Art Through the Eyes of the Homeless : Social services: Special programs give street people a chance to express themselves through painting and photography. After exhibits at City Hall and USC, some works are being sold to raise funds.

By IRIS YOKOI

Nov. 29, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

To express his views on the oppression of women, Hector Barcenas used bold, dramatic hues to paint a club-wielding woman stomping down a red path toward the stoic figures of a man and his dog. Colored cubes, symbolizing the frustration of her “blocked ideas,” frame the oil painting.

Vincent Richards used more obvious images to express his views about another societal problem--poverty. Richards took a photograph of Sunday food lines in front of Los Angeles City Hall.

Barcenas and Richards are homeless men in Los Angeles. Barcenas lives in an abandoned house in Echo Park; Richards sleeps on a 3rd Street sidewalk. And both men have been given the opportunity to express their thoughts and emotions through art programs.

Social service agencies such as Jovenes Inc. in Echo Park and the Homeless Outreach Program in Downtown Los Angeles have recognized the talent that often lies hidden in the homeless, and both offer arts programs that encourage expression through such media as painting and sculpture. Additionally, a professional photographer recently enlisted the homeless in a third program--helping her produce a photographic art project about life in the streets.

Barcenas, 32, is one of about a dozen participants in the art program at Jovenes Inc., funded in part by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, which supplied a $3,000 grant from the Los Angeles Arts Recovery Fund. Jovenes Inc., a nonprofit agency that helps homeless Latino youths and young adults, last year converted one of its Sunset Boulevard suites into an art studio where the homeless express themselves through oil painting.

Professional artist Ernesto Montano heads the art program, serving as mentor and teacher. All he asks of his students--many of whom have never painted before--is a commitment to art.

The students’ works have been on exhibit in City Hall and at USC. But Friday through Dec. 9, they will be for sale at the Jovenes studio, 1218 W. Sunset Blvd., Suite D. About 100 oil paintings on paper and canvas will be sold, priced from $200 to $800. Note cards and Christmas cards designed by the artists will also be for sale.

The artists will keep half of the proceeds and the other half will go to the art program.

“It takes courage to paint and allow other people to see your painting,” said Father Richard Estrada, the founder of Jovenes Inc. “The quality of the art and the expressions are wonderful . . . the vivid colors.”

“It’s very important for a person to have their work exhibited,” agreed Mike Neely, a former homeless person who founded the Homeless Outreach Program. “Even if he’s not a Chagall, it’s still important for that person’s worth that they’re contributing.”

Barcenas, who came to the United States from Mexico six years ago and has had trouble finding steady work as a handyman, said he paints not only for relaxation but for the sense of self-satisfaction. “The expressions you see on people’s faces when they see my work--money can’t buy that,” he said.

“A lot of my paintings are recent dreams that I’ve had. A lot of people have the same dreams and can relate to them.”

Among Barcenas’ works is “Painful Scream,” in which a pregnant woman is shown screaming as she looks at a pair of dangling legs--her husband has hanged himself. Barcenas, who is divorced and long ago lost contact with his ex-wife and only son, said he painted this somewhat disturbing work to show that “some people can’t take the pressure of families, but they don’t realize they leave someone behind who cares about them.”

Friendships were the recurring theme in photographs taken by street people as part of another art experiment funded by the Cultural Affairs Department. Professional photographer Jean Ferro used a $5,000 grant to distribute disposable cameras to 30 homeless people in Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood.

Ferro, a Hollywood resident, gave her photographers a weekend to take pictures of whatever they desired. She drove through Skid Row and Hollywood on Oct. 31, randomly handing out cameras and a booklet of basic photography tips. She specified that she would return to the same spots Nov. 2 to pick up the cameras. All of them were returned.

After getting the film developed, Ferro made up individual photo albums for each of the photographers and returned to the streets to give them the books and a congratulatory certificate. She will next fashion the photographs into a videotape titled, “Through Our Own Eyes--People Without Homes.”

Ferro, a portrait photographer by trade, said she was thrilled with the photographs, which she said present a mostly cheery picture of homeless life. The photographs are full of smiling faces and people posing arm in arm.

Some of the photographs take on an architectural theme, with shots of the Downtown skyline or the buildings that are most familiar to the photographers, such as the warehouses and missions where they find shelter. Ferro said she was impressed with the angles in some of these pictures, particularly those of one woman who lives on the sidewalk near 5th and Towne streets.

“She had a nice sense of composition and movement,” Ferro said as she reviewed the woman’s photographs of buildings in Little Tokyo and Downtown. “She’s very talented.”

Another man took close-ups of pigeons, a man and his baby and the bloodied face of a person who had been beaten up. Yet another man took landscape shots of the greenery and statues in a nearby park.

The participants themselves seemed surprised at the quality of their work. When Ferro returned with copies of his pictures, Richards initially reacted by saying, “They’re probably horrible.”

But as he reviewed the photographs, Richards exclaimed with glee, “I took that? Those cameras are terrific! It’s not me--it’s the camera.”

Richards, a spry, witty 66-year-old who faithfully sweeps the sidewalk where he sleeps, said he decided to photograph the Sunday food lines at City Hall “to show that underneath the Establishment is the food line. . . . We really have a problem.”

Said Ferro: “These are real people. I felt a lot of warmth and a lot of caring among them. I told them, ‘If you want to take 24 pictures of a bug crawling on the ground, that’s fine!’ My main concern was to give them the chance to express themselves.”