Common Art Exhibition
Athan’s Café Art Gallery
January 10 – April 7, 2013
Public opening reception- Sunday January 27
Unbound Visual Arts, Inc. and Athan’s Café are pleased to present the Common Art Exhibition. It is a group exhibition representing the paintings by ten outstanding artists in the Common Art Program in Boston. Common Art is a program of the Ecclesia Ministries, which provides space and materials to homeless people to develop their artistic abilities under the direction of the Artist in Residence Heidi Lee and Program Director Mary Jane Eaton.
Katie S.. is one of the participating artists in this exhibit. She has been on the streets of Boston for the past seven years. She loves to work in pastels, acrylic paint, and pretty much anything she can get her hands on. Her work is small in scale, but powerful to take in. Ed J. is another artist at Common Art. His work represents abstractions of nature and human facial expressions. He works primarily in ballpoint pen and acrylic paint. When you are on the streets, there is little to nothing you can lug around with you except the essentials. Jayne M. is a graphic design artist who creates magnificent worlds of fantasy using only an old, nearly broken down computer and the encouragement of her husband, who also survives daily on the streets of Boston. She is also a collage artist who creates whimsical visual compositions for children. Frankie S. paints in oils and acrylics. He lost his wife and three-year-old child to a drunk driver and since then has struggled to remain alive. He is several months sober and has recovered himself back into the creative process through his paintings.
The Common Art Program (www.ecclesia-ministries.org/common_art.html) allows artists without any means to do what is most human: Create. People who live in shelters, rooming houses, on unclaimed couches and benches, and on Boston’s streets, gather every Wednesday at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street to draw, paint, sculpt, make crafts, and to share with other artists in like circumstances. For most members, Common Art is a singular chance to express their artistic gifts. For some, art is a professional path, interrupted and suspended by calamity and homelessness, it is an opportunity to express unheard opinions, ideas and truths. Art can be pure joy, an oasis of form and color in otherwise dry times, and a simple and welcome relief from daily difficulty. For many Common Art members, art is a way of life and for others it is a new discovery. But for all, art is passion, expressing and affirming life itself, a defiant or gentle “yes” in the face of stigma and constant struggle of poverty and homelessness.
Common Art began in 1999 by a group of homeless men and women with the assistance of ministers from St. John the Evangelist Church on Bowdoin Street and Ecclesia Ministries. From its inception, the mission guiding Common Art has been to serve individuals within Boston’s poor and homeless communities by providing resources and opportunities for creating and participating in the arts. This is a unique opportunity within the Boston community. As one person expressed, “Common Art is famous! Everybody knows about it on the street!”
In its present form, Common Art works both to promote access to the arts for its members and to help facilitate the expression of members’ artistic gifts. In this way, Common Art acknowledges the dignity of all human beings and honors the divine creativity within each person. Through proactive advocacy, Common Art provides companionship and inclusive community, a place to come together and to share with other artists. Common Art embraces all artistic expression as healing and healthful, affirming life itself. As Shaun McNiff of Lesley University expressed in his book Art as Medicine, “Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul, the arts emerge spontaneously as remedies, as soul medicine.” Common Art is guided by this profound understanding.
Heidi Lee, of Boston, is the Artist in Residence for the Common Art Program, where she guides and instructs the participants. She also coordinates many exhibits for the Program throughout the Boston area, including Common Art’s involvement in City HeART, a citywide art fair and sale for homeless and low-income artists. She also teaches at Boston Trinity Academy, a middle to high school for urban teens. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from Gordon College and a Master of Education with a concentration in Visual Arts from Lesley University. Her art studio is in Watertown and she creates a wide variety of artworks and plans exhibits for her Common Art student artists.