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Homelessness/Housing
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Salt of the Earth magazine.
Janis Timm-Bottos
Joan Flynn Fee interviews Janis Timm-Bottos
WHEN JANIS-BOTTOS WAS a physical therapist, she worked with infants born addicted to drugs or alcohol. She visited their families and taught the parents how to massage and cuddle them. But she felt frustrated that she could not help these families more. So she studied art therapy to learn more about the underlying causes behind people's pain. It was as an art therapist that she expanded her work to the homeless.
With the help of the philanthropic community in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Timm-Bottos cofounded ArtStreet, a free art studio open both to those who live on the street and those who don't. ArtStreet has nudged some homeless people back into apartments and into school. But mostly it offers a safe, inviting space, where everyone who walks in the door is treated like an accomplished artist and where people come together to learn from each other.
THERE WAS A LEADERSHIP GROUP IN ALBUQUERQUE that wanted to start a project to help homeless people become more self-sufficient. The people who responded to their initiative were homeless artists. That's why the leadership group decided to invite me, because at that time I was working as an art therapist in a shelter.
When these community leaders—business people, bankers, hospital administrators—met with the homeless, communication was difficult. The suggestion was made that maybe we should make art together. So I helped facilitate groups, teaching them how to use art materials.
The next couple of weeks we all made things together. The dynamic began to shift: all of a sudden the artists were the experts, while the bankers struggled and the city officials had trouble with what they were going to make. Now the artists, who were dealing with not having a home and a job and were pretty down on their luck, became the teachers.
So we realized that these artists had a skill, but they were limited by not having a place to make their art. That's how we started talking about having an event or setting up a place where the artists could make art. Even though they wouldn't have a place to be at night, they could at least do their work.
THE IDEA DEVELOPED INTO THE OPEN STUDIO, which became ArtStreet. Our studio occupies some 900 square feet divided by floor-to-ceiling glass doors. It is well lit and in the back of a large two-story adobe house. It is a beautiful space that invites people in.
But I think it looked very different from what the artists expected. Many of them being trained, schooled artists, they expected something like individual stalls where they would be allowed to create alone. But ArtStreet is very different from a traditional art studio, where people tend to work very isolated and alone; in our studio the work all happens in this big open space. So there were some hurdles to overcome.
We have our studio stocked with a lot of recyclable materials: cardboard and plastic, bottles and tiles, magazines for collages. The materials are sorted in a way that makes them inviting to use. We have a kick wheel for pottery and a sewing machine for working with cloth. We have a framing corner where people can professionalize their art, then take it out to a gallery.
Our studio is unique because we welcome people of all ages. We often have infants in the studio as well as elders. We have a sand tray area where children can go to play. This is a very inviting place for children.
Often people come to the studio for a quiet, safe place just to settle a little, to allow their children to move. Many of the families are from the domestic-violence shelter--women with their children escaping very violent situations. It is very difficult for the kids in the shelters--they have to be controlled by their parents all the time.
AT THE STUDIO THERE IS MORE FREEDOM for the children to move and explore. We have lots of cover-up shirts, so they can make a mess. When you are homeless, you don't want to get your clothes dirty because there is no place to wash them. These are things we need to be aware of when working with homeless people.
ArtStreet is open to the whole community, not just the homeless. That distinction is very important to me. People always say, "Oh, you work with the homeless." But I never think of it that way. When people walk in here, they are artists. I still try to follow that original idea--that we also help the banker find his source of imagination again. If it takes the strength and the ingenuity of a homeless artist to do that, then that is what it is going to take.
I feel as committed to having staff members use the studio as people walking in off the street. Social workers will come from treatment centers and will bring a group of clients with them. Or a school social worker will come and bring a student. A range of different people use the studio, but everyone makes art.
People come to ArtStreet with the intention of making art; just the sheer, heartfelt connection of wanting to do that is enough to make it therapeutic. But it also becomes therapeutic because we enter into a dialogue. I'm making art, and you're making art, and we'll see what ideas we come up with together. So people enter into a relationship, not just with the materials and the studio, but with the other people creating art as well.
There is also a lot of natural peer teaching that goes on. One artist in the community may be well-versed in working with a particular material that a newer artist would like to learn.
One of the rules of ArtStreet is that you have to be sober to be there. I know for a fact there are people who stay sober so that they can come to ArtStreet the three days we are open. And so in an indirect way I am supporting their sobriety.
WE ARE SET UP IN AN ADDITION in the back of a building that is occupied by Healthcare for the Homeless. So people can go to the front of the building and have an appointment with a social worker or a family advocate who can help them with housing needs, food, or any other kind of service they may need.
There are some distinct success stories. On Wednesdays, starting at 2 p.m.., the studio is closed except to people from Casa Los Arboles, a treatment program. Since we have this closed time, more and more artists have signed up for treatment at Casa Los Arboles.
We also have people who have become independent through ArtStreet. We had one couple living on the street right outside of our building. All the woman wanted to do was to be an artist. She was very talented. She could do pretty much any art form. Now she has a place to live and is going to art school.
We have a Navajo husband and wife who have been coming to ArtStreet for six months now. They make art and sell it that same day on the street. He makes pipes out of rock. She makes gourd rattles and beautiful weaving looms. When someone starts making something over and over in the studio, we ask them if they might want to teach it to others. So for a month she took one day a week to teach how to make the Navajo weaving loom. We paid her an honorarium to teach--that goes right back to our goal to develop the artists' self-sufficiency.
We have shows where the community can see the artists' work. Our last show, "The Art of Being Homeless," was about the ingenuity of homeless people. It was a beautiful show. About 200 people came to the opening, and we also had a poetry reading. The artists were all there along with community people.
There are so many little things that happen at ArtStreet throughout the day: a garden being planted outside, one mother teaching another mother how to massage a baby's belly, someone playing the piano. We even had a man come in and play the accordion for us last Wednesday.
One man, who had been in and out of the studio, was very connected to his Jewish roots but was never in a place where he could celebrate any of the holidays. So we decided that we were going to surprise him and have everything he needed to do one evening of Hanukkah. We got the bread and the candles and asked him, "Come and help us do this. We don't know how."
A LOT OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES come to ArtStreet—Native Americans, people from Mexico and Africa. Here was one person who could teach us about Hanukkah. So everyone sat around waiting to hold the service. A friend of mine, who is also an art-therapist and who happens to be Jewish, came in. Together she and this man were able to lead us through the service. It couldn't have been better.
Things like that happen frequently. There is a moment that extends the heart into the world. That's where I locate my spirituality, too—in that place of connecting with another human being, needing no other sense than to have that moment together, creating something.
I have noticed that a lot of religious icons are made at ArtStreet. I have recently become interested in studying the influence of the dark Madonna in the studio, a direction I probably wouldn't have gone without the influence of the icons.
In the studio we seem to be soul-making. The materials are there, and people are taking the time to create. It happens so rarely in our culture. The homeless, people with a little time, have helped us get back to a place of being less busy and being able to get more in touch with our souls.—END
© 1997 by Claretian Publications