Homelessness is on the rise in Austin, Texas. In 2018, more than 7,000 people experienced homeless in Austin, according to the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO). On any given day there are over 2,000 individuals living in shelters or unsheltered — a number that’s risen nearly 5% between 2018 and 2019.
But building a community can play an important role in supporting individuals experiencing homelessness. Since 1990, Art from the Streets has been doing exactly that.
The organization helps the housing insecure find a greater sense of stability through art. Three times a week, individuals gather at a local Austin church where they can paint for free during an open studio session. There, artists have a refuge from life on the streets while also building a greater sense of community.
“We create a place of safety for people who are on the street to be able to come inside to just be, and be supported to create,” co-founder Heloise Gold told NationSwell. “I don’t refer to this as ‘art therapy’ per se, but it is very therapeutic.”
Art from the Streets also helps its artists get paid for their work. For the past 27 years, it’s hosted an end-of-year show and sale where artists are able to sell their original pieces for 95% of the profits. In more recent years, Art from the Streets has opened an online store to sell reprints and merchandise. Artists earn 60% of the proceeds from reprints, while the remaining 40% goes to support the organization.
Though the sale of artwork is important, Gold maintains that it’s the sense of community instilled that drives Art from the Streets’ mission.
“The heart of the program and what I was wanting in the beginning, that essence is still apart of this program,” said Gold. “We really want people to be apart of the community and to be influenced by each other.”
More: This Website Empowers People in Need to Make Art — and Sell It for Thousands of Dollars
Tag: art
Painted Stories of Police Brutality and the Power of Community Are Uniting Neighborhoods Across New York
Walking down Manhattan Avenue, on the edge of the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, passersby are met with an enormous black-and-blue mural bearing the somber message, “I Just Want to Come Home.”
The mural, sprawled across the side of a grocery store, wasn’t created by a woke graffiti artist. It was painted by a team of young men in response to the complex relationship between men of color and police officers.
That mural is one of over 500 murals created by Groundswell, a New York City-based organization that unites artists, young people and communities. The murals serve as tools to enable social change, and they focus on topics like diversity, healthy living, conflict resolution and history.
“We’re not just painting things to make [them] really beautiful,” Robyne Walker Murphy, Groundswell’s executive director, told AM New York. “We’re speaking to issues like police brutality and sexual harassment. We’re also talking about possibility and celebrating the beauty in these communities, too.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByQVBhyltN4/
Young people partner with artists to brainstorm and create murals in collaboration with communities.
The end result is as important as the creative process. Through planning, artists engage with the community about what topics they’re interested in. They research the history of the neighborhoods and ideas they want to explore. For example, with “I Just Want to Come Home,” the team of artists spoke with activists, city council members, residents and police officers before any work on the mural began.
After the research phase is over, an artist drafts a sketch and the design is reassessed. Finally, paint cans are opened and the painting takes place. Groundswell works with a variety of populations, including at-risk youth, incarcerated youth and women of color to help create the murals.
Each year, Groundswell works with around 800 young artists to create about 50 community projects. Since its founding in 1996, the organization has put its paintbrushes to over 500 New York walls.
The projects range from “Be the Change,” a mural that encourages elders to serve as mentors at Castle Hill Housing, a housing development in the Bronx, to a mural centered around food justice in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.
At Castle Hill Housing, where gang violence is common and buildings within the development have broken doors, windows and appliances, murals initially felt frivolous.
But the art ended up bringing the community together — something that home repairs wouldn’t typically do.
A group of artists between the ages of 16 and 24 met twice a week to transform their community center into a colorful painting of athletes, trees and clasped hands.
Sixteen-year-old Mousa Conteh helped paint the mural. “Everybody has dreams,” he told The New York Times. “This is going to most likely inspire them to keep doing what they’re doing.”
The mural is part of the 2016 Public Art/Public Housing program, launched in conjunction with Groundswell and the New York City Housing Authority, to create murals in five housing developments across New York. Groundswell also has other programs, like the Summer Leadership Institute, which employs young artists over the summer to create murals.
“For me, the most powerful aspect of this project has been seeing the excitement among everyone who has played a part in the mural as they put their personal stamp on the anonymous space of the community center,” Rob Krulak, the former interim executive director of Groundswell, told The New York Times. “This mural is an act of telling the world and each other about the importance of the people and activities that populate the center.”
More: This Website Empowers People in Need to Make Art — and Sell It for Thousands of Dollars
‘Climate Apocalypse Chic’ and 7 Other Ways Art Tackles Climate Change
When scientists, activists and journalists talk about climate change, they tend to use alarming numbers, large statistics and scary graphs. But around the world, some artists are working to translate intimidating facts and figures into something understandable on a human scale. Whether it’s via theater, fashion or street art, these artists challenge how we look at our world’s future and our role in it.
Saving Coral Reefs
Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater sculptures support the conservation and growth of coral reefs around the world. DeCaires Taylor, a marine conservationist, sculptor and scuba diver, has planted his work in places like the Maldives, Florida, Grenada and the Bahamas.
Many of his sculptures are shaped like humans — an intentional visual connection between people and marine life. The sculptures are made from a nontoxic pH-neutral concrete, with rough textures that encourage coral to grow. The sculptures start as stone but within just a few years, the work comes to life. Coral flourishes, fish find homes and crustaceans settle into the statues, sustaining life in areas where the reefs are vanishing.
Hadestown
Written by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin, Hadestown brings an unlikely subject to a large stage.
The latest Broadway hit is rooted in climate change mayhem. It’s a 21st-century spin on two classic Greek myths, where Hades, Persphone, Orpheaus and Eurydice all head to the underworld and back.
“Strange things happen in the world these days,” Eurydice sings in her opening lines. “Fall comes early. Spring comes late. One day summer comes, the next she goes, any way the wind blows.”
Before It’s Too Late
Climate change is expected to hit Miami especially hard.
Before It’s Too Late is a Miami-based initiative that sits at the intersection of art, technology and science. One of its projects, Miami Murals, uses augmented reality to transform Miami street murals. Hold your phone up, and the mural comes to life. Ocean waves slowly fill the screen and a yellow canary warns you about upcoming environmental threats. The user has two choices: They can look at our projected bleak future or pick “Be the Change,” which illustrates a healthy future, complete with wind turbines and smiling manatees.
The project started when Before It’s Too Late founder and CEO Linda Cheung noted a divide between scientists and citizens. Her murals are a place where those populations can connect and ignite social change through empathy.
Unfortunately, Ready to Wear
During February’s Fashion Week, Milk Gallery in New York hosted a new line of clothing called, Unfortunately, Ready to Wear. Created by Luka Sabbat as a collaboration between the Natural Resources Defense Council and Milk Studios, the conceptual line was designed as clothing for a future impacted by climate change. The collection is complete with fireproof jackets, storm-warning headphones and a backpack that transforms into a sleeping bag.
“We’re going at this from a different angle than I think most environmental organizations have ever done,” Rhea Suh, president of NRDC, told Fast Company. “Honestly, I think we need to be a lot more creative about how we reach out to new audiences.”
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Sean “Hula” Yoro
Street artists around the world are using art to raise awareness of climate change, but Sean “Hula” Yoro incorporates an element of nature into each of his works. His more famous murals involve tidal waves: Yoro sits on a surfboard and paints as the tides rise and fall. Yoro also paints on natural surfaces, like glaciers and trees, where the art quickly weathers away. Each piece is intended to spark a sense of urgency.
“It is important now more than ever to try to circulate positive environmental messages through art in order to combat the recent oppression of climate change research,” he told CNN. “I worry that we have taken for granted our natural world and if we wait any longer the negative effects will be irreversible.”
HighWaterLine
It’s hard to understand how rising water levels will directly impact a city simply by looking at a map. When you can physically stand in a place that will someday be underwater, it becomes a lot more realistic.
HighWaterLine is an attempt to do just that. Artist Eve Mosher, with the help of a line marker (the machines used to paint football fields), walks across cities, in her wake a blue line marking each city’s flood zone.
“I realized that while I didn’t have the skills to be a lobbyist, lawyer, or politician, I didn’t have the money to make huge investments or sway opinion, but what I did have was creativity and my art,” she writes on her website.
Mosher started the project in 2007 in New York City. Since then, HighWaterLines can be found in Philadelphia, Miami, Delray Beach and Bristol.
Chart Art
Jill Pelto’s art draws from her scientific research around the world. Whether it’s studying mountain glaciers in British Columbia or the Transantarctic Mountains of Antarctica, the destinations paired with climate data inspire her art.
“I make and read a lot of graphs, yet I forgot that many people do not,” Pelto told Vice. “Using actual information … provided an intellectual context to my work while my illustrations around the graphs created an emotional story that can inspire people to promote environmental justice.”
Support
In 2017, Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn installed a pair of giant hands in Venice’s Great Canal. The hands appeared to “support” a building that dates to the 14th century. The installation, entitled Support, was part of the 2017 Venice Biennale, and it represented the threat climate change poses to the city and the power humans have to stop it.
Venice is highly vulnerable to climate change and sea-level rise. It frequently experiences “acqua alta,” or high waters, where the city floods up to 60 times each year.
Quinn’s hands, which were based on the shape of his children’s hands, symbolize unification and the work we have to do to support future generations. “At once, the sculpture has both a noble air as well as an alarming one … the hands symbolize tools that can both destroy the world, but also have the capacity to save it,” Quinn writes on his website.
More: 5 Very Simple, Practical Things You Can Do to Curb Climate Change
This Website Empowers People in Need to Make Art — And Sell It for Thousands of Dollars
Kitty Zen used to sell her art on a blanket in a Boston public park. Now, her art has been displayed at the city’s Museum of Fine Arts and has sold for $1,000.
Zen, a 25-year-old self-taught artist, has been homeless for most of her life. But through ArtLifting, she’s created an income for herself.
“When I got that first check, it was amazing,” says Zen. “I didn’t want to cash it. I wanted to frame it.”
ArtLifting is an online platform where individuals impacted by homelessness or disabilities can sell artwork. There’s an application process where the artists and their work are assessed for mission alignment and curatorial standards.
Liz Powers, one of ArtLifting’s founders, started working in homeless shelters when she was 18. After graduating from Harvard, she received a grant to create art groups within shelters. But she noticed the art produced in these groups ended up in closets and trash cans.
“I realized there were already existing art groups all across the country, about a thousand of them, and that quality, salable art was being produced every day in these groups. The issue was that the art wasn’t going anywhere after. Instead, it would just collect dust or be thrown out. This is where I realized the need for something like ArtLifting,” Powers says.
So Powers and her brother Spencer pooled together $4,000 and founded the public benefit corporation in 2013. Originally, it functioned solely as an online gallery for original works of art. Now it’s expanded to a marketplace for curated art, business partnerships, prints and merchandise.
ArtLifting started in Boston with just four artists. Six years later, there’s about 150 artists and customers in 46 states. Staff curators choose the art they then represent on their website.
“After the last decade of working with homeless individuals, I’ve heard over and over, ‘Liz, I don’t want another handout. I don’t want someone to hand me another sandwich. I just want opportunity. I want an ability to change my own life.’ And that’s really gotten to me,” Powers says.
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While the income artists make is essential, empowerment is a key element of ArtLifting.
“My ultimate goal is to create a movement celebrating strengths. There are countless hidden talents out there, and our goal is to inspire people to notice them,” says Powers.
On its website, each artist has a story. Aron Washington, whose acrylic paintings are influenced by physics and designs, uses art to fight stigmas. Washington, who has synesthesia triggered by a bicycle accident, paints to bring awareness to humanity, he says.
Jackie Calabrese uses art as a release for PTSD and depression. Using colorful acrylics, she paints calming landscapes from memory that remind her of safe and happy places.
“[Painting] helps me to be more motivated in life, to feel less depressed or more peaceful. My past has been full of trauma,” she says. Art is a way to release a lot of that and find more peace within myself. It gives a place to think of that is beautiful instead of all the horror from the past.”
ArtLifting works with small businesses and Fortune 500 companies, like Staples and Microsoft, to provide artwork for offices. Prints sell for about $300 and original artwork has sold for as much as $25,000.
Eric Lewis Basher sold two artworks to Microsoft that now hang in Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters.
Basher currently paints at Hospitality House, a shelter and art studio in San Francisco.
“I am thrilled at the potential this means for me,” Basher says. “If anyone at that level likes my work then the world opens up.”
When a piece of art is sold, each artist makes 55 percent of the profit. One percent goes towards a fund that provides support to art groups, and the remainder keeps the business afloat.
Powers stresses that this isn’t a charity. These are talented artists looking to sell their work and spread their talent to a larger audience.
“It is a very touching moment to actually meet the person who wants to have a piece of your artwork be a part of their homes,” Zen says. “Artists are always our own hardest critics. Being appreciated that way is truly uplifting.”
More: 6 Stunning Art Projects That Are Making Cities Healthier
10 Pieces of Art We Loved in 2018
Believed
Podcast published by NPR/Michigan Radio
When former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was convicted of abusing over 300 girls over several decades, the question on everyone’s mind was — how? And how did he get away with it for so long? Believed delves into the stories of the people on the ground, including survivors and Nassar himself, to find out how so many people missed what was happening right under their noses. The podcast is a powerful reminder to listen to survivors and to empower women to come forward with the truth, with the hope that they too will be believed.
Suggested by Digital Media Producer Hallie Steiner
The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting
Long Read by Robinson Meyer, Atlantic
Admittedly, I am not as voracious a reader of long things as I could be, but one recent article truly galvanized me: this one on the Green New Deal, made mainstream by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s involvement with the protests.
It’s a bit light on details, but even in broad strokes, it’s the boldest, most exciting policy proposal I’ve seen in my lifetime (that isn’t called M4A). And IMO it’s worth “taking to the streets” for. Because I want the human race to make it, I’m considering joining one of Sunrise’s demonstrations to make sure that it happens. Our nation deserves it, and future generations will reap the benefits simply by being able to go outside in the winter without gas masks and sunscreen.
Suggested by VP of Published Content and Growth Anthony Smith
“America To Me”
Film directed by Steve James
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbfx9OpcUoc
This ten-part docuseries zeroes in on one of Chicago’s most progressive schools, located in suburban Oak Park. Despite its reputation as one of the city’s most liberal and diverse schools, more than half of the student population is white and stubborn inequalities among students persist.
The firm crew were given unprecedented access to the school throughout an entire academic year, and they in turn gave students their own cameras to record personal confessions. The result: An observational and confessional film that shows how divided America’s purported diversity can be.
Suggested by Video Producer Alan Thompson
“Brave”
Autobiography by Rose McGowan
As a woman and a fan of McGowan’s, I felt it was my duty to read her story as one of many voices raised as part of this year’s #MeToo movement. I was disgusted by what McGowan had to endure, and really proud of her candor and steadfastness in the face of unrelenting criticism. Her story, as well as that of Christine Blasey Ford and other high-profile women who have endured sexual violence, has made me certain we can work towards ending such violence and continue to demand equal treatment of women in industries that routinely protect men. But to do so, we need to change the conversation around consent, and get to a place where women can feel proud of embracing their sexuality and using it as a way to feel empowered, without having to endure shame, hatred or criticism for doing so.
Suggested by Managing Editor Alison Kotch
“Veterans Crisis Hotline”
Collection of Short Stories by Jon Chopan
By focusing almost exclusively on the moments of crisis experienced by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, “Veterans Crisis Hotline” takes on a topic largely missing from today’s mass-market literature. These 12 stories explore the lives of people who volunteer for America’s front lines and the price they pay for doing so. Author Jon Chopan doesn’t dance around issues involving PTSD, sexual violence, the price of war and the complex reality of masculine identity. Instead, he peels back the glossy veneer of valor to intentionally spark a meditation on how America supports its veterans today.
Suggested by Social Audience Director Caitlin Duffy
“Our Towns: A 1000,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America”
Nonfiction by James and Deborah Fallows
When I first got the assignment to interview James Fallows about “Our Towns: A 1000,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” the book he wrote with his wife, Deborah Fallows, my first thought was: Annnd it’s 100,000 pages long! But I was quickly won over by its deft prose and incisive look at what’s working to bolster the economies and bonhomie of small towns and cities across America. Since reading it this summer, I keep seeing how its lessons might be applied in the real world. When everything seems to be going wrong on the national stage, it’s more important than ever to realize that some things are actually going very right.
Suggested by Senior Editor Adrienne Day
“Blindspotting”
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
A film that explores the themes of gentrification, incarceration, racism, police brutality and violence in Oakland, California, “Blindspotting” will pull you to the edge of your seat and leave you hanging there until the final minute.
Starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, who are also the talent behind the screenplay, “Blindspotting” is a must see for anyone seeking insight into the lived experiences of those being displaced by the Silicon Valley tech boom.
Suggested by Social Audience Director Caitlin Duffy
“Travels With Charley In Search of America”
Novel by John Steinbeck
After the dust from WWII settled in America, Steinbeck set out on a road trip, with his dog, Charley, along for the ride. Steinbeck’s optimism throughout the novel — combined with his jaded patriotism and ultimate dissatisfaction with where America was headed at that time — also resonates particularly well in today’s America. While it’s a personal reminder to try to live outside the comfort zone I was born into, it’s essential reading for anyone who has grown comfortable with the bubbles we often refuse to step outside of.
Suggested by Video Producer Alan Thompson
“Championships”
Artist: Meek Mill
This past year has seen Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill transform into one of the most compelling voices in criminal justice reform, and Mill’s latest album, “Championships,” serves as a booming soundtrack to that movement.
Mill’s legal troubles came to a head last year when he was sentenced to up to four years for violating his probation, a move that sparked national furor. Now, with a trial still looming, Meek’s fourth studio effort roars with a barrel-chested intensity, forming a raw and emotional plea for substantive criminal justice reform.
Suggested by Senior Video Producer Sean Ryon
“The American Meme”
Documentary by Bert Marcus
While the rise of social media has meant it’s now easier than ever to stay “connected” — and connect with others who have similar interests — it also has contributed to social anxiety, depression and self-image problems. But for every study on how the rise of its popularity makes some people depressed and anxious, there are others who profit, or even thrive off of, its varied forms. The American Meme looks at the lengths some people will go in order to obtain followers on the most popular social platforms (Vine and Instagram).
Equal parts honest, sad and disturbing, “The American Meme” begs viewers to question the role social media plays in our lives, and whether we’re using it as a force for good, as a healthy creative outlet, or as a reason to feed our own self-absorbed narcissism.
Suggested by Managing Editor Alison Kotch
How a Classic Denim Company Is Greening up the Fashion Industry, Why One Judge Went out of His Way for a Convicted Criminal and More
In Its Quest to Decrease Water Use, Levi’s Is Open Sourcing Production Methods, FastCo.Exist
3,781: The number of liters of water required to produce a pair of jeans and grow the cotton they’re made with. To reduce its H2O usage, Levi’s developed a process that consumes 96 percent less water (think: transitioning from roomy boyfriend to super skinny cut). Even better? Instead of sequestering its eco-friendly methods in a top-secret lab, the producer of the classic 501 is sharing its techniques with industry competitors.
A Federal Judge’s New Model for Forgiveness, New York Times
Checking the conviction history question on a job application can make it next to impossible for the formerly incarcerated to gain employment. When issuing a 15-month-long prison sentence to a woman for faking an auto accident in order to collect insurance money, New York judge John Gleeson didn’t mean to issue the lifelong punishment of unemployment. Which is why, 13 years later, he handed her something unusual: a federal certificate for rehabilitation.
The Powerful, Young Gallery Owner Shaping L.A.’s Art Scene, OZY
The Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, which boasts the city’s second highest property crime rate, is also the unlikely home of Michelle Papillion’s art gallery. Showcasing the works of emerging African-American artists, Papillion is out to do more than just bring awareness to creatives that aren’t widely recognized and celebrated; she’s working to beautify the community around her.
MORE: To Reduce Drug Abuse, These Members of the Criminal Justice Community Advocate for Legalization, Not Criminalization
These Beautiful Art Projects Saved One Rust Belt Community from Economic Ruin
Construction projects wreak havoc on everyone’s lives. Residents become sleep deprived when the jackhammers wake them each morning, and commuters stress about detours adding minutes to their daily travel. But local business owners may suffer the most harm, as merchants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side near the Second Avenue subway construction and West Los Angeles storeowners coping with the new light-rail extension cutting through town can attest. Noise and dust drives away customers and businesses lose millions as a result.
When a year-long, $5.5 million repaving project threatened Cleveland’s now-thriving Collinwood neighborhood near Lake Erie, one civic group came up with a solution. Northeast Shores, a community development corporation, asked 225 artists to beautify the half-mile under construction with 52 community art projects. Funded by a relatively modest $118,000 grant, the initiative helped keep all 33 participating merchants in business.
“It’s pretty typical in Cleveland that a streetscape project results in business loss,” Brian Friedman, executive director at Northeast Shores, tells the blog Springboard Exchange. “People decide not to come thanks to the orange barrels.”
Ravaged by the decline of the city’s manufacturing industry and the onset of another recession, vacancies used to dominate Cleveland’s central thoroughfare, Waterloo Road, and more stores were boarded up than occupied. By 2013, however, a new generation of small businesses was reviving the neighborhood, but infrastructure improvements needed to catch up.
To create a distraction amidst the chaos, Northeast Shores drew inspiration from a similar arts project in Saint Paul, Minn. The development agency offered small monthly grants, made available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Storeowners instantly crowded outside their offices, clamoring to get in.
“We were a little distressed by the number of merchants who were literally waiting for us to open so they could shove paper at us seconds apart from each other, to make sure they could be included,” Friedman recalls. “We didn’t think it was a good community-building moment for us to have merchants sitting in front of our office at 5 o’clock in the morning, arguing with each other about who got there first.”
With a streamlined application process, projects soon got underway. Mac’s Lock Shop, for instance, helped sculptor Ali Lukacsy put up luggage locks stamped with individual messages (Locks of Love) on fences. Storefronts and open spaces filled with crafts.
Not only were beautiful surprises scattered throughout 10 city blocks, but the venture also helped to solidify lasting partnerships and sparked community involvement from artists who could’ve hunkered down in their studios until the streets were clean. Creative businesses — art galleries, performance spaces, fabric stores and design agencies — proliferated, and now, Waterloo Road is considered the city’s hotbed of arts and entertainment.
That strong civic fabric will be vital as Cleveland shifts its image from Rust Belt holdover (derided as “The Mistake on the Lake”) to an attractive destination for Millennials (with a new nickname of “The Comeback City”). “I want Waterloo to be a mini Austin or Nashville,” Cindy Barber, co-owner of Beachland Ballroom, a longstanding live music venue on Waterloo Road, tells the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. “We have to dream big to expand what we’ve been doing here to get people to Waterloo.”
The artwork gets visitors to stop and look. From there, closing the deal should be the easy part.
The App That’s Beautifying the Daily Commute
New York City subways are notoriously known for their clutter of ads pushing anything from weight loss miracles to online college courses. And since New Yorkers spend an excess of time underground traveling across the city’s seven boroughs, a new app is setting out to make that experience a little more pleasant.
NO AD is an augmented reality app designed to replace the abundance of mindless ads masking the city’s subway stations and trains with art.
“I think that overconsumption of advertising is detrimental to your mental health,” says street artist Jordan Seiler, who created the app. “Public space happens to be the only media space I can’t opt out of. I would advocate for the complete banning of advertising as a social health issue, the same way that we want to clean up toxic waste.”
Seiler enlisted 50 artists to contribute to the app, which works by opening the app and pointing the camera at the horizontal vinyl ads scattered across platforms at the city’s 468 stations.
NO AD uses feature tracking software to target which ads to filter out, excluding public health messages from the list. The campaign ran in NYC throughout the month of September and hopes to continue with other contributors from local galleries and museums. The app can be downloaded for free at app store or on Google Play.
As more people embrace the wearable market thanks to head displays like Google Glass, Seiler contends products like NO AD will become important in navigating the city’s ad-laden landscape.
MORE Robots to the Rescue: Machines That Bring Hope
How Turning Row Homes Into Works of Art Helps Single Mothers
This year’s class of MacArthur Foundation Genius Grants, which includes winning $625,000 with no strings attached, include an impressive offering of scientists, mathematicians and poets. But a Houston artist’s work on a small community — where an art experiment has led to economic revitalization over the last two decades — may be one of the more fascinating programs of note.
Rick Lowe, a Houston artist and recipient of this year’s MacArthur Grant, has been working on Project Row Houses since its inception in 1993. The conceptual project began began with just 22 houses in one of Houston’s oldest African-American communities and has grown to more than 70 buildings across the neighborhood, according to City Lab.
Lowe and a group of artists transformed the area into what he refers to as “social sculpture,” which includes housing for young, single mothers, an arts incubator for budding artists and a community support program. But that’s not all.
Project Row Houses also focuses on architectural and historical preservation, which include some of the 1930-era shotgun homes that comprise part of the properties.
“Houston is not a place that is accustomed to preserving its history. Or having a high cultural identity in its neighborhoods,” Lowe says. “Project Row Houses at least gives Houston an example of how that can happen.”
The Young Mother Residential Program, or subsidized transitional housing for single mothers between the ages of 18 and 26 with children under the age of 17, provides support to find employment and education.
The project launched a separate nonprofit in 2003. The community development corporation is a support center committed to “strengthening, sustaining and celebrating the life of the Third Ward community,” according to the site.
But more than anything, Lowe contends Project Row Houses is first and foremost an art project.
“Project Row Houses is an art project. I always tell people, creating anything, it’s art, especially if it’s something experimental. If it’s new, it’s always hard,” Lowe says. “To bring a painting into being on a blank canvas — if you think about it, that’s impossible. How can that happen?”
The project is also home to an arts incubator and has partnered with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, since 2004 to host the Glassell Core Fellow Artist residency. The recipient receives a one or two-year residency while the Summer Studios program exhibits work from selected local college or university art students. The project also serves as an arts venue for other artists.
But how will winning the grant help the thriving community? Lowe isn’t sure, but says that the project will look to food issues next and a possible “little small museum thing we’re playing around with.”
Project Row Houses has informed several other projects across the country including the Watts House Project in Los Angeles, the Transforma Projects in New Orleans and more recently, the Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow in Dallas. Lowe is also heading up the Pearl Street revitalization program in Philadelphia’s North Chinatown neighborhood.
These Works of Art Were Impossible to Create 20 Years Ago
Imagine a world where science and art merge; where Da Vinci and Einstein work together on the same project.
It may seem strange, but the concept has come to fruition with the emergence of tech-art. Combining artistic creativity and scientific innovation, tech-art has redefined what can be viewed and considered art.
It all began in 2013 when Portrait of America and Rain Room burst into the art and tech worlds. Rain Room was featured in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and allowed visitors to experience a rain shower in the rain forest without ever actually getting wet. The Portrait of America exhibit at the Smithsonian (which was on display this past February), was an American flag covered in pieces of glass that, when viewed through Google Glass, showcased different events in the history of the United States.
Now, in 2014, artists are continuing to innovate and excite. Below are three new exhibits taking the tech-art world by storm.
First up is Jim Campbell’s Rhythms of Perception located in the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, New York. A graduate of MIT with an electrical engineering and math degree, Campbell is not the stereotypical artist. However, he was actually a fine arts major at first, and, after he made the switch, has been able to integrate both areas of interest. His work includes sculptural LED works that are formed from the union of video and light and custom electronics. Currently, over 20 of his works are displayed in the exhibit.
Next is 5000 Moving Parts at the MIT Museum. The Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibit features six “kinetic” artists whose work focuses on the movement of the human body. One example is that of Arthur Ganson and Christina Campanella’s Machine with Breath — a lung that imitates the regular, rhythmic pace of breathing.
Finally, Dr. James Chung has brought sculptor Auguste Rodin into the twenty-first century with the introduction of Inside Rodin’s Hands: Art, Technology, and Surgery at the Cantor Arts Center at California’s Stanford University. Rodin’s famous hands sculpture is now a classroom tool in diagnosing medical conditions. The sculpture has been updated to a three-dimensional level that shows bones, nerves, and muscles — allowing it to be used for simulated surgeries.
With technology continuing to advance, it is only natural for it to expand into different arenas — and art is simply the newest area to be enriched by technology. We can’t wait to see what masterpieces will be created by the union of these two seemingly contradictory industries.
MORE: To Help Young Girls, This MIT Student Brings Together Two Unlikely Disciplines