Meet Our Instructors: Javonte’ Patterson
Javonte’ Patterson (aka Kyrico)
Washington College
WBS Alum
Hello friends of Writers in Baltimore Schools. I’m Javonte’ Patterson, also known as Kyrico. I’m a fully self-taught artist who mostly works with character design, but I also really love illustration and environmental art. Two of my favourite artists are Julia Lepetit and Jack Burke. They’re amazing artists who both often dabble in spooky and unsettling art. I love plants, and one day hope to have a garden. However, one “plant” that I have a really strange relationship with are mushrooms—fungi—which are genetically closer to animals than plants. I love the way they look, the aesthetic, how they consume and rot away life and return it to the soil. Mushrooms also terrify me though because of “The Last of Us” and the aforementioned “being closer to animals than plants.” Yes yes, I know, very Irrational.
But not everything needs to be rational.
I first joined WBS just because I was a little bored and had the time on my hands. I was an 8th grader at Calverton Elementary/Middle School at the time, and I didn’t even like writing. Now here I am, teaching creative writing to elementary students in the exact same program I joined; I’ve come full circle and I appreciate that. It felt like I had a duty to come back and provide more children with this amazing program. I’ve really enjoyed teaching the younger generation, even though they take every opportunity to give me as much sass as possible.
My favourite experience, however, was actually teaching a etymology and poetry lesson for the college students when I was the WBS Teaching Fellow for the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars collaboration class. I really love etymology, so I based the entire lesson around a book written by John Koenig: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I instructed everyone to, as the book does, create new words, either by using real etymology or by choosing something with emotional substance to them. Then after everyone’s words were created, they were to write a definition poem with this word, which is one of my favourite poetic structures. It was a very, very self indulgent lesson. Which is likely why I enjoyed it so much.