Open any tour book about Washington, DC and you’ll undoubtedly find world-class art institutions filling its pages. Descriptions of the Smithsonian museums, national galleries, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and more will entice you to engage with art inside architecturally stunning buildings. But there’s another kind of art in DC rising from the ground up, in a place you’d least expect it–the street.
It’s the kind of art that isn’t meant to impress critics, but gives life to those exiled from our cultural feast. It embodies hope and faith. It reframes existential struggles. It comes from the heart of our unhoused neighbors who make meaning on the margins of society.
Wouldn’t this practice be deeply spiritual?
That’s what I pondered earlier this year after picking up my first copy of a biweekly newspaper called Street Sense from a sidewalk vendor in Cleveland Park. A vendor/artist, to be exact, which is the role that 97 current participants embrace in the street newspaper’s low-barrier income program to end homelessness in the DC area. My neighborhood vendor/artist, clad in a blue apron vest, pocketed $4.50 out of the $5 I gave him.
That’s the business part of Street Sense Media, which incorporated as an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet in 2005. Today, the organization is part of the International Network of Street Papers, which consists of over 90 street papers in 35 countries–all of them sold by people experiencing poverty, homelessness or other forms of marginalization.
‘Collapsing hierarchies’ of conventional media
Street Sense Media’s art part came later, along with case management, skill-building and other support services for the unhoused.
In 2007, Street Sense Media already had a Writer’s Group that eventually evolved into its flagship Writer’s Workshop. By then, the paper’s professional editorial team was making time to work with vendors. Over time, art-related classes expanded and by 2017, vendor/artists could learn illustration, painting and photography as well writing, poetry, theater and podcast production. Professional artists volunteer their time as instructors.
Even though professional journalists and interns produce the bulk of objective journalism, many of the paper’s pages give voice to those experiencing precarious living conditions. Working with staff, some vendor/artists venture into journalism, while others focus exclusively on art. Regardless, all get to discover and share their voices in a safe space. The program is inclusive and nurtures creativity.
“We follow the basic ethos of street papers,” says Thomas Ratliff, Director of Vendor Employment. “We collapse hierarchies between the people making the paper and the people selling the paper.”
Housed in the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church in downtown DC dwarfed by modern, bulky buildings, Street Sense Media features a vendor lounge with basic creature comforts, including a bathroom.
Consistency of place is key, according to Ratliff. A regular respite from the gritty realities of the street helps vendor/artists heal from the trauma of homelessness.
“Being supported in pursuing art, expressing oneself through art has a kind of power for the inner world but also builds relationships with the outer world. Many people are denied this base to practice skills that they can cultivate here,” he says.
It also builds a community that crosses class, racial and social inequities in the district. “We work together with the common end of everyone getting to be here, be safe and healthy,” he continues. “We make this newspaper where we hope all of this impacts the buying public.”
Art that empowers
Street Sense Media is just one of a handful of space use partners at the church, and while not a faith-based organization, its mission is particularly aligned with Episcopal values, according to Reverend Glenna J. Huber, who began her role as Rector there in 2016.
“Our mission is to share the love of God through acts of justice and good faith,” says Huber. “Epiphany is really integrated. We see many vendors on Sunday morning and some of them utilize our shelter space. I don’t know of any other partnership that is that holistic.”
Some artistic cross-pollination takes place between Street Sense Media offices and the church. Twice a year, vendor/artists involved in the theater workshops perform for the congregation and offer a Q & A. Occasionally, Huber switches up regular service and gives Street Sense poets a chance to share poetry or spoken word with the congregation.
“It’s not necessarily religious,” says Reverend Huber. “But their poems give our congregation a glimpse into their lives and them a chance to express themselves.”
Although Huber is not involved in the daily production of Street Sense, she hones in on the importance of art as a spiritual healing modality–the kind of art, as I mentioned above–that empowers people, especially the “historically underrepresented individuals in America, which means Black women and men and more recently, Latino and non-English speakers.”
The practice of art, Huber notes, can make a difference for those living on the street. She continues:
. . . if [someone] feels powerless, spiritually it means they have lost their voice and ability to act. Art, poetry, writing allow people to find and claim their voice and reclaim their power. And once you reclaim your power that allows you to live into hope. If I feel powerless and then there’s no way I’m ever going to believe that I’m going to get out of the situation I’m in. And when I create something people respect it and it gives the creator a sense of pride.
Transcendence in action
Gerald Anderson and Queenie Featherstone, both long-standing vendor/artists, can attest to feeling empowered and uplifted through art.
I met both of them at Artshow, an event held at Metrobar in Edgewood this past September, which showcased the work of several vendor/artists who practice painting, music and spoken word.
Gerald Anderson has a book under his belt
Anderson came to DC in 2005 as a Hurricane Katrina evacuee leaving behind a life of prison, drugs and homelessness in his birthplace of New Orleans. He was 37. Selling Street Sense papers and contributing stories turned his life around.
Anderson, who has become a fixture at the G & 9th Street exit of Chinatown/Gallery Place metro, sees his customers as a kind of family–they’ve even rallied for him during challenging times.
“Everyone knows me in the city, wherever I go” he says.
A major breakthrough came in 2015 when he published a memoir with award-winning DC journalist Susan Orlins. With Orlins at the keyboard and Anderson in the role of storyteller, the 18-month long collaboration resulted in “Still Standing: How an Ex-Con Found Salvation in the Floodwaters of Katrina” from Jambalaya Press.
For someone who didn’t learn how to read or write until he was 22 and spent most of his young adulthood in prison, he says that having a book is “amazing”–a way to teach other men not to make the same mistakes he made.
“It made a big difference in my life,” he says. “It opened a lot of doors. It showed me how to help others by telling my story, which is really a true story. When I speak I like to tell the truth.”
Queenie Featherstone still can’t believe she writes poetry
Native Washingtonian Queenie Featherstone went to college because she wanted to make her mother proud. Despite having worked most of her adult life at various jobs, including retail and work in Montgomery County as paraeducator, she suffered income loss that led her to a period of housing insecurity.
Learning the business side of selling newspapers changed her life.
“I became homeless even while working,” she recalls. “But I was able to overcome it because of the positive people [at Street Sense Media], my surroundings and my faith and me just knowing how to be strong. Now I’m here to help others and advocate for the unhoused and the less fortunate.”
She’s also here for art. Back in the 80s and 90s, Featherstone would drive her friend, Veronica Plater, to literary events around the city. When Plater, a Christian poet, moved away from DC, the friends lost touch.
For Featherstone, life took some interesting turns. While she still had a roof over her head, Featherstone got involved with Barbara J. “Mother” Brown’s lay soup kitchen ministry in San Francisco. She “got under her wing” and traveled summers feeding the homeless around the country.
“I never dreamt that I would be homeless but that’s how I could handle it,” she says. “I could handle it because of what she taught me. I’m thankful and blessed.”
Featherstone also never dreamed she’d be writing poetry, but that changed the day she walked into Bonnie Naradzay’s poetry class at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless services and advocacy non-profit in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of DC.
It was rhyme at first sight.
“I’m just so amazed, shocked I just don’t believe it, as they say, ‘you have to kick yourself,’ when I write the poetry,” Featherstone says. “I like poetry to rhyme, but Miss Bonnie says ‘now Queenie, it does not always have to rhyme,’ but because I’m old fashioned, I like my poems to rhyme.”
Naradzay, who currently volunteers poetry classes at both Miriam’s Kitchen and Street Sense Media, shares literature that her students might recognize in class–think Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou–but also encourages them to explore their own, something that Featherstone does often.
“I might wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning with my pad and pencil and start to write poetry,” she says. “I thank Miss Bonnie for her knowledge and skills to teach us poetry. I’m still learning so much. It’s just so amazing how some of my poems just flow and when I submit them and they like my poems, I kind of cry a little.”
Featherstone also laughs–a lot. She injects humor into mundane situations as in a poem she wrote about “a mouse in the house” from her current apartment.
Featherstone recently reconnected with her old friend who moved back to the area. She’s thrilled, especially after saving clippings of her Street Sense poems all these years not knowing if she’d ever see her friend again.
“We hugged, kissed and cried and I always saved the different papers where my poetry was printed,” she says. “I said ‘Lord if Veronica is still living I want her to be proud of me and see my poetry.’ And she’s living! I saw her this past Sunday!”
Blinders off
I met many more artists at the Artshow last month–too many to mention here. They all spoke confidently about their art. I saw a familiar sparkle in their eyes, one that I know well. Being an artist myself, I know what it feels like to be seen in a world that often doesn’t pause to look.
If folks who struggle to get off the streets can kindle that little flame of inspiration with help from mentors, what does that say about the rest of us whose senses have dulled in a city full of masterpieces? Do we even know where to find our social blind spots? Perhaps the spiritual lesson is meant for those of us buying the paper–art can help the human spirit rise and that’s a beautiful thing to behold.
About the Homeless Crisis Reporting Project
This article is part of our 2024 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works are published in a special online section of Street Sense Media. I encourage you to read the other posts, which provide vital perspectives on homelessness and housing insecurity in the nation’s capital.
Learn more
- From the beginning, a short anthology of Street Sense Media [Street Sense Media]
- Vendor/Artists Profiles [Street Sense Media]
- “Where are you growing?” A podcast with Queenie Featherstone and Morgan Jones [Street Sense Media]
- Queenie Featherstone’s archive [Street Sense Media]
- Gerald Anderson’s archive [Street Sense Media]
- Gerald Anderson and Susan Orlins share about collaborating on their book [Youtube]
Featured Image: Street Sense vendor/artist Gerald Anderson holds a copy of the The Art Issue issue at his vending point in downtown Washington, D.C. on October 7, 2024. (Photo/Maria de los Angeles)
Author’s Note: Veronica Plater legally changed her name, per Queenie Featherstone. The correct spelling of the new name was not available at time of publication.
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