Art lessons brought father, son together

ST. LOUIS -- Thirteen years ago this summer, Jovan Hansman -- then Jovan Simpson -- was walking around his neighborhood in the city's Clinton-Peabody public housing complex when he spotted a white guy in a parking lot.

"You never saw white people down at Peabody," he recalled. "If you saw a white person, it was for drugs or undercover police."

That white guy was Washington University architecture professor Bob Hansman.

And instead of drugs, he was peddling art lessons.

Those lessons changed the course of Jovan's life. The teacher eventually adopted him. Now Jovan, 26, has an art studio in the Delmar Loop and customers commissioning his work. And he is headed back to Peabody, where he was raised, to teach a new generation of children about art and offer them hope for a better life.

Initially, they were a reluctant, unruly bunch, Jovan recalls of his classmates under Hansman. "It looked like it was going to be a disaster," he said.

But there was a student who turned it around -- Jermaine Roberts, Jovan's best friend and the only person he knew in the neighborhood who didn't sell drugs or belong to a gang. And everyone respected him.

"Jermaine was the glue that kept the whole program together," Jovan said. Two years into the program, in 1996, Jermaine died of sickle cell anemia at the age of 19.

"I just lost it," Jovan said. He turned to the only adult who had been there for him. He asked Hansman if he could come live with him in Affton, Mo.

Hansman told him to ask his mother, and even she realized it offered him a better chance.

Hansman, now 59, was raised in Affton. He expected some cultural adjustment when he brought a street-wise, urban black teenager to live with him. They said neighbors frequently called the police when Jovan walked down the street to the store. Some called Family Services to investigate.

And the police stopped Jovan so frequently -- up to three or four times a day -- that he kept his identification in his pocket rather than his wallet. When he tried to attend the alternative school, other students yelled racial slurs at him.

Still, Jovan prayed that Hansman wouldn't ask him to leave.

"I knew I wouldn't get shot. I knew I wouldn't get jumped," he said.

In fact, one day he said point-blank to Hansman: "Have you ever considered adopting me?"

Hansman remembers reluctantly agreeing to start an art program in the projects in 1994.

Most of the children there had no father figure, so they turned to him when the gas was shut off or a relative needed to be bailed out of jail. He filled the gap whenever he could. But he never realized how deep and literally some children bonded to him.

When Jovan asked him if he ever considered adopting him, Hansman replied without hesitation: "Sure. But I never knew how you felt about it."

On May 15, 2002, they made the adoption official in family court. Jovan changed his last name from Simpson to Hansman.

The art program has survived over the years, in various forms, although formal lessons ended about five years ago. Students at Washington University help raise money to pay the rent for a studio at Peabody and for a studio on Delmar Boulevard, called Faces in the Loop, which showcases much of the work.

"I'm living my dream," Jovan said. But he hasn't forgotten his roots. For the past three weeks, every Tuesday, he has been gathering children wandering Peabody and bringing them to the nearby studio for art lessons.

"I'm not going down there to turn people into artists," he said. "I'm going down there to show them, 'You can do this."'