programs like Logic and Reason. Kendal says that hands-on experience is as an added bonus to the recovery process.

“We’re not only giving them the gift of art — we’re giving them training,” he says. “It’s a huge gift to give. And we don’t expect everyone to come out as a fashion designer or an artist. That’s not the point of it. But we expect them to learn something about themselves and get their voice out. What we’re trying to do is keep the storytelling going.”

iHuman allows high-risk youth to express themselves through art, helping them reconnect with society and nurturing their sense of self-worth. The society encourages clients to access available treatment and support programs — for issues ranging from substance abuse to prostitution — but it is not mandatory. Most clients have legal trouble, and little or no family support. Many are in government care, and Kendal himself is the guardian of three iHuman clients.

The key to iHuman’s approach is giving users continued support once their treatment is finished, and when they find themselves in the same circumstances that led to addiction in the first place.

It’s an investment that Kendal believes makes financial as well as moral sense.

“Every kid that recovers — to put a monetary value on it — is worth millions of dollars,” he says. “There’s no cost to the government anymore. They contribute to society. All the good stuff you want in a person is there, they all have it, but to get to that stage is a long-term process. We’ve sent one guy to treatment eight times, and this is the first time he’s ever been clean more than three months in his lifetime.”

Maturity At Any Age

Kendal won’t reveal how old he is, not even to the kids. He has grey hair and more than his share of wrinkles, but these could easily be side effects of his work ethic. Kendal believes it’s critical for the youth to see him as a peer, without being reminded of the potential half-century that separates their birthdays. This is particularly important, he says, when dealing with a society that has rigid expectations for maturity.

“Age, to me, is a very irrelevant topic,” he says. “A girl or guy who starts using hard drugs at 12 years of age, to be honest with you, will stay around 12 until the time that they stop drugs, and then the maturity will kick back in. That’s what people don’t realize.

“We use chronological age to say that when a child is 18, they’re good to go — they’re ready for the adult market. It doesn’t work in this field. That’s why we work from 12 years to 24 years. I think iHuman was the first society to start this, and all over Canada now, everybody’s working with kids up to 24 and calling them youth. That’s one of the breakthrough things that we did.”

It’s an idea that resonates with iHuman clients, past and present.

Gabe, 23, first came to iHuman and met Kendal when she was 19, and caught up with crime and selling drugs. They got along right away, and before long she was using the studio to work on designing her own clothes. Eventually she took a job there, though she has since stopped to pursue fashion and music on her own.

“[Wallis is] amazing,” she says. “We’re, like, best friends. There’s nobody like him. [This is] an art centre that deals with the worst of the worst, criminals nobody wants to look at. And how it functions, it’s just amazing. You barely ever have problems. It’s a mutually respected place. And those were his ideas, and his concepts, that he created.”

“He’s been a good mentor — almost like a father figure, you know?” says Geli Bean, 24. She came to Edmonton after being banned from her reserve as a teenager and now works at iHuman as a program facilitator. “If I needed help or anything like that, he was always there. He was one person I knew that I wasn’t afraid to call.”

The Slow Road   

Kendal says that he has no intention of retiring from iHuman anytime soon, but after nearly a decade he is showing signs of slowing down. Earlier this month he hired a new youth outreach worker to take some of the strain off him, allowing him to focus on night work, which is what he prefers doing.

“I don’t know if it’ll be the same if he ever dies or goes away,” Gabe says. “It’ll be really hard to keep it up.”

“I’m constantly exploited,” Kendal admits with his characteristic gruff laugh. “Let’s get real. I’m exploited for helping a kid out with some money for food. I’m exploited in helping a kid get medicine. I’m exploited for lots of little financial things. I’m exploited for my time — a kid will phone me and say, ‘I need help,’ but really what they need is for me to be a taxi service, and take them from point A to point B.”

Sometimes, Kendal dutifully gets into his car to pick the kid up anyway, because it presents an opportunity to gain insight into their life. “I’m the guy they can talk to, without any reservation,” he says. “They can tell me anything and it’s going to stay with me. It’s not going to go down the road, and it’s not going to cause them trouble. I get to see the inside glimpse.”

Much of Kendal and iHuman’s efforts are focused on changing society’s perceptions toward youth, addiction, and the very process of recovery and integration. Their progress is slow, he says, but necessarily so.

“We don’t want anyone to get the illusion that we have masses of kids lined up here, we’re processing them, and doing magical things to a group at a time,” he says. “When you have this kind of individual, it has to be one on one.”

Kendal describes his work as giving them an opportunity to be important, to communicate their feelings either in art or conversation. For kids who have been abused and left without parental support, it’s a process that takes years.

“It’s invisible to most people, because nobody sees results five years down the road,” he says. “But we do. We see results everywhere.”