Artist Designs a Guardian Angel of Her Own

Art, insists Michelle Allen, has often provided relief from the steely grip of her hard life.

But it was persistence that recently propelled her cumbersome wheelchair onto an elevator at the 7th and Figueroa shopping plaza downtown, outmaneuvering several rude pedestrians who would have crowded in front of her. She had wandered over from her apartment a few blocks--and a world--away on skid row to explore and grab a meal, but may instead have met her guardian angel.

It was pearly white and unadorned, standing 6 feet, 6 inches in the showroom of Community of Angels, the public art program that began last year and features decorated life-size angel statues set out in public and private places across Los Angeles. Allen happened on the storefront the day before the deadline for this year’s design submissions.

She worked through the night to come up with a sketch of butterflies to cover an angel’s fiberglass body. It was presented the next day and accepted.

She was more delighted to learn that the angel project benefits youth programs of the Volunteers of America.

Allen is staying in a single room apartment operated by the same group on skid row. She is 45, afflicted with a degenerative joint disease and dependent on disability checks for most of her income. Off and on for three years she has been homeless, living in a rented car and on the street.

She has shown her colorful portrayals of mothers and children, animals, African, Latin and Asian studies at craft fairs and charitable events, but the returns have been too small to do more than ease the financial strain for a time, never enough to make a real difference.

She will get $1,000 for the angel statue. But more important, she hopes that this art project will be a means to mend her tattered life; that the angel taking on the hues of exotic butterflies will transport her to a better place. She is mindful of the formidable odds.

“It’s like trying to find the energy to one more time pick yourself up, and it’s hard,” said Allen, sitting at a desk in the Community of Angels store. She referred to her home of three months only a few blocks away, a gated residential community called Ballington Plaza set in a squalid strip of open drug dealing, urine-stained streets and much misery.

“I know people who’ve been there for eight or 12 years,” she said and sighed. “People get trapped down here just trying to survive.”

Cal Winslow, executive director of Community of Angels, and his staff are not art critics. They review the submitted designs--300 this year--to ensure there is nothing offensive or overtly commercial. Individuals, businesses or organizations can look through a catalog and choose designs to sponsor, at fees starting at $3,500.

Modeled on public art projects in Zurich and Chicago, the Los Angeles group hopes to display 200 of the 100-pound statues beginning this summer for at least several months. The angels echo the city’s name and are intended to inspire civic pride and a sense of unity.

Winslow said he was so taken with Allen’s design of butterflies and her story that he persuaded the Volunteers of America to sponsor her statue.

“My heart went out to her,” Winslow said. “A lot of artists pick up the templates for designs and never return, but Michelle was back with bells on. People see these beautiful angels but don’t know the stories behind them and some, like hers, are really interesting.”

Indeed, much like her talent for art, surviving seems to be a thing that Allen does well. At 12, after reporting sexual abuse by a relative, Michelle Ophelia Allen was placed by authorities in a Los Angeles foster care group home, she said. She remained there until she was 17, when she emancipated herself by fleeing.

She endured, finding odd jobs and going to school. She graduated from Azusa Pacific University and then trained to become a licensed vocational nurse. She specialized in pediatric home care, working with children recuperating from serious illnesses or permanently tethered to ventilators.

But by the time she was 25, Allen had begun to develop arthritis, which deteriorated until the pain and frequent falls forced her a few years ago to quit nursing. She also developed diabetes and other illnesses.

She lost an apartment, spent time in a friend’s garage and took to riding the bus all night, using fast-food restrooms to wash up.

Through her life, art has been her buoy. She used to volunteer at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center and created paintings for patients. Soon her work began to go up on the ward floors.

Allen has sold her work at fund-raising events sponsored by CARES, the nonprofit group that runs the hospital’s gift shop and child-care centers.

“Even when she didn’t sell a lot of work, everyone who saw her paintings was uplifted,” said CARESadministrative secretary Nancy Castillo. “She would talk to patients and share how she was ill but was still able to paint and keep her dream alive.”

The hospital used one of her drawings on T-shirts for a health fair.

Now she is painting an angel.

Allen works in the Ballington lobby, usually late at night into the early morning. She sketches patterns of butterflies and flora and fills them in with acrylic paints. She then adds a sealing varnish to protect the art from the elements. Much of the body was painted in a four-day spurt.

She is unsure where her statue will be displayed, but it could travel to a number of places, including 7th and Figueroa or Pershing Square.

When it debuts in June with the other statues, Allen will join artists such as Hiro Yamagata, Pierre Matisse, grandson of the iconic French painter, and Rose Parade float designer Raul Rodriguez, who designed angels last year.

The rending from home continues to be a source of turmoil. Her mother lives in Southern California, and Allen has two siblings. But she is not in contact, she said.

People who have encountered Allen describe a warm spirit.

“She’s a sweet person who has had a lot of unfortunate things happen,” said Vivian Washington, who works in the art and music department at the downtown Central Library, where Allen frequently does research. “What attracted me to her art are the colors. There is a richness in the images that seem very lifelike.”

Allen will be showing some of her work on May 18 at the Hanson Dam Recreation Center and July 23 and 24 at County USC Medical Center.

Many have suggested that she call her angel “Hope.”

“Art is really sacred to me, and I believe it’s God’s path for me,” she said. “It’s all worth being in this place, because the angel has given me back my faith.”