Why are we here?

Why are we in this particular little house in Northeast Portland?  Buckle up.

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I choose to think of it as serendipity, but it's probably also because I'm terribly stubborn.

I'm Jenn, the owner of Cully Community Arts. This little house, built in 1926, was my home for the first year of my life. My grandparents and father moved here in the early 1970s and this is where they lived for the rest of their lives. My children are the sixth generation of our family to have ties to this area, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to continue to be a part of such a warm and vibrant community.

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This studio is an ongoing project with a complicated history. This is where I spent my childhood, baking in my grandma's kitchen and raiding my grandpa's vegetable garden like Peter Rabbit. But it's also where I watched my father disappear in the jaws of addiction, my grandma die of cancer, and my grandpa struggle on without them. All stories have their ups and downs.

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My grandparents were welcoming and generous beyond my comprehension, and happily shared their home with anyone who came to them in need. They saw goodness and value in people that others didn't, regardless of their history, mental health, or struggles with addiction. They couldn't fathom the idea of someone going without food or shelter or a shower when they had those things to offer. So they provided a haven to people in need, regardless of the cost to themselves.

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And the cost to themselves was high. After Grandma died, the house gradually became a homeless camp, and trash piled up to astonishing levels. Noise, drug use, and altercations were almost constant. Neighbor complaints and fines from the city also piled up. I could no longer bring my children to visit. In 2017, Grandpa was almost killed in a house fire. Still, he refused to turn people away. He insisted on giving even his grocery money to charities and causes he valued. When he had a stroke in late 2021, the people he gave so much for could not be bothered to call him an ambulance and he had to be carried out of the house because a stretcher wouldn't fit through the labyrinth of trash and "very important" mail. 

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These were their choices to make, and I accept that. I'm humbled by their goodness. But the cost to me was also high. Watching them live through the consequences of radical trust and generosity over and over again was a heavy burden to grow up with. And when Grandpa died, I was left with a house, once beautiful and loved, buried in trash, deeply in debt, and inhabited by people I didn't know who had a very high level of need. This was now my responsibility, and I had a choice to make. I could run away and never look back. I could close that chapter of my history and just let the bank deal with it. Or I could take it on. All of it. The mess, the people, the history, and all the emotional baggage. I could accept, publicly and without shame, that this is my family and my history.

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This is where serendipity comes in. Also the stubbornness. Calculations suggested that I could clean up and sell the house for enough to pay off the debts owed. But mostly, I needed to clean it. I needed to heal it. I needed to repair the years of neglect and abuse. I needed to heal my soul after years of watching it all go downhill. My hands were finally untied. There was finally something I could do about it. So I rolled up my sleeves. To my great wonderment, the people around me rolled up theirs too. 

 

Family, friends, and neighbors pitched in with whatever they had to offer. It was like a demented version of Supermarket Sweep. I'd drop the kids at school and then we'd rush to throw as much as we could into the truck and haul it to the dump before I had to go pick them up again. One garbage bag, one truckload at a time, one day at a time, we hauled roughly 35 tons of trash off the lot. It was like an archaeological dig, with occasional recognizable bits of my own life sprinkled in. It was intensely difficult, physically and emotionally. It was disgusting. It was stressful. But it was strangely joyful. Working with people who want to help elevates any task, and I was shocked to find myself laughing more than I had in years. Every load of trash hauled was weight off my soul. 

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As we cleaned, painted, and repaired, my vision cleared. My confidence grew. Time and again, the thing I needed, be it person, time, money, or idea, appeared before me just as I needed it. The light in the freshly painted house was beautiful, and it became a place I genuinely wanted to be. The idea for Cully Community Arts began whispering to me. I could sell it and pay off the debts, but maybe it could be... more. And the revised math worked out so that I could just afford to try it. At this point, nothing seemed properly scary anymore. So I took the leap, trusting that what I needed would continue to appear.  

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This little house is now my house again. It's a work in progress, but I'm incredibly proud of it. My grandparents taught me so much about radical acceptance, boundaries, and the importance of caring for each other. I'm honored to be able to restore our family home and share it as an asset to the community, where we can connect and bring out the best in each other.

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I could not have imagined this outcome in my wildest dreams, and it would not have been remotely possible without the support of people who chose to be generous when they didn't have to. There was always someone who had the skill or the tool or the exact thing (garage door) I needed. I am beyond indebted to the next-door neighbors, Anna and Alex, and our family friend Mr. Bob for their constant support and hard work, even -especially- on the hardest days. I am so humbled and inspired by their kindness and faith in me and eternally grateful that they appeared in my life. All my stubbornness would be for naught without their serendipity. 

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