By Catherine McLaughlin<\/p>\n
Monitor staff<\/p>\n
Michael Tuerk doesn\u2019t remember the day he posed for Cynthia Tokos to take his picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day is kind of groundhog day out here,\u201d said Tuerk, 31. \u201cYou almost have to wake up with a fresh brain every morning. A clean slate, if you will. It\u2019s the only way to get through.\u201d<\/p>\n
He estimates the portrait was taken around Christmas. In it, he wears a grey hoodie tucked behind his right ear and carries a navy backpack looped over the handlebars of the red bicycle at his hip. He marks time by noticing the bike he was riding.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lifetime away,\u201d he said, holding the photo at the corners. \u201cI almost don\u2019t recognize this person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tokos came to Concord in 2022 as a director at Christ the King parish, but she has been a photographer for 25 years. During the last year, she\u2019s captured portraits of 48 guests of the Friendly Kitchen, a soup kitchen providing free, hot meals to people in the Concord area.<\/p>\n
Last Saturday, she transformed its dining room into a gallery.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these folks have some great challenges, and I just wanted to show their dignity and their respect,\u201d Tokos said.<\/p>\n
Tuerk grew up in the White Mountains, graduated high school in Amherst and traveled across the country as an Americorps member from California to New York to Washington and back. He\u2019s been in Concord since last summer. Still close-cropped, his hair is longer now than in the photo Tokos took of him.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s working with the Coalition to End Homelessness to find housing, and in the meantime, he plays the piano at the Friendly Kitchen during the last few minutes of meals.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that talent, as well as his youth, that Tokos sought to capture.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo hear him play the piano blows you away,\u201d she said. \u201cThese are the important things that we don\u2019t see. I can see you, but I don\u2019t see you. And that\u2019s what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tokos asked her subjects to write something about themselves on a sheet of paper in response to the title of the gallery, \u201cWhat I Want You to Know.\u201d<\/p>\n
To accompany her portait, Melissa Cleasby wrote, \u201cThere is so much more to me than the one small part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cleasby learned to paint as a teenager when she received a toolbox full of paints and paintbrushes as a Christmas gift. At 41, painting is still her refuge. She keeps her supplies in that same toolbox today.<\/p>\n
At the gallery, landscapes, both real and fantastical, hung on the wall beside her photograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if it\u2019s the worst day of your life, you can always find something to be happy about,\u201d Cleasby said. \u201cThat\u2019s where my art comes into play. I just paint and everything goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The site where she paints and lives with her husband, Jesse, is peaceful but \u201cnot so ideal,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
In her portrait, she sees an aspiring artist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be so happy to share my art with others,\u201d she wrote, \u201cand have them enjoy my pieces as much as I enjoy creating them.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Sara Curran, office manager at the Friendly Kitchen, the portraits are an invitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are all people who have lived lives that we know nothing about,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is just a moment in their lives, and we kind of get to learn more about who they are and what they\u2019ve been through.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the walls were portraits of David Josselyn, an 88-year-old from Henniker who retired from his work as a dump truck driver last year. He used to only grow out his beard in the winter, but now he keeps it year-round.<\/p>\n
There was Frank, who wore a serious expression when photographed alone but lit up with his arm around Darlene.<\/p>\n
There was Malcolm King, who lives downtown. It was his hands, bedecked in rings shaped like wolf heads, that caught Tokos\u2019s eye. Shy at first, he became excited about his photo. It offered a chance to share with people that he is an elder in his church.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There was Bill McFarlin, a musician originally from Epsom who plays near encampments as a way to help people earlier in their recovery journey. The acoustics under the 393 bridge, he noted, are excellent.<\/p>\n
At 72, he has played guitar for 42 years, and his music took him across the country before he returned to Concord in 2006.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can bring happiness in the music, I\u2019m doing something better and spreading a message,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I\u2019m also teaching that you can indeed be happy in sobriety.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than one subject wrote beside their photo, \u201cI\u2019m a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were two photos of Rodney Moody, who had a way of taking people under his wing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to be everybody\u2019s doorman,\u201d he told Tokos. \u201cI feel needed that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his portrait, he leans forward, resting an elbow on his knee, as his dog sits beside him. Browned, fallen leaves perch on the green grass in the background.<\/p>\n
Guests at the gallery passed around a sign-up list for anyone who wanted a copy of Tokos\u2019s portrait of Moody, who died in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guests have been so open to it,\u201d said Jonesy Rainsville, a staff member at the Friendly Kitchen. \u201cThey want to share their stories, and they want other people to know that they\u2019re trying hard and they\u2019re working hard to do the best they can every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Letitia Hamel was hesitant about Tokos taking her photo. Fear of judgement, even ridicule, crossed her mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then I thought, why not?\u201d she said. \u201cEverybody needs to know who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamel is in recovery, and relies on an e-bike to get around because of mobility issues. She stands over her e-bike in her portrait, beaming.<\/p>\n
She slowly milled through the gallery, read the personal histories and quotes hung around the room and wiped away tears.<\/p>\n
Behind them, she said, was \u201chope.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just brings you closer, because there\u2019s something, maybe, you can relate to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
To Tuerk, Tokos\u2019s project is timely. He said he feels as though the city\u2019s progress on addressing homelessness has stalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all been bad news lately,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s something that\u2019s heavy out here, is not knowing that there\u2019s a plan set in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStuff like what Cynthia is doing gets people to talk about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Catherine McLaughlin Monitor staff Michael Tuerk doesn\u2019t remember the day he posed for Cynthia Tokos to take…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-133121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115001811546247144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}