On Fridays starting in January 2024, CSS has been able to offer our clients two hours away from the challenges that characterize the life of an unhoused person to create art at the OSLP Art and Culture Center, a warm and bright studio space staffed by an incredibly welcoming and knowledgeable supportive arts team. 

The exhibit at the OSLP studio includes an assembled Conestoga Hut with a painted canvas covering, making it a work of art in its own right; client artwork from across most of our 14 CSS communities; a video celebrating this award-winning collaborative project; and a mosaic made of many keys painted by CSS clients, staff, and sixth graders at the Eugene Village School.

CSS makes a lot of keys. Keys are constantly being lost and replaced. Folks leave. Locks need to be changed, and so on. What to do with these keys has been a topic of conversation at CSS for years. “These would be great for an art project,” I’ve heard repeatedly. Keys represent what we do as a sheltering organization and what it means to have a place to call home. Keys painted by many, assembled onto a larger, colorful, inclusive key, seem a natural symbol of the power of art and community to uplift the unhoused.

Joshua, one of the featured artists, held a key in his pocket the night of the exhibit opening. After a year and a half in CSS communities, he had just signed a lease for an apartment in Springfield and was moving in later that night.

Joshua had just begun participating in the art program shortly before the exhibit. “I was struggling with a mental block that wouldn’t let me get involved,” he said. “It wouldn’t let me express myself because of the stress involved in doing something expressive, emotive because that comes with a lot of emotions." 

Very few people knew he had been an artist before a four-year “hiatus” led to him being unhoused. “Being homeless is one of those things in the culture; you have to be careful who you share with.” 

In fact, he spent a year in AmeriCorps teaching art to disabled adults, earned an art degree from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and pursued a graduate degree in arts education, during which he worked with pre-K through 12th-grade students.

“My goal was to go to grad school and teach college-level art,”  he said. And that night, with the key in his pocket and his paintings on the wall, he said: “There’s still time for that.”

When his background in art had been discovered in the CSS community, Joshua finally felt ready to help install the exhibit, “getting things framed up and ready to go”—including his art, which had been kept safely by his parents, who live in Cottage Grove, and his sister, who lives in Eugene. 

He said CSS, in general, and this art project in particular, allowed him to reengage with vital parts of himself that he’d lost track of during his period of being unhoused. “I’m so grateful. I really can’t say what a great program it is.”  Despite moving into permanent housing, he plans to continue with the CSS aftercare and to be a full-fledged participant in the CSS–OSLP art program.

“My future is wide open now.”

As a low-barrier shelter, we take all comers, regardless of criminal record, health, addiction, or mental health status. These communities are places of radical inclusion--and challenge. Besides navigating their own survival and healing needs, our clients must find ways to remain in communication and resolve conflicts with one another in their communities. It’s not easy.

This open studio program has been a place of refuge and peace for CSS clients. Our clients have learned how to make mosaic art pieces; one painted with acrylics for the first time, another painted on a canvas for the first time in years, and several folks discovered they have genuine artistic talent.

One client drew a scene of her Safe Spot community as a summer camp, reimagined with a fire pit and a tire swing. It had a tree in the middle with a heart carved on it. The heart said RIP with the name of a friend who had recently died.

Most program participants express greater hope due to this program and look forward to this time each week.

With 60 square feet of interior space per hut, getting out and about is a must for our clients. Eugene offers scenic places to rest, gather, and be on fair days. However, no matter the weather, most built environments do not feel safe or welcoming to the unhoused. 

OSLP Art and Culture Center is a rare combination of a gorgeous physical space with a mission of inclusion and support that provides precisely what our clients need to uncork their creative talents. To grow as artists, we need spaces that help us feel safe and valued, access to art-making materials, and appropriate instruction. CSS partnering with OSLP has brought to fruition a long-held dream of an arts program for the unhoused in Eugene.

Community is key to addressing homelessness. Join us! The exhibit runs through August 23.