Thursday, May 5, 2011





There are thirty-five million accounted for men, women and children that go homeless each night in the United States.  With about every 11 individuals that are not homeless in the United States, there is 1 that is homeless.  Two trends are largely responsible for the rise in homelessness over the past 20-25 years: a growing shortage of affordable rental housing and a simultaneous increase in poverty.  Given this fact of so many homeless people right here in the United States, I find myself begging the question, “Just what do they go through to live their lives let alone barely survive?” 

The Homeless have to be creative to survive. Homeless people have three major issues: Hunger, Shelter and Safety. Eating from garbage cans or digging in dumpsters behind fast-food restaurants is one strategy for food and supplies.  Sleeping under park benches with card board for a mattress and using the seat above as a framework like a tent while putting some waterproof covering on top of the seat to retain heat is another strategy for shelter.  They makeshift shelters for themselves with whatever they can find: such as trashed doors, old cabinets, blocks of wood, sheets of metal, etc.   To beat the cold weather they might camp with other homeless people, using campfires, alcohol, and body heat to stay warm.

This body of work is portraying the loneliness and scarcity of wealth in the lives of the homeless but in spite of this my intention is to show the beauty in and surrounding their lives. I have spotlighted them as individuals that are worthy to be recognized within frameworks that comment on their ingenuity using such items as found objects and scraps of wood.