A man with one crutch and a cowboy hat winds a piece of wire around a wooden spool at the woodworking table, while two children shove their hands into wet clay at the pottery wheels.
A woman with missing teeth puts an old teddy bear into a heart-covered basket and asks, “You like this?”
These people are participants at ArtStreet, an open art studio for anyone interested in creating art. At ArtStreet, however, 80 percent of the artists are or were homeless.
Jimmy Lujan, an ArtStreet participant who serves as a mentor to newer participants, was homeless for four years. He said ArtStreet saved his life.
“My wife was murdered in ‘06, and I ended up on the streets, drinking, doing drugs,” he said. “I lived in parks if I could make it to the park and sleep there. I couldn’t hold a job, I couldn’t do anything. But I found a great therapeutic venue here.”
Director Mindy Grossberg said ArtStreet offers an open-ended program so artists have as much freedom as possible. The program, which is part of Albuquerque’s Healthcare for the Homeless, provides integrated health services to the city’s homeless.
“We don’t do a lot of focusing on someone’s art and then diagnose them. It’s very different from that,” Grossberg said. “We create a space and allow people to have a relationship, an individual relationship with their art making, and that in itself is therapeutic.”
The walls are lined with art, and craft stations include collage, woodworking, painting and writing. Participants have the opportunity to make profit. Some sell their work for anywhere between $1 to $450.
While no medium is more popular than another, Grossberg said she sees a lot of painting, collage and found-object art that is especially meaningful to many participants.
“This is something that people are throwing away, and you’re re-creating it — you’re shedding new light on it,” she said. “Here are folks who are throwaways to other people, in a sense, and yet they are full, creative beings, creating out of nothing.”
Hot food and drinks are provided to participants as long as they spend at least a little bit of time making art. They must also be sober while they are there.
Meanwhile, a couple dances in a corner and artists kiss Grossberg’s shaved head as they leave. Some of this closeness is due to shared experiences of hardship, participant Kristen Leve said.
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Leve was homeless 10 years ago. She now serves on Healthcare for the Homeless’ board of directors. She said ArtStreet helped house her and gave her what she has today.
“As homeless people, we tend to come from broken situations, so we all know what that’s like even though we have different experiences,” she said. “We understand what it’s like to not have anything, to have to go somewhere for a free meal, to find somewhere to spend the night.”
That closeness is also displayed in the art. A group of hand-painted tiles on the west side of the Healthcare for the Homeless building commemorates more than 100 homeless people who have died.
The centerpiece reads, “The streets are silent where your footsteps rang. Now there are no more words. I bring a leaf, a flower and a stone.” Some names: “David Cheeseman” and “Dale Santerre, Halibut Man.”
Grossberg said many people come in and out of the space, and she has been closely connected to five or six people who have since died on the streets.
“You never know. If someone leaves, are you going to see them again?” she said.
