Aida Peery Interview, December 01, 2022

Okay, it is December 1st 2022. We are at Studio House Walbridge, and we're here on-on our World AIDS Day and day-also known as Day Without Art. And I was wondering if you might tell us your name.

My name is Aida, and my last name is Peery. P.E.E.R.Y not P.E.R.R.Y.

Ok, thank you, alright. And, do you-could you tell us what brings you here tonight?

Well, actually, Angie is a friend of mine, a colleague, actually, we happen to be working for the same organization called the Street Sense Media Newspaper. Its a homeless newspaper here in DC, and actually it's an international newspaper, and the newspaper's all over the country. It started off in California and then it just went to the races to different cities where people, you know, really like this paper. They like to, you know, the-the reason for the paper, you know. I can't remember the guy's last name, but his name was Bill, I think, who started it in California, who happened to be homeless, and he got tired of begging or seeing people begging. He says, why don't we get them a product and they can put their stories in the newspaper. And this is exactly what we're doing today here at Street Sense Mediam and they have one also in Chicago, which is Street Sense-Street Wise. They have one in Cinncinnati called Street Likewise. They have, they have so many different newspapers-homeless newspapers. So, you know, it gives people confidence, you know, and hopefulness that, you know, they're selling a product and then they also give some skills to do so and then they can move on, save money, hopefully not-you know, find an apartment right off the bat with all these prices out here its ridiculous, but it gives them some kind of a sense of hopefulness. You know, where they can get and find resources to maybe find housing or talk about it. And have politicians read the newspapers, which a lot of our politicians here in D.C reads the newspaper. I did a-a, in fact, I think back in 2017, I think, 17, 16, somewhere around there. A few of us artists and vendors, we did interviews with the Senators and mine was Cory Booker. Another colleague of mine did Maxine Waters, and then we did-another colleague of mine did, I can't think of his name, but he was disgraced because of sexual allegations. He was a Senator and he was a comedian. I can't think of his name.

Franken

Franken, yeah, Franken, yeah he did Franken, you know, and so we have a-we actually have covers, you know we had talked about homelessness, you know, how we can try to change and-and get people off the streets and into homes, or in transitional homes, because everybody can't be in a home, you know, cause they don't know how to live in a home, you know? So transitional homes is not a bad thing, it just teaches people how to relive all over again, to be able to live in their own apartment and be responsible while you're in that apartment. I mean, you've got some good people out here that, and even by law, and I've had arguments with people in the past, they say-keep saying about-because of the McKinney Act. The McKinney Act, it says-everybody has it and then whether they put money into the budget or not per state, well, that's another story, but they have to put it in there and it doesn't have to be a lot of money but everybody who builds a homes or apartment buildings or dwellings, I think it's like more than what 15 or something like that dwellings or whatever apartments, they have to keep 1% or 2% for the low-income people. And if you notice, and I notice most people don't notice this, but if you ever walk in these high price high rises, you'll notice that a lot of apartments are empty, and you want to know why? Because it got to keep them empty to bring in somebody who has low income. But then, but it's, they don't want to bring anybody in. And I don't blame them, because there are people here, you know, and throughout the building that are actually paying the market price of 28 hundred dollars or whatever. You know, I'm sure they would love to pay, you know, one third of their income and it'll be a hell a lot less than 28 hundred dollars a month.

So but anyway, Angie you know, I've been talking to her off and on about Peter Stebbins and what happened was, she says Aida, Peter showed me this picture of you, the portrait of you. I'm like, get out of here. Nobody know anything about that portrait unless I told them, you know. And so, she came back to, you know, to the organization because I also worked there too as staff. And, I'm like, oh, hell no. I-she had the same picture that I have, but I don't have the portrait, and it's an oil painting of me when-back in 1970, so I had to be around 14 or 15 years old at the time. And, that was back in New York City, in the summer of New York City. And, I happened to be going to a private school because my mom didn't want, well, actually, what happened was a-a teacher strike, okay, so since it was a teach-a teacher strike of public schools, my mother says uh-uh, you're not staying home, so you're going get-go into a private school. So, I ended up in Downtown Community private school in the Village, and I was there for about two years until almost the closing of the school, I graduated from the school to go on to high school and, the gym teacher, Terry, you know, everybody would just used to drool over this guy because he was so good-looking. Oh, was he a gorgeous white boy, I ain't never seen a white man that pretty, my God, that man was beautiful. And even the girls would drool, were drooling, you know. Well anyway, his wife came there, one time, or several times, and she came with a couple of their children, two girls, little girls. And we used to have our gym on top of the building because it was warm, you know, when it's nice out and everything, and I kept noticing somebody staring at me and I'm like, okay, why is she staring at me? You know, but I didn't think nothing of it. So Terry came up to me, our gym teacher, he says, Aida I want you to meet my wife. And, I said Hi, how are you doing? And he said she wants to paint you. I'm like, paint me? I was like no, no, because, you know, the summer was coming in, you know, and school was going to be out and I wanted my time during the summer. I wanted to cut up and act a darn fool, like, any teenager does, you know? So she, Marcy told me, she said that she thinks that my structure-my bone structure, everything about me, she would love to do a portrait of me. And she said it would not take my whole summer. She lied. It took up my whole summer. I was so pissed as a teenager. And I used to tell my mom, my mom says, Aida, you said you was going to do this portrait. Yeah, but she said it wasn't gonna take the whole summer either, you know, but you still go ahead and go to those sittings and do the portrait. Boy was I mad. Anybody ever asked me to do a sit-in or anywhere they were either going to pay me or they going-its going to be a flat-out no, walking away. I don't want to hear nothing. Nothing, nothing. I didn't even get paid for that, you know? So I did it, I did the portrait. She put this dress on me. It was a gorgeous dress, but it was a heavy dress. It literally had glass. If you see-if you saw the portrait itself, it was a red dress, a beautiful, beautiful dress, but it was heavy. So, of course, I had to sit, or it was gonna make me sit, I couldn't stand in there in that dress. It literally had glass, mirrors inside the damn dress. I'm like, oh my God, but it's a gorgeous dress. So, I sat there in this wicker chair as a teenager with a fro, when I should be out there marching and having a good time and doing the penguin and this and that and the other. By the time I got away from her house, I was too beat to do anything. I just wanted to lay down go to bed you know. I ain't-half the time I didn't even want to eat, you know. So, finally she finished the portrait, close to me going back to school almost, and we went to the art show out in-somewhere in- I think at Battery Park or some Park, I forgot, or somewhere in the Village. She was down there. So I said, Mom, let's go down there and see about my portraits, and I said are you going to buy it? She said better not be expensive, boy, was it. Marcy was asking $500, that's back in the 70s, who in they right mind got five hundred dollars for a portrait? In the 1970s. I told my mother, Mom you got the money, go ahead, get the portrait. She says it's a gorgeous portrait, but I don't have $500. I said Mom, you're working for the mayor's office and you're designing projects for the-everybody. You got the money, we live in an expensive Linux, Linux apartments that, you know, it takes money to live there, you know, and she's like I don't have it.

So, Marcy did a charcoal of me and I said, okay I had accept that and then she took a picture of it and she sent you know, a photo of it, and that was the end of that. So, I said well it must be sitting in somebody's, you know, wall or living room or whatever and the same picture photograph that I've carried since the 1970s, Angie had it or Peter Stebbins had one just like it, and I'm just like, whoa, where did you get this from? Because everybody said that's, Aida, I know her. I'm like what? So, that's faith. No, I believe in God. That's God's faith. That's God's work. That was God's work. Wanted me to get involved in this art stuff or whatever. I don't know why, or even involved with Angie. Cause Angie, she can get snippy too? In Jesus' name, she-she gets a little snippy. I mean, I used to be like that little lady, that damn woman. She's pretty rude. I mean, I just say hi, Angie and just keep on going, you know,

I had no idea. She knew all these people in this art world, had no idea. So, I told her and she went through the staff at Street Sense Media, and everybody says, well, has anybody seen Aida? I'm like, Jesus, what did I do now, you know? They're talking about the portrait. So, yeah, I heard about it. I just told everybody, yep, I heard about it. Nip it in the bud, you know. And then, I got sick back in July of the summer. And then I-all this time, I have never gotten positive for the COVID-19 and then bam out of the blue, I got it, but I had other respiratory, you know, conditions going on with me anyway, before I was tested positive and I ended up in the hospital for about nine, almost ten days and everybody thought I wasn't going to make it. Well, that's not everybody. Only some people thought I wasn't going to make it. So everything turned out well, everything was fine. When I woke up I was in ICU and I thought I was just there for a couple of days and the nurse telling me I was been there for five- I was like, five days, you know? And so I ended up going back downstairs with the rest of the population and I stayed there for four days and boy was that hard to get out of bed. I had no idea that I was, you know, in the hospital that long and then everybody's making phone calls, you know, family and this and that. My daughter is really tripping, you know. She's thinking her Mommy's is dead or died, my son is worried, everybody's worried. So I, you know, I'm grateful that you know, that somebody did get in touch with me about the portrait. Jane, I remember her as a little girl, but we're keeping in touch with each other on Facebook, her dad just had a birthday and I would love to meet Terry again. I would love to meet him again. The gym teacher. But I understand that Marcy's mom who was- who did the actual portrait of me she's now has Alzheimer's. So now I was going to make some kind of arrangements with Peter Stebbins and Angie Whitehurst about going to New York City to go see her. Now, at first, I didn't want to go see her because who wants-somebody with alzheimer's, and I had an uncle and an aunt that had that they don't recognize you. So what's the sense of me to go down there? That's my-my thought. But Angie and Peter were both saying, just out of respect, because she did this portrait. I'm like how, how is that out of respect? First of all, I don't have the portrait, and two she did a charcoal with me, and she ruined my whole summer in doing it, and I'm like, to myself, what-how am I, you know, where's this respect thing coming in? I said, well, and then Angie says, to me, she says, you know, Aida, we can get a couple of meals out of him. Okay, great, I'm game. If you get some of that New York food, yep, I'm gaming. I know some good places if they still exist, you know, after the 70s, you know, but we can go to the Red Rooster in Harlem, but I know that still exist and they renovated that whole restaurant, but I don't know if the food is still good not. Maybe the drinks are better, I don't know. But anyway, I said, okay, we can go down there. No problem. But I would like to see Jane because I haven't seen her since she was a little girl. She was a toddler, and she was just lively and her sister was lively. I said, wow, they was some happy kids. Yeah, they were really happy

Where is the portait now?

Oh, we found, okay, what happened-Jane found out, the daughter, Marcy's daughter, found out through her files that the portrait is in Texas somewhere. And they don't, she knows exactly where it is, but she can't give me that information because if she gives me that information, and I blurt out, she can get sued, or her mom can get sued, or the foundation can get sued. So they, and she can't go down there. She literally has to hire somebody or like an art reporter or somebody who has a license to do that to go down there to see the portrait or talk to the owner of the porch-who has the portrait. They don't even know if the owner is alive or not. That's the key. So it could be, whoever if-if the owner still alive, that's wooray. Whoo. Whoo. Okay. But if the owner is not alive and her, her family has the estate, it's all legal, everything is legal. And if you do something wrong they can sue the-her foundation or her mom, even though she's got Alzheimer's. It's a lot of legal stuff involved in it. You can't-when you sell something to somebody for a high price, a portrait of something, or someone, they might not want that information to be known or something of that nature. I don't know. We don't know, they really don't know. It could even be destroyed. I hope not, but you never know, you never know. So, that's strange, from 1970 to 19 to-to 2022 and the new millennium. I still look the same at 14-15 years old. Oh my Jesus, and they recognized me that quick. It's unreal, uncanny. I got gray hairs. I've got all these aches and pains, I've had kids and grandkids, and they recognize that portrait.

Wow, that's-and that's what brought you here tonight?

Yeah. Right. This is the first time me meeting Peter Stebbins, you know, in-personally. I've always talked to him on the Facebook but or on the phone. But this is my first time, and boy when he grabbed me, I thought I was going to die. I'm like, I can't breathe, he finally let me go. Yeah, so yeah. So ,this is why-but Angie, she's sneaky, she didn't tell me. She told me it was an art show and now I come here and Bam. She didn't tell me I had to do it interview. That's sneaky, we wait.

Well, here you are sitting down for the whole evening.

Sneaky sneaky sneaky.

Alright, is there anything else that you would like to leave us with tonight?

No, I just want hopefully that maybe a reporter or somebody who's got a legal bounds to get in touch with Jane Burrow or Peter Stebbins and maybe they can find the original portrait and put it in an art museum. That's all I have to say.

That's terrific. Alright, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Okay.