Unhoused Art program aims to break stereotypes about city's homeless

Aug. 19—Organizations working with the homeless are often laser-focused on meeting people's basic needs — and for good reason.

But Ryan Williams believes when it comes to people who have very little, "nonessential services are also essential to people's well-being."

It's that ethos that led Williams to create the Unhoused Art program, a nonprofit that works to connect people living in Santa Fe's homeless shelters with opportunities to make and sell art.

"With art, you have a choice," he said — something that's often in short supply for the homeless, whether they live in a shelter or on the street.

The program began about a year ago with a nanogrant of $40 Williams received from Axle Contemporary, which he used to raise another $8,000 through GoFundMe. It's currently under the fiscal sponsorship of St. Elizabeth Shelters and Supportive Housing.

"You wouldn't think $40 would really kick-start something, but it did," he said.

Unhoused Art currently has a gallery on view at Vital Spaces in the midtown campus on St. Michael's Drive, which runs through early September.

Williams said everything the program does is geared toward breaking down barriers between the homeless and the rest of the city's residents.

"We're trying to break stereotypes," he said. "People can come to the gallery and realize, 'I'm not looking at this person as an unhoused individual, I'm interacting with this person as an artist.' "

Williams organizes eight 'healing arts' workshops per week at seven local shelters and the Life Link Clubhouse. Once a month he also hosts an event at Meow Wolf, which anyone can attend even if they are no longer living in a shelter.

Williams said his goal is to help people create works of art they can keep, sell for a profit or give as gifts. Participants get to keep 90% of the profit of art Williams sells on their behalf, with 10% going back into the program. Artists who host workshops, which typically run about 90 minutes, receive a $50 honorarium and their supplies are paid for.

"We're trying to uplift people in local shelters and support local artists," Williams said of the project.

If shelter participants become skilled in a specific art form, they can then lead workshops themselves for compensation.

"It's really important to me if you do work, you get paid for your work," Williams said.

The workshop leader Aug. 13 was Amber Paz-Csibi, who was helping Williams guide a small group of residents at the St. Elizabeth Emergency Men's Shelter through making their own soap in decorative molds.

A local art teacher who primarily works with K-8 students, Paz-Csibi said she had led more than half a dozen workshops after hearing about the Unhoused Art program.

"I've been learning a lot by going to the different shelters," she said. "I think it's so great [Williams] started this."

So far she's hosted workshops teaching shelter residents how to make soap and beaded keychains and said she's eager to do something with ceramics, her personal favorite medium.

Past art projects have included everything from jewelry, keychains, ceramics, towels, resin art, tie-dye, stamps to traditional painting and more.

Along with workshops, Williams also distributes art supplies to homeless Santa Feans on a regular basis and helps people store their art at St. Elizabeth so they don't lose it while on the street.

Art can be a powerful touchstone for people dealing with the fallout of becoming homeless. Williams recalled one woman who attended several of his workshops while living at Casa Familia with her children.

"She told me, 'I felt like a failure bringing my kids here,' " Williams said. "And her son said, 'But mom, we wouldn't have made all this art and gone to Meow Wolf!' "

He recalled another man who rarely spoke to shelter staff and was frequently grumpy. But while making art, he would start to open up.

"You're focused on something else, and all the sudden you're talking," Williams said.

At the men's shelter, participants in the workshop were excitedly melting different types of soap bases and mixing them with herbs, flowers, essential oils and exfoliants to try to create an appealing final product.

Jerry Clinton had become so enthusiastic about the project he had purchased some of his own supplies and said he has experimented with making soap on his days off work.

Originally form Indiana, Clinton has been living at St. Elizabeth since April. He said he originally started participating in the workshops just as a way to stay busy.

"Sometimes when we don't have anything to do, we can fall in with the wrong crowd," he said, adding he was "in a bad place" before coming to the shelter.

But after some people expressed interest in the soap he made, he realized he could use it as a second income stream on top of his day job, and estimates he's made about $300 to $400 so far.

"He created opportunity for me," he said of Williams while making a batch of glycerin-based soap embedded with tiny rosebuds.

Others were simply there to have fun.

"I just do it for the enjoyment, not for money," said another man, who asked not to be named.

John Ackerman enjoyed having the ability to create things again after he suffered paralysis last year during a surgery. The former U.S. Forest Service employee was at St. Elizabeth after spending a year and a half recovering in a nursing home. He's also teaching himself how to play guitar, he said.

"I like it," he said of the art workshops, while pouring a soap mixture with poppy seeds and mango extract into a heart-shaped mold.

A St. Elizabeth resident named Nik, who declined to give his last name, said he was trained as an artist before becoming an architect, and currently had his supplies in storage while awaiting an apartment.

"It gets me out of my head," he said of the art workshops.

He noted the discovery of cave paintings tens of thousands of years old, pointing to evidence humans are hardwired to create. The need doesn't go away when someone is homeless.

"Art is for everyone," he said.