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WENTWORTH -- It's the first day of a new semester at Rockingham Community College and Todd Drake's first day as the new art instructor. He's the slim, bald guy with the dark mustache and glasses.

A bumper sticker is taped to the door of his classroom: "Intolerance of difference is the height of arrogance and the death of art."

Though left behind by a former instructor, it couldn't be more appropriate for Drake.

Most of his work is grounded in issues of social justice.

The goal of his art is to expose the humanity within his subjects, whether they're Alzheimer's patients, exotic dancers, truck drivers, college students or undocumented immigrants.

Drake creates art to interpret their experiences, bringing his subjects into the process. And he creates art to spread this message:

We may come from different socio-economic or cultural backgrounds. We may speak different languages or worship differently. But hear our stories. Learn what matters to us. And you'll see we're not so different.

He wants to enlighten others, to get them to share the same compassion that he feels. And thus, his art has a greater purpose than self-expression.

* * *

Drake was one of those kids who was always drawing or making something.

Outside, he built forts and treehouses; inside he drew beach scenes with seagulls and waves.

"I was better at art than spelling and reading, and my mom praised me for what I was good at," he says. "So, I kept making art."

But when it came to making a career decision, Drake chose medicine. It was a respected profession, and he could help people as a doctor. An art professor at UNC-Chapel Hill also advised him against becoming an artist.

But Drake was miserable studying medicine. He remembers the exact moment when he decided to go against all of the advice he'd been given.

During his second year in medical school at Wake Forest University, he recalls praying in a state of emotional distress: "What am I going to do?"

He was driving home from Winston-Salem and passed a certain section of I-40 Business, dubbed Dead Man's Curve because of the many accidents there. As he passed the curve, he heard a voice: "It's going to be OK. Go ahead and pursue your art."

Drake believes it was God who spoke to him, giving him permission to pursue his passion.

Though newly married, his wife, Robin, says she never worried about their financial future.

"I knew in my heart (medical school) wasn't the right thing (for him)," she says. "I wanted him to be happy at that point. I didn't care what he did."

There was another reason Robin Drake didn't worry. She was always attracted to his ambition and self-confidence.

"Todd's a doer," she says. "He's never going to sit idle. ... Doors have always opened for us when we need them to open."

To make ends meet, the Drakes started their own document retrieval service while Todd Drake was pursuing his master's degree in art at UNCG. The business also allowed Robin Drake to work from home, while caring for their sons, Shaw and Reid. By the time they sold the business in 1996, they had 10 employees and clients in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Now, 19-year-old Shaw Drake respects his father's career decision.

"He always found a way to have enough money to support us but at the same time never compromising what he wanted to do," Shaw Drake says. "I've never seen him do something purely for monetary purposes."

* * *

Good art reveals itself in layers, Drake often tells his art students.

His work used to be more realistic. He tried to draw what he saw: animals, landscapes, houses. It was his training at UNCG that inspired him to explore abstract art.

"Their program gave me a really good foundation in observational skills, but also taught me to recognize and employ strong design principles," he says.

And for Drake, creating art -- that sometimes solitary process -- is more rewarding when others are involved. Drake says this allows him to paint more honestly.

Ola Mohamed, 20, is currently collaborating with Drake on a book of Muslim self-portraits. The UNC- Chapel Hill junior says Drake welcomes her input. She says other artists may have a particular image they wish to present to their audience, but not Drake.

"They want to mold you into what they envision the end to look like, whereas Todd wants everyone he encounters to bring something new," Mohamed says.

Drake's approach makes the end project more complete, she says.

He also strives for images that are both abstract and narrative.

His et al series of paintings were inspired by interviews with Alzheimer's patients, exotic dancers, retail store cashiers and truck drivers. They also gave him doodles or small drawings that reflected their interest or life stories. Drake used their sketches and drew from his own interactions with them to create his own work.

"This allows the group to shape the paintings in a very real way so that the end product is by them and a unique creation of my own," he says.

Any profits he makes from these paintings will be shared with nonprofit organizations or college scholarships.

He recently helped create a mobile for Northern Guilford High School in Greensboro, aimed at encouraging dialogue between the students there. The new school, which brings together students from Northwest and Northeast high schools, creates a more diverse student population than either school had on its own.

Drake and an art teacher at Northern asked students to submit their hopes and concerns about their new school in the form of a question. Many of their concerns were about how they might get along.

Their questions were presented as thought bubbles that hung in classrooms at both schools. The bubbles will hang as a single mobile once Northern opens, and teachers will lead discussions about the questions presented there.

Drake wanted to do the project because his son, Reid, is a sophomore there, but he had another reason, too. Throughout school, Drake was involved in only one fight: in junior high school, the first year of integration.

Until then, Drake, who is white, had never been to school with many black students. His opponent, who was black, kicked him on their way to the buses. Drake defended himself but ended up with a broken nose.

"My guess is that he was angry at being relocated, and in retrospect, he was acting out in anger," Drake says. "And I was scared and intimidated, as well."

He wonders if things might have turned out differently if teachers had encouraged more dialogue between the students.

"We fear what's different and what we don't know," Drake says. "That's human nature."

* * *

Drake's exploration of socially focused art evolved gradually.

"It seems to be a slow process of combining my skills as an artist, as a teacher and my idealism -- my love for my fellow man and a desire to make a difference," he says.

He has a blog on art and activism, titled: "Make Art Like You Care. Good Art. Good Works. Better World."

It's a space dedicated to artists like him who are using their craft to bring attention to social justice issues, such as immigration.

Drake received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 2004 to create a project involving a diverse group of people living in the South. He held free multicultural art classes at Guilford College and at a school in Biscoe to draw participants.

Through collaboration, they created pieces that address this question: "What do we retain as essential to our past and what is released to become renewed?"

Drake met fellow Rockefeller recipient Hannah Gill through that project. Gill, a cultural anthropologist, focuses on Latin Americans in North Carolina.

Together, they published a book, "Going to Carolina del Norte," based on interviews with Mexicans from Celaya, Mexico, now living in Orange County.

Gill recorded their harrowing stories of coming to the U.S., and Drake helped them create art that reflected those experiences.

"With art workshops, people felt a lot more free to have a conversation that was a lot more spontaneous," Gill says.

Those workshops in Carrboro eventually took them to Celaya to meet the family members left behind, enabling them to share the other side of immigration.

"We wanted the general public to understand where Latin American immigrants were coming from and why they were here," Gill says.

After that project, Drake illustrated another book, "Give Me Eyes, Crossing Borders to the Heart." It's a tale of a couple who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexican border to pursue their dreams of a better life.

"It's not to justify illegal immigration, but to allow the reader to see the human struggle of those who choose that path," Drake says.

The recent surge in anti-immigration sentiments reminds Drake of the days before integration. He says immigrants are people, whether they're in the U.S. legally or not. It's a message he's determined to spread.

"I'm not trying to play political-correctness cop," Drake says. "I'm just trying to challenge the assumptions we have about one another."

* * *

He brings the same attitude and spirit of collaboration to the classroom.

The first thing Drake wants to know from his RCC students is: What do you want to keep and what do you want to change about the class?

He tells his students they'll be respected, even if their beliefs are extremely conservative. He has been called a flaming liberal. They'll have some interesting conversations, he says.

He promises to push them to find their voice as an artist. And he warns them: "I hope you're not in here because your mommy said go take an art class or your peers said it's an easy class. It will be demanding."

Drake likes teaching art because it fulfills that desire that made him want to pursue medicine: to help others.

The projects he likes most are collaborative pieces that tackle an issue and involve many artists. At Guilford, he led a project in which students used art to express their feelings following the highly publicized beatings of two Middle Eastern students there last year.

It's not unusual for students to shed tears in his class. Sometimes the tears come from healing. And sometimes, as happened recently, they come from failed attempts to deliver on an assignment.

"The worst critic that you'll have as an artist is yourself," he often tells his students.

* * *

Robin Drake says her husband is first a father, then an artist.

Todd's father died when he was 2, and his stepfather died when he was 14. That's why Drake worked to nurture close relationships with his sons, staying involved in their activities and taking them on separate trips, in addition to their family vacations.

His interest in social activism and art has influenced both sons.

He took son Reid, 15, to his third antiwar rally last year.

"Usually at school, aside from my small group of friends, there's not that many people with similar views," Reid says. "(At the rally), you really feel like one body."

Shaw Drake, a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill, is pursuing a major in Latin American studies and Spanish. His decision came after joining his dad in Celaya, Mexico, for the "Going to Carolina Del Norte" project.

He had been to New York and overseas, but nothing prepared him for the poverty he saw in Mexico City. His previous travels had been to more touristy destinations.

In Mexico City, they were warned of the dangers of tourist kidnappings or robberies.

"It was dirty. It was polluted. You could definitely feel the pollution in the air," he says.

But in Celaya, which was more rural, Shaw Drake experienced great hospitality and generosity. He became ill while there, and the woman in whose home they stayed cared for him all night.

"She took care of me like I was her child, and I had just met this woman," he says.

Another man missed an entire day of work to take Shaw to a trustworthy doctor. In Mexico, where a day's wages may equal $7 and a gallon of milk may cost $5, this was a huge sacrifice.

"The rest of the world sees people like them as lesser than we are because we have all these material goods," Shaw Drake says.

"To see the conditions they were living in, at the same time, their happiness with life was a life-changing experience for me."

Shaw Drake plans to return to Celaya this year. He respects his father's willingness to help anyone in need and his respect for others.

"He's instilled the idea not to see someone else as less because of their situation," Shaw Drake says.

* * *

Drake's art may be hard for some people to understand or interpret.

It's sometimes hard to distinguish his subjects within his pieces. UNCG art student Nancy Jones loves Impressionistic paintings but had never really explored abstract art. When she was charged with finding an artist activist for her Arts and Activism class last fall, she chose Drake.

Jones says she appreciates his work more when she hears the stories behind the pieces. She has always appreciated art and music but had never been an activist.

She admires Drake's concern for others.

"I'm glad he's out there and he's in this community," Jones says.

"He's causing us to think about some of these things we should be thinking of, such as immigration."

Contact Tina Firesheets at 373-3498 or tina.firesheets@news-record.com