Art From the Streets: Off the Streets and on Your Walls

It's this simple: Art helps. For the person who makes it, it helps develop a sense of self-worth through creativity and individual expression. For the person who acquires it, it helps recharge the spirit through a vision of life rendered in line, color, texture. And sometimes it even helps artists get off the streets and into a place of their own.

All of that has happened with Art From the Streets, the local volunteer-driven program that has been giving people who are homeless an outlet for their creativity since 1991. AFTS offers twice-weekly art classes where folks from the streets can come and express themselves in paint, pen, pastel, crayon, and marker, then once a year, the program sponsors a show and sale where these artists may sell the work they've created. Proceeds from the sales go directly to the artists themselves, who can make enough to buy food and clothing, and sometimes help put a roof over their heads. In 2004, more than 80 artists sold more than 1,100 pieces of art at prices ranging from $30 to $350.

Volunteer co-director Bill Jeffers anticipates more than 2,000 new pieces of art in this year's show, which he hopes will bring in $20,000 more than the almost $60,000 generated by sales, admissions, and donations in 2004. To date, the homeless artists of AFTS have earned more than $350,000 through this work they've created themselves. That's a lot of help from art. But don't forget: The person who purchases the art gets help, too – help that can be enjoyed for years to come in the home that patron is fortunate enough to have.

Once you head down to the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and plunk down $3 to get in (a suggested donation that helps defray the cost of supplies and materials for AFTS' ongoing classes), you can help yourself. Just like the artists have already done.