Portrait of the artist as a young hoodlum

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Jonathan Cruz turned his back on thugs and dope dealers to bring his edgy art to Iqaluit

Jonathan Cruz, an upbeat 23-year-old artist in Iqaluit, survived some tough teen years.

He was walking through a park in his suburban Toronto neighbourhood, when he met a member of a gang of drug dealers and thugs he used to call his friends.

Cruz and one his former friends in the group got in an argument about who had more street credibility. It ended with Cruz staring down the barrel of a loaded handgun.

Cruz escaped, not without taunting his assailant to pull the trigger. But afterwards, he had a mental breakdown and spent time in hospital.

Eventually, with the help of family, he turned his life around, got great marks in school, and went on to study art in college.

“I lost myself,” he said, sitting in his home studio overlooking Frobisher Bay.

“But then I started going on the right path of discovering who I was.”

Now, Cruz hopes teens in Nunavut, especially Iqaluit, will learn from his decisions.

To get their attention, Cruz is launching his first solo exhibit at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum this weekend. He calls the series of paintings “Hybrid Theory,” a reference to a common bond between Nunavut and the grittier streets of Toronto.

“You’ve got urban art, and you’ve got Inuit art,” Cruz explained. “You put them together and sometimes you see the subject is the same, but the style is totally different.

“I’m picking up the pieces and putting them together.”

Cruz says one of the common threads is youth struggling to find their way in life.

Cruz has already used his past to reach the ever-growing number of Iqaluit teens attracted to the “gangster” side of hip-hop, popularized by music videos and iconoclastic superstars like Eminem and 50 Cent.

After coming to Iqaluit three years ago, Cruz became a regular on the basketball court in front of Nakasuk school. There, he says he takes every opportunity to speak with kids who’ve dropped out, or are having problems at home or with police.

Cruz says he’s noticed youth, including the groups that hang out in front of the Northmart, tend to listen more closely when they realize what he’s been through.

“When I see the kids I see myself, “ Cruz said, clad in bulky jeans and wool green sweater. “I tell them ‘you’ve got to be able to do your own thing.’ You can be bad-ass, but do you have a brain?

“Eventually, your friends won’t be there no more.”

Cruz’s exhibit takes his mission to help youth to another level. This will be the first time that he’s publicized his mission, complete with intense and highly personal paintings created during his years in the North.

People visiting the exhibit will find a five-foot portrait of Cruz’s first love of Nunavut, his ex-girlfriend, who he met while studying art and illustration at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont. In the painting, a beautiful woman stands solemn against a green background, wearing an amautik.

In the piece “Elevate,” Cruz puts his personal journey in colour. The painting is a self-portrait showing his face transform from dark and sullen, to an expression of hope, with eyes bright and staring upwards.

Cruz’s experiment in merging northern themes with the urban south is evident in his painting, “Talib Kweli.”

The piece shows one of Cruz’s favourite American hip-hop artists blending with a dove carrying an olive branch.

Cruz said the idea of morphing people into animals came from artists like Kenojuak Ashevak and Simon Tookoome, who he visited during a basketball tournament in Baker Lake.

The inspiration has Cruz painting whenever he can.

“I wake up, I paint,” Cruz said. “I’ve been painting a lot more since I came here. I’ll die with a paintbrush in my hand.”

Cruz will be at the exhibit opening tomorrow from 1-5 p.m., and will give a personalized tour on March 15 at 7:30 p.m.

The exhibit is sponsored by Atii-Go Media and Ray Lovell Art Studio.