Skid Row Artist Experiencing a Renaissance : Homeless: His work goes on display in LACE program to help the down and out who have vision.

Some might consider Frank Parker lucky by Skid Row standards. An artist with his own “studio,” Parker has found several small shops in which to sell his works.

In addition, Parker has become fairly prominent among the surprisingly large group of artists living on Skid Row. His drawings grace the covers of publications by the Homeless Writers Coalition. Now, his works are being displayed in two simultaneous downtown shows--one at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and the other at the Weingart Center Cafe.

Still, the going for Parker is not easy. While preparing for his current shows, Parker found that several years’ worth of his drawings, as well as a number of his sculptures, had disappeared from his makeshift storage space in a friend’s garage. But rather than getting discouraged, Parker looked at the experience as “a great excuse to do new works.”

He’s working in his “studio”--actually an oblong concrete and brick storage space with intermittently dripping overhead pipes adjacent to an unused loading dock in an old Skid Row building.

Parker is one of more than 30 artists working through LACE’s Skid Row Artists’ Fund, which provides artists with up to $25 monthly in art supplies. The newest feature of the program, called “Art From the Streets,” allows artists to show their works in rotating lobby exhibitions.

“Through the exhibition program, people can see that people that are homeless are creative, that they can make serious art and that they do have vision,” said the program’s coordinator, Adriene Jenik. “I’m not just interested in showing homeless art because it’s homeless art, and I don’t think the artists want to be exploited that way either. I want to show something that can be taken seriously.”

The “seriousness” of his art is why Jenik selected Parker for this particular exhibition, which opens tonight and runs through July 29. On view are works from Parker’s “Conversation” series--mixed-media pieces made of Scotch tape and interwoven colored bits of telephone wire, as well as a sculptural piece made from objects such as old mattress springs.

Before finding himself on Skid Row, Parker, 44, had shows at several locations including a number of colleges and community spaces and galleries in Santa Barbara, San Diego, New York and Pennsylvania. In 1977, he was featured in the Long Beach Museum of Art’s “Studio Z: Individual Collective.” He lived for a time in Venice, had a studio on Slauson Avenue, a steady job as an exhibit technician at the Museum of Science and Industry, and was taking art courses at Claremont Graduate School.

But when personal problems--which he declined to discuss--disrupted his life in the late ‘70s, Parker began taking odd jobs. He dropped out of graduate school, vowing to return someday, but eventually his money ran out. A little over a year ago, he found himself on the streets of Skid Row, which he said was “a better alternative” to some of his other options.

He was a regular at “Another Planet,” the celebrated Skid Row cultural center that had been formed out of a converted garage. But like many artists, Parker was hit hard when the building burned down last August. He lost many of his artworks, as well as all his slides and documentation of past works stored there.

“Just doing my own work was hard to do,” Parker said, noting that now he works daily on his art. “I had no space of my own, it was hard to hold on to my tools and there was no privacy.”

Today he works as a handyman in exchange for his small studio/living space in the old Wall and Boyd Building--the same building in which noted artists George Herms and Lita Albuquerque have their studios--he is able to support himself through sales of his small sculptures, which can be worn as jewelry (most are priced from $5-$25). Also a big help, Parker said, are the free supplies and the verbal support he receives from LACE.

The original Skid Row Artists’ Fund--paid for by an anonymous donor--was set up about a year ago through downtown’s Roark Art Supplies, which sells goods to LACE at below wholesale costs. Artists then come to LACE’s Jenik for their monthly supplies.

“We began the artists’ fund basically because of where LACE is situated,” Jenik said. “Skid Row and (its) community members are certainly a part of our community. People would come by looking for a job and see what we were doing and say, ‘Hey, I’m an artist, too.’ So we began to set up a program to work with the Skid Row people.”

With the help of $5,000 from the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, Jenik is expanding the homeless artists’ program once again. Beginning June 13, LACE will co-sponsor weekly art classes to be taught by visiting artists at the Homeless Outreach Program offices. Also provided will be desperately needed storage space for artists to keep their art and supplies.

“It’s a step toward the ideal situation, which would be for (the Skid Row artists) to get a space of their own,” Jenik said. “We hope to start (money-making) projects and things like sales of artworks to make the program self-maintaining.”

Establishing the homeless artists programs has not been easy, Jenik said. Many of the artists have no addresses or phone numbers, and sometimes she must search the streets to find them. In addition, health problems have interfered, such as with the first “Art From the Streets” exhibition, in which the scheduled artist--portraitist Myshicka Jerome--was hospitalized with a bone disease a few days before his show’s opening.

“It’s really crazy sometimes working with (homeless artists). There’s no telling what could happen at any moment,” Jenik said. “So with all this stuff, we’re really flexible--we have to be.”