00:00:00:14 - 00:00:06:16 Dr. Winn I'm Dr. Rob Winn and you're listening to Real Cancer Talk from VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. 00:00:08:11 - 00:00:30:06 Rudene Mercer Haynes Good afternoon everyone. Today. We're really, really excited about the conversation. We're going to talk about multiple myeloma as a disease that not many folks know a lot about. But it's it's on the rise and impacting communities of color in particular. We're also excited to talk to you about, the Massey on the, Massey on the Move mobile vans. 00:00:30:06 - 00:00:56:21 Rudene Mercer Haynes That's a lot of M’s, Dr. Winn, but, we are here to talk about, you know, those rolling out. And of course, we have two artistic geniuses who have helped make those, vans more appealing. To our, prospective patient population. So very, very excited to have, the two artists are Sir James Thornhill and, of course, the inimitable, Hamilton Glass. 00:00:56:21 - 00:01:08:04 Rudene Mercer Haynes this is a personal story. My uncle was actually diagnosed with multiple myeloma about ten years ago. And when he first called me up to let me know about his diagnosis, I was stunned. 00:01:08:04 - 00:01:30:04 Rudene Mercer Haynes I'd never heard of it before. I had to figure out how to spell myeloma. But since then, I've seen and we've heard of, you know, people like Colon Powell who was afflicted with the disease. So we're very excited to have an expert here, Doctor Joseph Mikhael who's going to talk to us more about this disease, for those of you who are not familiar with it. 00:01:30:06 - 00:01:53:03 Rudene Mercer Haynes Doctor Mikhael, you have a wonderful resume. I'm going to keep it brief. But I will let people know that you are a professor of the Applied Cancer Research and Drug Discovery Division of the Translational Genomic Genomics Research Institute, an affiliate of the city of Hope Cancer Center. You're also the chief medical officer of the International Myeloma Foundation. 00:01:53:05 - 00:02:20:23 Rudene Mercer Haynes He specializes, clinically in plasma cell disorders, multiple, namely multiple myeloma. You're deeply committed to reducing health disparities. You're leading the IMF African American initiative known as mPOWER. I love that name, which seeks to improve the care delivered to African Americans with myeloma. You also spend about 20% of your time in the Third World seeking ways to enhance access to myeloma therapies and underprivileged countries. 00:02:21:00 - 00:02:31:02 Rudene Mercer Haynes I can I can't do justice to your wonderful resume, but I thought it was best for you to be able to share in your own words. What is it you do and what you'd like to sort of share with our group today? 00:02:31:04 - 00:02:58:09 Dr. Winn And Joe, can I can I just, take two seconds just to say how grateful I am? And for those of you who don't know, Massey does have a partnership with the city of Hope. It's a fantastic institution. And this TGen is a wonderful program. And, Joe has been a leader throughout, and, someone who I not just respect, but, as we talk and walk this path that people who walk the talk, he is exactly that. 00:02:58:10 - 00:03:01:13 Dr. Winn So, Joe, the floor is yours. Well, thank. 00:03:01:13 - 00:03:24:13 Dr. Mikhael You so much for the much to kind introductions. I'm just absolutely blessed to be here. This is a particular privilege, one, because as you can tell, Robert and I have a bromance going on here that is clearly continuing during this session. But also, because it's just a privilege to be able to talk about this disease. And we just heard, you know, that, people have to Google it to know how to spell the word myeloma. 00:03:24:14 - 00:03:42:02 Dr. Mikhael So my objective is really to help people understand myeloma. The extent of the disparity that unfortunately, we see with the disease and, of course, a way that we can overcome it. You were you were more than kind to me in the introduction. All people need to knows my name is Doctor Joe, and I'm here to give the talk. 00:03:42:07 - 00:04:03:00 Dr. Mikhael So I try to keep it relatively simple. And so, let's dive in. I must also just say it's particularly, a blessing to me. And my, if you will, former life and to, to a certain degree in my current life, before I went into medicine, I was a Bible teacher. So to put facts and faith together where we have myeloma and faith together, this is really my, happy place. 00:04:03:00 - 00:04:18:07 Dr. Mikhael So in particular, I'm thankful to be here. So just as a level set, and I know our time is brief, so I'm going to be brief. Let's just go back because some of us may not be familiar at all. This may be the first time you've heard the word myeloma. Let's go back to the blood. Right. 00:04:18:07 - 00:04:38:19 Dr. Mikhael So blood and I'm a blood doctor, so I'm obviously a little biased towards it. Blood is what circulates in our body. And it's made of stuff and liquid. The liquid bit we call plasma and the stuff we call cells, of which we have three kinds of cells. There's red, there's white, and there's rose, I mean, there's red, there's white and there's platelets. 00:04:38:21 - 00:05:00:20 Dr. Mikhael So, so the red cells are really just little trucks that carry oxygen. Our body, when I breathe in. I was out running this morning on on the mountain here in Arizona. And I breathe in oxygen. The little red cells pick up that oxygen and deliver them to the tissues, and come back for more. White cells, which we've been talking a lot about through the pandemic, our part of our immune system. 00:05:00:20 - 00:05:19:04 Dr. Mikhael They're like an army that that is meant to protect us and fight off the enemy. And then platelets are just tiny little cells that are help that are meant to help us clot. If you caught yourself, they're like the ambulance. They're the first ones on the scene to plug up the hole. And all of our blood is made in the factory of our blood, which is we call the bone marrow. 00:05:19:04 - 00:05:40:15 Dr. Mikhael So we're going to be talking about a bone marrow cancer or a cancer of the blood. And I wanted to make sure we understood what terminology we use. So so we think, what is cancer? I mean, I try to make it super simple. Three words define cancer in my brain. Identical, uncontrolled growths. It's just easier to picture a lump of lung tissue or breast tissue or colon tissue. 00:05:40:17 - 00:06:01:11 Dr. Mikhael But really these are what blood cancers are as well. And so what happens is the body unfortunately normally keeps a balance so that none of your cells go out of control and, and grow out of control, and your lung or your breast or your colon. And the same thing in the bone marrow that normally we make good cells in our bone marrow that, that make these red, white and platelets as we've described. 00:06:01:13 - 00:06:21:16 Dr. Mikhael But sometimes they go out of control as well. And the double whammy, sadly, with blood cancers is that these are the cancers and these are the cells that are meant to protect you, that are meant to help you. And now all of a sudden, they've turned and are hurting you. And in particular, the cell in question in myeloma is what we call the plasma cell that lives in the bone marrow. 00:06:21:18 - 00:06:39:01 Dr. Mikhael Now, whether you know it or not, for the last few years, you've all been talking about plasma cells. Every time we talk about a vaccination, we're talking about a plasma cell, because plasma cells are the cells in your body that make what we call antibodies. And we all know we love to use words medicine the patients don't understand. 00:06:39:06 - 00:07:07:13 Dr. Mikhael So we call it immunoglobulins. But it's basically just antibodies. So if I get a vaccine like a Covid shot, my that message gets sent to my plasma cells. Those plasma cells make antibodies so that if I get exposed to Covid, they can fight and help destroy the Covid. And that's what, is so important about plasma cells. I joke about the fact that I want to have a picture of my wife's plasma cells next to my bed, know that she has a beautiful face. 00:07:07:13 - 00:07:29:19 Dr. Mikhael I'd love to look at that. But I'm a little obsessed with plasma cells because these are the cells that unfortunately become cancerous in myeloma. And so what myeloma basically is, is now instead of making good antibodies that fight off infection, we make bad antibodies that damage the body. So these are bad proteins. Sometimes we call it monoclonal or m proteins. 00:07:29:24 - 00:07:49:07 Dr. Mikhael And of course myeloma is not melanoma which is the skin cancer. So in myeloma in the red column here what we call active myeloma we know it's it's a disease that can sadly damage the bone damage the kidney. But it's preceded by what we call a pre malignant condition or these other conditions we're not going to get into today. 00:07:49:11 - 00:08:07:22 Dr. Mikhael But it will become important to us because those of us like myself, of African-American descent, are twice as high risk of getting these conditions that I'll come to in just a minute. And part of the challenge is that people don't walk into a doctor's office and say, hey, doc, I got my lower because there's no simple sign or symptom that points in the direction. 00:08:07:24 - 00:08:34:06 Dr. Mikhael Sometimes it's just fatigue, sometimes it's bone pain. Sometimes if someone has done a blood test, it means a low red blood cell count as we described, or anemia. These three things are incredibly common in medicine in general. And so often it takes a while for the diagnosis to be made. When myeloma becomes active, we define it by this concept of the Crab criteria, or a calcium elevation, renal or kidney damage, anemia or bone disease. 00:08:34:11 - 00:08:54:04 Dr. Mikhael And now we've added a few more features to that in the formal definition, but that's beyond our scope. Today I just wanted to listed for you there. So myeloma is relatively rare, 1 to 2% of all cancers. We're going to see about 36,000 new cases this year and tragically, about 13,000 deaths that I'm going to get into the second half of the slide in a moment. 00:08:54:09 - 00:09:14:24 Dr. Mikhael But it is twice as common in African-Americans. And sadly, and this is the part that is very terrible, is that the mortality is twice as high in African-Americans than white Americans. So if you're a black man or a black woman with myeloma, you're expected survival after your diagnosis is half that of a white man or a white woman. 00:09:14:24 - 00:09:37:14 Dr. Mikhael And that's unacceptable as far as we're concerned. This may be indeed the most disparate or the one in whom we see the biggest gap in survival of all the cancers between the African-American community and the white community. And so as we treat myeloma, and I'm not here to talk about treatment today in any way, we have, basically we divide people as to whether or not they're going to go to transplant or not. 00:09:37:16 - 00:09:55:11 Dr. Mikhael And it's one of the things that we do where we use what's called a stem cell transplant, where we give people certain kinds of treatment. But but myeloma has radically changed in the last 20 years. I started myeloma 25 years ago. The average patient maybe lived a year or two. Now, most of our patients live over a decade, and we want them to live longer. 00:09:55:11 - 00:10:13:14 Dr. Mikhael We want him to live better. And we'll talk a bit about that progress in a minute. The sad reality is that even though we have these great treatments, and even though people get a good response and they go into what we call a remission, it's really not a cure. Eventually this disease just keeps coming back and coming back and typically comes back even more aggressively. 00:10:13:20 - 00:10:35:22 Dr. Mikhael And so this is why it's so important that we develop new drugs and new ways of attacking this disease. And I'm not admitted to do a lecture today, but I wanted to overwhelm you with this slide two slides, actually, to just give you a flavor of how many drugs. When I again started in myeloma 25 years ago, I would have had two words on this page or two drugs on this page. 00:10:35:24 - 00:10:49:12 Dr. Mikhael And now you can just see we're developing so many more drugs, and even more recently, a lot of these novel approaches using things like Car-T cell therapy and others that are that are going to really have an impact in the way we treat this disease. 00:10:49:12 - 00:11:14:05 Dr. Mikhael The call to action is based here, that there is a longer time from the symptoms to diagnosis within African Americans. So when we look at anyone with myeloma, typically they see their family doctor three times with signs and symptoms consistent with myeloma before the diagnosis is made. That's even longer within African Americans. African Americans are younger on average, the average age of diagnosis is around 70. 00:11:14:05 - 00:11:35:10 Dr. Mikhael It's about 65. In African Americans, it's actually about 64. In Hispanic Americans, as I mentioned, the disease is twice as common. It is the most common blood cancer within African Americans. We've we've developed all these great therapies over the last several years. Four things have significantly improved the lives and the life and the length of life of myeloma patients. 00:11:35:12 - 00:11:56:18 Dr. Mikhael Transplants, triplets are three drug combinations, clinical trials and Car-T cell therapy. And they all start with the letter T. It's how I remember them. And unfortunately, we've demonstrated that African-Americans are less likely to have access to those for there are some biological differences that, in fact, if you're if you're black with my longer, you were less likely to have high risk myeloma. 00:11:56:18 - 00:12:31:13 Dr. Mikhael You're more likely to have what we call standard risk myeloma. In fact, to me, that widens the disparity because we would expect that people would live longer with myeloma if they were if they were African American. But sadly, as I showed you, they did not, because the survival outcomes are half that of white Americans. And yet I end with number seven because on this slide, because it is so important to recognize that even through V.A. studies and so on, we've learned that if the equal access is given, African-Americans actually should have better outcomes, should live longer, which again, as I mentioned, expands that disparity and makes us realize that this really is a call to 00:12:31:13 - 00:12:46:07 Dr. Mikhael action. So what are we going to do about it? Well, many people on this call today could answer this question better than I could, but I break it down into three areas where we have to do work within the lay community. We have to do work within the medical community, and we have to do work within the regulatory and corporate community. 00:12:46:07 - 00:13:09:05 Dr. Mikhael And there's so much work to be done. And we're blessed at the IMF, the International Myeloma Foundation, to be in a place where we feel we can bring many of the stakeholders together to address at least a considerable number of those drivers. And so we created mPOWER, which is a bit of a play on words M standing for Myeloma Power, where we want to empower patients and communities to change the course of my life. 00:13:09:07 - 00:13:27:09 Dr. Mikhael And it's really centered. And I'm going to be very brief about this, but very centered in three major focuses. Number one, to engage the lay community to raise awareness around myeloma. If you've never heard of myeloma so that you know those signs and symptoms, that if something's not feeling right, that you go to your doctor to talk about it, to break the stigma of myeloma. 00:13:27:11 - 00:13:46:18 Dr. Mikhael And as you're going to see, we partner with everybody and anybody about this, whether it's the faith community, fraternities, sororities, the medical community, we work closely with, the National Medical Association and others. We also, secondly, want to educate the primary care community so that they can be sensitive and learn to make the diagnosis earlier and not confuse it with things like diabetes. 00:13:46:18 - 00:13:50:23 Dr. Mikhael That often gets happen and then to enhance the myeloma providers themselves. 00:13:50:23 - 00:14:07:09 Dr. Mikhael And so empower is a national movement, but it's also local. We want to provide resources across the country. We know every community is different. We don't just descend on a community fix and leave. So we've worked in Charlotte, in Atlanta, in Baltimore, in Tampa, in New York, we're going to Detroit and many other places. 00:14:07:09 - 00:14:24:11 Dr. Mikhael And we want to go to over time, where in every situation we put the patient in the middle and we partner with anybody and everybody. And I'm hoping out of this call today, this discussion today, we can even partner with other individuals who want, alongside of these amazing medical institutions like VCU, so that we can care better for our patients. 00:14:24:11 - 00:14:43:22 Dr. Mikhael And so we do interactive work, both virtually and in person because of the pandemic, of course, any, hip hop fans here might recognize Dougie Fresh, with whom we did a session, and various ways that we draw people to our website, to learn about myeloma, to learn about the resources there, to make them, make it accessible to them. 00:14:43:22 - 00:15:06:08 Dr. Mikhael We've been particularly been focused on church outreach. This is just a few weeks ago, and the Macedonia Baptist Church in Los Angeles, where our CEO and president, who he himself originally from Ethiopia, is a 27 year survivor of myeloma. I love the verse. Where there is no vision, the people perish. And there he is sharing with this church group and he and I together, about myeloma. 00:15:06:10 - 00:15:20:06 Dr. Mikhael To our on the right side of the slide is, a well known individual, Robert Pugh from Charlotte. He's both pastor and a patient, and he shares his experience and what it's like in that storytelling, that sharing together has brought many, many people together. 00:15:20:06 - 00:15:26:18 Dr. Mikhael And as I conclude, as I've mentioned, we have done tremendous work, not just within the community, but within the health care community. 00:15:26:20 - 00:15:36:17 Dr. Mikhael This was a course that I taught and we've had in multiple venues to educate primary care physicians about, multiple myeloma so that they can make the diagnosis more clearly. 00:15:36:17 - 00:15:49:00 Dr. Mikhael And so, for time's sake, I'm going to stop there and just direct people towards our, website. If you're interested in myeloma, dawg@empower.myeloma.org, we've already had, over 300,000 people come to our website, 00:15:49:00 - 00:15:55:22 Dr. Mikhael And I know our time is going quickly, redeemed, but I'm more than happy to take some questions if there are any. Thank you so much. 00:15:55:24 - 00:16:11:02 Rudene Mercer Haynes Doctor Joe, I can see why there is a bromance with doctor Winn. You all are of the same ilk. Oh, my God, that was amazing. My first question for you is, is MPower coming to Richmond or can MPower come to Richmond? 00:16:11:04 - 00:16:28:02 Dr. Mikhael MPower can absolutely come to Richmond. So one of the things that we have, we have, said is that, you know, we want to in sync with trying to have national efforts, have individual efforts. And I've already had even through this call today, people reaching out to me, asking, asking how we can do this. 00:16:28:02 - 00:16:48:19 Dr. Mikhael And I would very much entertain the opportunity. Our, our goal is to reach everyone, of course. And it just takes time. And we want to be, systematic about it. But this is an environment in an area where you have all the elements that we would want for MPower. A fantastic, dedication to the community, health institution. 00:16:48:21 - 00:16:58:18 Dr. Mikhael That is this remarkable, and, the the IMF has, over 150 support groups across the country, of which there's one in Richmond. 00:16:58:18 - 00:17:25:16 Rudene Mercer Haynes Doctor Mikhael, it's so interesting. I mentioned my uncle had, multiple myeloma. He had the Car T-cell therapy, and he shared with us what his doctor's bill would have been, but for insurance. I think insurance is another piece of this that sort of impedes access to treatment. Right? Some people can't afford, the sorts of therapies that exist, particularly, you know, people who are, you know, disproportionately impacted in a socioeconomic scale. 00:17:25:16 - 00:17:30:08 Rudene Mercer Haynes So I, I just think that that's something another nut we need to crack in this. 00:17:30:10 - 00:17:47:08 Dr. Mikhael And, oh, I agree with you. I mean, that's why I included both the health care system and the socioeconomic or social determinants of health in those initial drivers. You know, in this country, if you are black with myeloma, you're more likely to be uninsured or more likely to be on Medicaid than if you're a white man or woman with myeloma. 00:17:47:08 - 00:18:07:04 Dr. Mikhael I mean, that is clearly, a problem that affects access to transplants, that affects access to Car-T cell therapies described in even, many of the key drugs that we use. Because these these are, you know, costly processes of treating people. Very often people get treatment for many, many months, if not years with myeloma. So I completely agree with you. 00:18:07:04 - 00:18:26:18 Dr. Mikhael We we, for example, the IMF have pushed very hard on the whole concept of oral parity because a lot of the drugs that we use are pills or oral drugs, and yet somehow insurance seems to cover the intravenous ones, but not the oral ones. And so that leads people from being able the opportunity to have oral therapy. So that's why in that, that original, what can we do about the slide? 00:18:26:18 - 00:18:38:15 Dr. Mikhael I included the regulatory and the corporate community, because we have to look at those kinds of policies and laws that affect our health care system in general, but specifically affect, the myeloma community. 00:18:38:17 - 00:18:53:09 Rudene Mercer Haynes Thank you so much for educating us about this. And I have to tell you, whatever you search on the internet would not be as helpful as that slide that you put up there about the trucks, the army, all the things very helpful in understanding this particular. 00:18:53:11 - 00:18:56:14 Dr. Mikhael Any time, if I can ever help you and your family. By the way, 00:18:56:14 - 00:19:03:22 Rudene Mercer Haynes I could talk to Doctor Joe all day, as you can probably tell, but I need to pivot again and, tell you about something else exciting going on, 00:19:03:24 - 00:19:23:11 Rudene Mercer Haynes in Richmond. So first of all, I got to tell you, I went to Richmond Raceway yesterday to pick up my bib for the Monument 10K. I am not running all of it because I'm not that fit. But I will be jogging and running and walking and all the things. But guess who I saw? I saw one of our speakers today. 00:19:23:13 - 00:19:45:18 Rudene Mercer Haynes Hamilton Glass, who has been instrumental, I think, on some of the artistic, sort of design behind the Monument 10K 2023 race. So with that, for our next guest, I'm not really going to do a traditional introduction. I want these individuals to sort of share with you who they are, where they're from, and what they've done in the community during this fireside chat. 00:19:45:20 - 00:19:56:06 Rudene Mercer Haynes We're excited to have, as I mentioned, Hamilton Glass, and we also have Sir James Thornhill. But what you might not know is they’re the artists of the new Massey on the 00:19:56:06 - 00:19:56:18 Rudene Mercer Haynes Move. 00:19:56:18 - 00:20:02:07 Rudene Mercer Haynes Mobile health units again say that five times fast. Massey on the move mobile health units. 00:20:02:12 - 00:20:06:13 Rudene Mercer Haynes Massey on Massey along with. 00:20:06:15 - 00:20:23:05 Rudene Mercer Haynes What do you mean to take over next time? But this is made possible by the generous support from Dominion Energy for sponsoring the vans and Bank of America for sponsoring the educational materials that will be distributed by the mobile health units. So with that, I think I'll just start talking. 00:20:23:07 - 00:20:44:18 Dr. Winn So so in starting this, I was going to start off with the first thing about trying to set the stage, really, before we even get to the vans, about what drove you in the type of art that you're trying to do and what you're trying to communicate, particularly to our community. So first I was going to, turn it over to, Brother Glass and then Brother Thornhill. 00:20:44:20 - 00:20:45:11 Hamilton Glass Yeah, absolutely. 00:20:45:16 - 00:20:47:11 Dr. Winn Why do you do what you do? 00:20:47:13 - 00:21:05:04 Hamilton Glass Oh, thank you, thank you for for allowing me to, speak here. For those who don't know me, my name is Hamilton Glass. I'm a public art is here in Richmond, Virginia. A lot of my work centers around, community engagement work, really allowing the community to be able to be a part of the art. 00:21:05:10 - 00:21:45:13 Hamilton Glass So the art doesn't just speak to the community, but it speaks for and with the community. And, when being asked to be a part of this project, I mean, it's like a once in a lifetime, situation to be able to, to again align myself with VCU, and Massey, and, and this, this project of getting these vans out into the community to again service and also learn and know more about cancer is something that's just really aligned with with what I do in general, just and so and being able to be a part of that, I just wanted to, to be able to bring some energy, design and bring some 00:21:45:13 - 00:22:03:02 Hamilton Glass energy to these vans. That gave people hope. And I, I won't speak too long. So I'll let James James go. But again, I'm just, overwhelmed to be asked to be a part of this and be part of the face of, of what, what these vans look like. 00:22:03:04 - 00:22:04:16 Dr. Winn Brother James. 00:22:04:18 - 00:22:06:18 Sir James Thornhill How are you doing, sir? 00:22:06:20 - 00:22:12:08 Dr. Winn I am good, especially when I'm amongst the presence of these folks here with Facts and Faith Friday.. 00:22:12:10 - 00:22:12:21 Sir James Thornhill Yeah, yeah. 00:22:12:22 - 00:22:15:18 Dr. Winn So just picking up on that thing. 00:22:15:20 - 00:22:25:22 Sir James Thornhill So James Thornhill, resident of of Jackson Ward lived here all my life. And, I call myself a community activist kind of artist. 00:22:25:24 - 00:22:49:03 Sir James Thornhill Most of my murals are dealing with historical issues within our community. Unsung heroes, people that are not usually recognized. We put them on a wall, you know, because, my thought has always been, without art, our community suffers because there's no creativity and art to be taken out of our schools. So, I mean, a lot of the arts be taken away from a lot of things. 00:22:49:03 - 00:23:09:20 Sir James Thornhill So my thing is to make sure that we have this visual aspect of art, because some kids are going to do all the academics, but who are bringing on this team. If you notice him and I, we always have like we have volunteers a lot and those are our local students, you know, our teachers, our our investors and our partners. 00:23:09:20 - 00:23:27:00 Sir James Thornhill So, my biggest thing is about community and just seeing what can we do to bring more, more color, more light and more understanding because, you know, art, art is, art is visual words. 00:23:27:02 - 00:23:41:21 Rudene Mercer Haynes And I'm sure you were thinking about this when you were giving your answer, Sir James, but can you and Hamilton sort of share with us what your proudest moments are? Have been as an artist? I know there's so many to think about, but. 00:23:41:23 - 00:23:43:04 Sir James Thornhill Yes. Yeah. 00:23:43:06 - 00:24:05:02 Hamilton Glass Honestly, my proudest moment of being an artist, honestly, is really just becoming an artist. I know that sounds cliche, but, if you know, if you know my story, it really centers around, I didn't go into art to, because I never thought I could be. I fell for that stereotype of being a starving artist. 00:24:05:04 - 00:24:28:16 Hamilton Glass And so I went into architecture instead. And so, and I kind of accredit that to not having a representation of a black, thriving artist. And so the second that I, kind of leap out in faith and, and went and, and made that happen, I, I made it a thing to, to be that representation that I didn't have. 00:24:28:16 - 00:24:54:24 Hamilton Glass And so that's why my work again, revolves around that community engagement. And James, and I again, have partnered, partnered and collaborated on many things. And we both we especially when we go into schools, make it, make it so that the students know and see and work with. So they, they have that representation as well. So that's my proudest moment, in my, in my art career. 00:24:55:01 - 00:25:19:00 Sir James Thornhill Well, one of my proudest moments was, of course, being back our neighborhood. And when we do this mural, we do, dedication, ceremonies. And then we, we talk, with the families of those people we are painting. And to get all the history, I mean, firsthand because, you know, you live in a city, you know, you’re not going to paint somebody’s face, you know, and a family. 00:25:19:04 - 00:25:37:08 Sir James Thornhill And it's not right. Because you're going to look at a family every day and say that’s not right. So I guess my proudest long when those, those member of the family start crying. Man, you are putting my, my family on the wall and they walk past with tears in the eyes and just the community, the, their impression. 00:25:37:08 - 00:25:55:09 Sir James Thornhill Because my thing is, it comes from above. We are the middle man, right? I really like that. We are the middle man. And then we put it out to the people. So it comes place from above. We get it here, we digest it and we put it out so people understand. So I guess my proudest moment is just when people look at it, they give you your props. 00:25:55:09 - 00:26:11:04 Sir James Thornhill They they make you feel so good. You know, you did a great job because of how people approach you, what they see about your love, about your, your, connection and your willingness to give back to the community. 00:26:11:06 - 00:26:28:24 Dr. Winn So. So if I had, again, I'm not giving away any secrets, not giving away any secrets. But if you could say something about what energy you were trying to bring to the van, or why you were excited about doing it, would you just give us a little hint? 00:26:28:24 - 00:26:51:05 Dr. Winn A little spice, just a little teaser about what you were really, what you were excited about with this van project, or even if you want to break down, give us a little secret about kind of what you thought about doing. But again, I know there's always been a lot to show and talk about your stuff before they see it, so I'll just say give us just a little teaser. Brother Hamilton. 00:26:51:07 - 00:26:53:14 Dr. Winn Just a little teaser that I'll talk with you. 00:26:53:16 - 00:27:23:12 Hamilton Glass So my, my, design and in general really plays with color theory and really, you said it when you were when you were kind of asking that question. It really revolves around energy, right? It revolves around, yes, energy and, making making people feel bright. And even if, you know, you look at this van moving down the street, and have no idea what it is, it makes you want to follow it. 00:27:23:14 - 00:27:27:13 Hamilton Glass And so that was that was kind of the goal in mind. 00:27:27:15 - 00:27:39:02 Dr. Winn Hold up. So if you from baby Bill Kentucky and Bill Virginia and I saw this where you try to say it's going to make me happy. Yeah absolutely. 00:27:39:04 - 00:27:52:01 Hamilton Glass That's the the goal is, is to portray movement, movement and, and just really high energy. And that was one of the things that was really important to me. 00:27:52:03 - 00:27:53:22 Dr. Winn Brother James 00:27:53:24 - 00:28:14:12 Sir James Thornhill For me, it was it's movement. When I heard that term Massey on the move or flow and imagine a world without cancer, I had a niece of mine who passed from cancer, and a couple of friends of mine had passed from cancer and a good friend of mine Darnell. So Darnell, when they all hair was shaved off, he looked at me with a smile, said do you still love me? 00:28:14:17 - 00:28:39:07 Sir James Thornhill Yes, I do. In this couple of weeks he was gone, you know? So I felt like it was personal to me to to engage this and then, to make it acceptable to come into these diverse neighborhoods was a challenge because we want people to look at without fear or intimidation. We want them to come. What I like is the ice cream, those old ice cream trucks who was come around up. 00:28:39:09 - 00:29:04:02 Sir James Thornhill They had music playing. We want people to run like that, like that. Right. You know, and then when we did the little girl and, And I called uncle Joe and then the flowers, and then the color, just that whole collaboration of Massey team and myself. And when I first thought about it by saying I ain’t never warpped no van. I mean, you know, never before, and I'm trying to figure this out. 00:29:04:02 - 00:29:32:00 Sir James Thornhill I called Hamilton a couple of conversations, and what you what your team assured me was that we got you here. We we're here. We we're back to back. So, the experience was great, you know, but just the fact of having your work riding around, I know they have been before, but I've never been able to look outside and see a buss with my work on it, but. A couple walls, but no busses or vans, so I'm just excited and thankful that you trust me enough to be a part of the process. 00:29:32:02 - 00:29:47:08 Dr. Winn I, I am looking forward to this partnership and looking forward to the spirit that you brought to this project. The many time you talk about a man with an ice cream truck, man I was the first one in line going ice cream. I could hear it a mile away. But yeah, but, you know. 00:29:47:10 - 00:29:53:11 Rudene Mercer Haynes I'm so happy that you all could join us today. I'm looking forward to seeing your artwork around the community.