Homeless But Hopeful

Creating artwork about the homeless has been a humbling experience… one that grants perspective, no matter how diligently you work to stay impartial to the subject matter. Recently, a friend of mine told me how my work touched her and shared with me a personal family experience (which you can read about on her blog). Recent developments in my own life (such as being laid off from yet another real estate day job) has brought the issue out of hibernation and put it in the forefront of my mind again. Assuming that I’m eventually accepted to one of the five MFA programs I’ve applied to, I still have to face the reality of surviving art school during the worst economic crisis of my lifetime. Up till now, it has been all too easy to forget that I live paycheck to paycheck… but I can no longer ignore the fact that I could easily be a couple of overdrawn charges from “homeless but hopeful”. That being said, I haven’t given up on my dream, but I am more open minded now to taking a different route to achieve my goals. I’m sure I face some difficult decisions ahead… expect news from the Nagy camp in the upcoming weeks.

Back to my point about creating artwork about the homeless: The problem with social commentary is finding a balance that allows you to to explore an issue (and encourage the viewer to do the same) without the artist necessarily taking sides on it. I’ve met my fair share of beggars in the year I’ve been working on this project and have come to see the issue from multiple perspectives. Few children hope to grow up and live on the streets. (Actually, I’ll admit: when I was a little girl and had a bad day, I would dream about running away from home and living on doughnuts – but I’m the exception to the rule). Nevertheless, there is a certain argument for the state of homelessness being, not that of a disease, but that of a lifestyle. Particularly in the Austin area, I’ve come across a fair number of hippies and gypsies that live on the generosity of strangers or the tips from their street performances… some who seem genuinely happier with their situation than the bulk of my professional acquaintances.

Again, I don’t want to take sides on the issue. If I were to try to sum up my observations, I would classify the deciding factor as that of “choice”. If you are forced to live in your car because you lost your job, that is certainly the type of homelessness likened to a disease because you weren’t given a choice. If you are an addict, begging for your next fix, it probably started as a choice. I can’t help wondering about the story of some of the characters in my work. Like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel… where did they go wrong?

I documented a lot of homeless this year and have been rummaging through some of my source images. Under normal circumstances, I’d like to keep some part of this process a mystery to my readers. But after today, I thought I’d share them with you in the hopes that we can both learn something. Maybe understanding more about my process will give you some inspiration or comfort.

P.S. There’s 70+ images… see the rest on my Flickr site.