LeVar "Var" Lawrence

In 2005, I was shot in an argument over a dice game in the Fort Greene projects, where I lived. From the Hospital, I went to Goldwater for rehab. In 2013, they closed, and I came to Coler.

I always knew how to draw anything. If I had chosen to stay in school, I could've been a tattoo artist or an architect. Instead, I chose to be a drug dealer. Once I got paralyzed like this, I started using my phone to manipulate pictures, using more abstraction. I can still be an artist, just in a different way.

When we talk to people, I say what’s in my heart. I talk to kids as if they’re my own. I see my own kids every week. I have three boys and three girls, aged 14 to 25, and I talk to them straight up. That way they can feel they can be straight up with somebody else.