Art of the Streets : An Artist Helps the Homeless and Finds His Muse

Every car window washed, every aluminum can plucked from the street kept the Ford family one shaky step from a homeless shelter.

For the first time, Ron Ford had no regular job and no home. But he and Lydia, married for 19 years, were determined--and desperate--to stay out of a shelter. So every day for a year and a half, the family from Detroit scraped up the $60 they needed for food and a hotel room.

“We were spinning our wheels until we had no more rubber on them,” Ron Ford said.

Another option arose: The Fords, their 14-year-old daughter, Tricity, and 5-year-old son, Ronnie, were invited to live in an artist’s studio in Mar Vista to help regain their footing and to collaborate on a painting depicting their story. The painting will be one of a series of 10 created by Los Angeles artist Randy White; each will represent a different family who lived in his studio for a month.

The collection, “Artifacts of the Street,” will debut this fall on the East Coast and then go on tour. The paintings, lithographs and photographs documenting the project will be sold to benefit Comic Relief Inc., which raises money and provides health care for homeless people in the United States. Comic Relief is paying for the project’s expenses with promotional money from HBO, which broadcasts the group’s annual benefit shows.

Six families have spent their time at the studio and moved on. After the month in residence, each family receives $5,000 over the course of a year and support from social service agencies such as the St. Joseph Center and Beyond Shelter, including help in applying for government-subsidized housing.

Five families now are in their own apartments; the Fords--who spent February with White--still wash windows and are looking for more work. One couple have jobs at a restaurant, and another couple are learning to care for their new baby. A single mother is in law school and another single mother is applying for jobs. The sixth family moved out of the studio Monday and is living in a motel temporarily.

“I’m experiencing the fruits of it already,” said Ron Ford, 43, who moved his family to Los Angeles in December, 1989. Ron worked in Detroit as a cosmetologist and also as a writer-producer-performer for a music company until it folded in 1985. His cosmetology license isn’t valid in California and he didn’t have money for school here.

“I’m no longer homeless. My kids have their own rooms. But that’s just us. There are a million more homeless people out there who need the same kind of help we’ve gotten.”

He’s hoping people who see the paintings might be inspired to help, to think that one person can make a difference, and to think that “maybe every homeless person isn’t crazy.”

Through the art, White seeks to illustrate that homeless people cannot be easily categorized together, and also to effect some change, first in the lives of the 10 families and then by raising money to help others. “I am pinpointing avenues that art should be pursuing,” says White, a Texas native who has shown his work in such places as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Norway and Turkey.

All subjects for this project are families, who make up 30% to 40% of the homeless in the United States, said Fred Karnas, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. Estimates of the homeless range from about 700,000, using a strict definition of those without homes, to 2 million to 3 million, using a broader definition of people without homes of their own, but who are doubled up or tripled up with other families. The fifth family to move into the studio had been living in a two-bedroom apartment with 25 people.

Comic Relief became involved when White mentioned his idea for the project to actress-comedian Whoopi Goldberg, who offered to call some people at the organization. (Goldberg will host a fund-raiser at the studio Sunday.) The organization, formed in 1986, usually raises money through comedy events.

Comic Relief ‘90, broadcast live on HBO from the Radio City Music Hall with hosts Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, raised more than $9.3 million. A small people-intensive project of 10 paintings is a new twist.

“This was a new way for people to connect with the fact that these people are human beings,” said Dennis Albaugh, Comic Relief vice president. “When you see the paintings, you will feel these people’s lives.”

The collages include life-size photographs of the family members taken by Jim Cessna, torn up by White and then reconstructed to signify the shattering and mending of lives.

Each family contributes an object to their portrait, insignificant to others but heavy with meaning for them. For the Fords, it was the plastic spray bottle Ron used to wash windshields. In the painting, he is leaning over a car windshield; the actual spray bottle juts from the surface and appears to hang from a back pocket of his blue jeans, ready for the next squirt.

For another couple, T. C. and Stacy, the object was the thin blanket that first touched the skin of their baby, Daniel, born in an ambulance en route from the studio to a hospital. In the painting, the pale-yellow blanket serves as a backdrop to a larger-than-life photograph of the boy.

Single mother Marguerite provided a battered aqua-blue Samsonite suitcase that daughter Reimjah and son Reggatto could sleep on if the ground was damp. The suitcase stands on the floor, chained to the painting on the wall above. Jeanette, a single mother and law student, offered typewritten statements about her feelings.

“It’s not dining-room art. It’s not trendy art. It’s their art, formed by their experiences,” White said. The paintings are 10 feet by 10 feet, about the size of a room at a homeless shelter, he said. He said the families are thinking of the paintings as a family portrait--for some, their first.

“I’m so proud of this picture,” said Lydia Ford, 43. “It will give me the chance to tell people who don’t understand about the homeless that they’re human. They’re intelligent, God-loving, decent people.”

The sixth family, Jaime and Isabel Galarraga and children Lucas and Maria Isabel, moved into the living quarters of White’s studio June 17. They brought all their possessions--a few full suitcases--into the large room partitioned from the studio. Their room holds a double bed, bunk beds, a TV and stereo, a couple of chairs and sofas. The walls are covered with original murals and portraits.

“This is a Hilton for us,” Jaime said, “most of all because of the friendliness, the warmth, and I should say the love these people have given us.”

The Galarragas moved to California from Ecuador in March. Jaime, a pilot and U.S. Army veteran with a university degree, had intended to work with anti-drug programs in Los Angeles, as he had in Ecuador.

Less than two weeks after their move, Jaime learned he had a brain tumor. Surgery seared a scar across his forehead, evaporated his sense of smell and most of his sight, exhausted the family’s savings, and left the family with two choices, he says: living in a parking lot or under a bridge.

“We didn’t know our luck was going to be so upside down that we would have to go to a shelter and ask for help,” said Jaime, 43. “Things just completely changed for us.”

A medical crisis is a common kick into the spiral of homelessness, said Karnas of the National Coalition for the Homeless. So the family turned to the St. Joseph Center in Venice, which invited them to live in White’s studio and participate in the project.

They found the artwork, far from being irrelevant to their immediate physical needs, essential for their survival. “It relates very much to us. It’s a spiritual understanding,” said 32-year-old Isabel in Spanish, translated by her husband.

He agreed. “Going through a low economic situation, where the stress and the blues go through you, these things sort of uplift you,” he said, gesturing to the paintings in their living space.

The portrait of the Galarraga family still is blank, but each has an idea of what they want it to impart. All say immediately that the portrait will depict the family together. Isabel wants it to represent their happiness, dreams and hopes for better days. Jaime wants a more general message, that homelessness can happen to anyone. Lucas, 6, wants to be painted in a shirt striped red, white and blue. And Maria Isabel, with the cheery matter-of-factness of a 5-year-old, says she wants bright colors of all kinds and her father wearing the white knit hospital cap that hid the angry scar across his forehead.