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Exhibitions: Hobos
To Street People: Artists’ Responses
To Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present
At The California Historical Society
Carol
Harvey Video Interviews Part II
Most don't consider tented people working in fields as homeless.
Depression artist, Dorothea Lange, photographed a young mother
with her two babies, one holding a nippled Coke bottle, seated
in a Ford near Tulelake, California (1939). Nearby hangs David
Bacon's photo of an Mexican mother and child camped on a hillside
outside in Del Mar, California. “They are still the same,” said
Terry. “The only difference is nowadays they would take
your kids from you.”
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Artist, Christine Hanlon on “Faux Street Revisited:” |
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DISPLACEMENT, ROOTLESSNESS AND VULNERABILITY Art Hazelwood on Displacement and Rootlessness and on “G.I. Homecoming” by artist, Sandow Birk, who satirizes Norman Rockwell's“Homecoming G.I.”: |
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| My invitees to this show are like most
poor, fragilely housed or unhoused San Franciscans. They lose
their homes for various reasons --- renter or home owner evictions,
loss of paychecks and work, or illness. Some couch-surf with
friends while saving up rent. Terry Chandler sleeps in daylight,
walking nights for safety. David Suttles panhandles for monthly
hotel rent for his wife and himself. Travis was displaced from
a hotel during hospitalization for mugging but is temporarily
housed again. Hazelwood believes the inevitable vulnerability of displacement and rootlessness is a U.S. social norm. Our emphasis on money and ”advancement,” at the expense of “the general welfare,” forces all of us --- rich, middle class, or poor --- to tear ourselves, or be torn, away from our safety nets. Giacomo Patri's illustrated novel, “White Collar,” (1938) tells of a middle class working stiff displaced by transcendent, enlightening events. The stock market crashes. With repeated firings, Patri's character, Hazelwood explains, converts from “sneering disinterest in revolutionary speakers and blue collar organizers he passes on the street” to being blacklisted unionizing white collar workers. He and his wife end up homeless. Catholicism and the '60s and '70s backlash against war and capitalism seem to have sensitized Jos Sances to the twin cruelties of social privilege and poverty. Sances' symbolism thrusts the viewer into the reality and heart of homelessness. A Boston-born Irish-Sicilian, Sances matured out of the Church's mythology of Christ as Deity, while preserving in his art the fragile beauty of Jesus' humanity. Homeless people warm to Sances image of Jesus' sacred heart simultaneously surrounding, then evicting, a mother, father, and two diapered babies from its loving embrace. One homeless interviewee, his parents and twin siblings suffered such an eviction. Jos Sances painting, “Holiday Home 2008” depicts the invisibility of the unhoused at Christmas. Moses described the pain people feel “outside” at holiday time: |
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| URBAN VS RURAL Post-Ronald Reagan, Hazelwood observed, we have seen the total destruction of the social safety net and a progressive downward slide into complete defunding of federal money for American cities' public housing. Hazelwood's 'Spirit of Abandon' and Claude Moller's 'Housing Crisis: Condition Critical,' render pictorially accessible the harsh statistics that clarify loss of urban affordable housing. Most people think of homelessness as urban. Ed Gould's,“America's Forgotten Homeless People,” charts the defunding of rural affordable housing which disappeared last year. Terry worries about people in the country. “They couldn't survive like we can here (in the cities) because there is nothing for them out there.” |
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STRUGGLE AND HOPE Travis sleeping in a coffin box: |
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| After his father lost their carpentry business
and his mother her nursing job, their Detroit home was foreclosed.
Travis left so he wouldn't burden them. He said the noble couple
in 'And Now Where?' reminded him that, despite their love, his
parents could not verbalize mutual pain. Norman Rockwell is several times satirized in this show. His 'Freedom from Want' is a homey thanksgiving dinner. In Rockwell's 'Freedom from Fear' --- a couple putting their son to bed as the husband holds a paper with a World War II headline --- suggests, “We're safe here in America.” By contrast, in Hazelwood's series 'Four Freedoms,' 'Freedom from Fear' displays a homeless man's sign saying, 'Beaten, robbed, help please.' 'Freedom of Assembly' is the right to stand in a food line outside a church like Glide. Hazelwood's satirizes Rockwell's evocation of FDR's vision of a hopeful future and the failed dreams of 1950s America. |
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| The words, “Everyone has a right” march
across Robert Terrell's Market street photographs brutally portraying
an elderly homeless woman and an AIDS sufferer accompanied by a
quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the
U.S. is a signatory, guaranteeing housing for all. The bitter reality
mocks the Rockwell-like promise, but suggests what we can do about
it. Jesus Barraza's 2001 San Francisco Print Collective poster bears the words: 'How many Homeless people does it take to start a revolution?' Across it is written, 'There are 15,000 homeless people in San Francisco. Is that enough?” A black silhouetted figure holding a gun poses before an orange shopping cart. “When that came out,” Hazelwood observed, “it was vilified and mocked by 'The Chronicle.'” “ Poor people's rebellions are not an unheard of thing.” As the Depression began, dispossessed World War I Vets, the “Bonus Marchers,” were denied benefits. General MacArthur led the last cavalry charge against their protest on the Washington Mall. I recalled that ragtag Parisians did storm the French Bastille, and in 1968 Dr. King did lead a Poor People's march on that same mall. “It happens,” murmured David Suttles, as he slid past the poster toward Eric Drooker's 'Sleeping Giant,' slumped hugely over a street light, unaware of its powerful size. Travis on Eric Drooker's “The Sleeping Giant:” Hazelwood reaffirmed the show's purpose. If we look at the history here, we can say, “We've been through this before, and we can rise to the occasion again. The government did something (about the Depression) in the past. The government could do something (about our current economic crisis) again. We don't have to live with this terrible situation we have now. We can get through it.” Carol Harvey |
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Go to Carol Harvey Hobos to Street People Interviews part one, two and three