In this feature, Next City explores how three artistic communities have been empowered and fulfilled through creative endeavors: Art From the Streets in Austin, MudGirls in Atlantic City and a conglomerate of artists and art organizations in the Skid Row neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles. For most, their practice fosters a sense of home. For others art is a pathway to economic mobility. For most, economic hardship and houselessness present varying degrees of financial, emotional and physical vulnerabilities, and their artistic expressions manifest that vulnerability. Next City talked with artists who have had significant experience living with extreme economic hardship, or without shelter - how it shifted their perception of themselves and intersected with their own pre-held stigmas surrounding the unhoused - and ultimately, how it affected or catalyzed their art. Lack of affordable housing and inadequate income remain the leading causes of houselessness in the US, according to the National Law Center of Homelessness and Poverty. They cannot afford the housing options in their area they live in cars, tent camps, local shelters, or on the streets. Many have jobs but are not paid a liveable wage. In the U.S., the estimated 567,000 people who are unsheltered or the more than 17 million living in extreme poverty have fallen through the gaps in our increasingly inadequate social safety net. Throughout history, many artists, particularly those who were women and people of color, would have been marginalized and impoverished had they not practiced their craft, and been paid for it. They still have an annual art show at the Neal Kocurek Memorial Austin Convention Center, which can bring in upwards of $100,000, all of which is distributed to the artists. This approach has provided many of the artists with consistent, livable income, Chapman says. Now, they’ve scaled the program to offer prints of original artwork as well as other merchandise, along with pop-ups and smaller shows throughout the year. Early on, the artists were only paid once a year for the art they sold at a big annual art show. “A lot of our artists have gotten off the streets because of our program,” says Pat Chapman, AFTS studio coordinator. He works part-time for the city and paints as much as possible he tries to paint 30 new pieces a year. Through AFTS he was able to sell enough art to be able to move into his own apartment five years ago, where he still lives today. Williams sums up his experience with AFTS and painting as a practice that gives him “stability, sobriety and a sense of entitlement,” as well as ownership over his life. But most importantly, his artistic mantra comes from something he heard his mother tell her own art students many years ago: “Keep it simple, keep it simple.” Don’t tell the whole story to your audience, she would say. He’s influenced by the flourishes and curves of Japanese architecture. The subjects he paints include animals, landscapes, and jazz and African American themes. Williams describes his artistic style as “primordial,” a word - and technique - he finally landed on after years of trial and error, he says. “They were present.”ĪFTS artist Larry Williams (Photo courtesy Art From the Streets) But most of all they had people were always there when they said they would be,” says Williams. “What I found out was they had a lot of paper, and a lot of paint. It’s run by a board of volunteer directors, who manage the website and inventory, and provide the open studio space and high-quality art supplies for the artists - mostly acrylic paint, pastel or charcoal and paper. The program gave him a haven from the “culture shock” of homelessness, he says.ĪFTS is a nonprofit that started 12 years ago to give people living with homelessness a way to make and sell their original artwork at an annual art show. It comes to you…not only fast, but dramatically.” He was living at Austin Research Center for the Homeless (ARCH) when he encountered Art From the Streets (AFTS). “Homelessnesss was something I had never considered, intimately. “I went through a divorce - a mid-life crisis,” Williams says. And didn’t encounter a paintbrush again until about 40 years later. He moved away from art and painting during his adolescence, when he was more interested in boxing and baseball. LA’s ‘Unapologetically Black’ Mile-Long Monument Rises in Crenshaw.L.A.’s Alternative Bookstores Put Community And Culture First.Housing In Brief: Kingston, New York Has Passed A Historic Rent Reduction.
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