Street Artist KASSO Paints Black History at Middlebury College 

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• Caleb Kenna
• Jennifer Herrera Condry and Will "KASSO" Condry in front of a mural depicting Mary Annette Anderson and Martin Henry Freeman

With its picturesque steeples and grand "Little Ivy" campus, Middlebury College is not the first place you'd expect a nationally established street artist to call home. In recent months, though, muralist Will "KASSO" Condry has been creating large-scale portraits of African American historical figures and icons there. You just have to know where to look.

The story of the New Jersey-born artist's arrival in Vermont is closely entwined with the emergence and evolution of Middlebury College's diversity efforts and its new "intercultural" space, the Anderson Freeman Resource Center. Located in Carr Hall, the AFC officially opened in October 2015, a result of students' efforts to obtain a designated space on campus for students of color and other marginalized identities.

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• Caleb Kenna
• Will "KASSO" Condry

One of the students behind that movement was Condry's niece, Sadé Williams, who graduated in 2014. At her invitation, Condry led a social activism workshop on campus in 2012 and live-painted at a Verbal Onslaught spoken-word event. In 2016, he spoke at the college's TEDx speaker series. And in August of this year, Condry cemented his connection to Middlebury College: He married Jennifer Herrera Condry, who is the AFC's associate director.

Today, visitors to the center will find information at a front desk, along with glossy buttons. Some feature a quote from African American author and activist bell hooks; others, the words "First Generation," for students who are the first in their families to attend college.

On the wall just behind the desk, a floor-to-ceiling mural depicts the center's namesakes, Mary Annette Anderson and Martin Henry Freeman. The former was the first woman of color to graduate from Middlebury; she was valedictorian of the class of 1899. The latter was a Rutland native who graduated from Middlebury in 1849 and went on to become the first African American college president (of Allegheny Institute, later Avery College, in Pittsburgh).

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• Caleb Kenna
• Mural of Pamela Colman Smith

Last spring, Condry worked with now-senior studio art major Zarai Zaragoza to design and complete that mural, the first of many in the AFC. During that semester, Condry was the Alexander Twilight artist-in-residence, joining a lineup of past residents that has included activist and author Angela Y. Davis and Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican American author Junot Díaz. The program is named for Middlebury's — and the country's — first African American college graduate, who also gave his name to a campus building.

"When you walk around [campus] and every oil painting is a white man," Herrera Condry said during a recent visit, "that has an impact." The overall mission of the AFC, she said, is to "develop a sense of place and a sense of ownership within the institution" for underrepresented communities.

"I'm learning so much about myself being out here," Condry said of Middlebury, "because this is a place where I wasn't sure how I'd fit in."

So far, it seems, his experience has been positive: "There's a real community here," he said.

Condry, 40, was raised in Trenton, N.J., which he describes as "a rough town that's been through a lot." He grew up in the late '80s and '90s in a primarily black and Latino area that was decimated by the crack epidemic and gang activity. Condry has been painting for as long as he can remember.

"I had a lot of responsibility from a very young age," he said. "Graffiti was my therapy."

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• Caleb Kenna
• Mural of Audre Lorde

Condry studied fine arts and illustration at the College of New Jersey, where he made his first large-scale mural in a dorm. After graduating in 2001, he supported himself for the next five years by doing airbrush painting on the east side of Trenton, which he described as a Crips-run neighborhood. The bulk of his workload came in the form of memorial portrait T-shirts.

"The images I was putting on these shirts were images of dead children," he said. "I wanted my work to be used to promote something more positive. It really affects you when 90 percent of what you're doing is centered around death."

On Easter Sunday in 2008, Condry created his first unauthorized public mural: a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi that included the late Indian leader's famous quote "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

In 2012, Condry and other members of street-art team Vicious Styles Crew founded the artist-run nonprofit SAGE Coalition. As Condry put it, SAGE's mission is to "build up the self-esteem of the inner city" through creative beautification projects. One of the organization's initiatives was to transform the vacant lot beside his Gandhi mural into a community garden.

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• Caleb Kenna
• A mural in its early stages

Condry permanently relocated to Middlebury in January, and was quick to join community initiatives beyond campus. He recently took first place in Magic Hat Brewing's annual Wall to Canvas live painting competition and fundraiser, and he showed work at Burlington's S.P.A.C.E. Gallery during the South End Art Hop. To September's inaugural Above the Radar street-art festival, organized by local spray-can artists Anthill Collective, Condry contributed a mural portrait of his wife.

"KASSO is a huge resource for us in terms of figuring out how to validate the work we're doing," said Anthill's Scottie Raymond. "He's already got that figured out; he's been doing it for decades down in Trenton."

At Middlebury College, Condry continues his work building community while honoring the struggles and accomplishments of people of color. Near the AFC's entrance hangs his portrait of bell hooks, her words seeming to radiate from her Afro. Downstairs, portraits of author James Baldwin and singer Nina Simone are beginning to take shape.

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• Caleb Kenna
• In-progress murals of James Baldwin and Nina Simone

During exam week, Condry worked with a small group of students to color-blast a western stairwell with a smattering of styles and symbols, as well as with portraits of two of the students who worked on the space. A quote from Audre Lorde — "Without community, there is no freedom" — gently winds downward as the stairs descend, leading to a portrait of the renowned poet, feminist and activist.

At the other end of Carr Hall, in the eastern stairwell, Condry is finishing up a mural titled "Where There Is a Woman There Is Magic." Named for a quote from Trenton-born playwright Ntozake Shange, the mural features women of color whom Condry admires, some of whom are generally under-recognized for their cultural contributions. Among them are Pamela Colman Smith, the British illustrator of the Waite-Smith tarot deck; and Poly Styrene, front woman for the British punk band X-Ray Spex. Among Styrene's screamed lyrics: "Oh bondage, up yours!" (1977).

Especially poignant is Condry's decision to add his own daughters to his celebration of women of color. Near the stairwell's door to the second floor are images of his two girls, one of whom is currently a sophomore at the University of Vermont. One holds a can of spray paint. "If you look at it from the top down," Condry said, "[it looks like] these two girls ran amok and painted the whole stairwell." He also plans to paint in the daughter of AFC director Roberto Lint Sagarena.

Gesturing to the staircase, Condry said, "I got to paint in a style that is vastly different than anything you'd see in this environment — I'm proud of that. Who would have thought something like this could be at Middlebury?

"I don't look at it as promoting any agenda," he concluded. "It's promoting the truth."