Beginning March 1 and running through April, the Real Change Portrait Project will be on display at Seattle City Hall, downstairs in the Anne Focke Gallery and in the lobby near the elevator.
Since the project began about four years ago, more than 30 artists have volunteered to paint a portrait of a Real Change vendor.
The paintings have been displayed in coffee shops, bars and libraries throughout the state and are a remarkable testament to the relationships that form between our readers and the people who sell this paper.
Because nothing says “someone cares about me” quite like getting your portrait done.
Portraiture is an art form that was once reserved for kings and queens and clerics and generals. It wasn’t until after the Italian Renaissance that artists like Vermeer began to paint common people.
Yet, paintings like de la Tour’s “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player,” or Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid,” were anonymous.
The names of the subjects were of little interest.
With the 19th century, that began to change. The upheavals of the industrial revolution brought ordinary people into history. Art materials became widely available. Portraits began to appear in middle class homes.
Artists associated with the social realism movement, like Courbet and Daumier, began painting poor and working people, and their work was equal parts art and political statement.
But even now, most of us are unlikely to ever have our portrait painted. Even less so if we are poor. Homeless people, typically, are anonymous.
Perhaps that’s part of the problem.
If every homeless person were as precious to us as much as our own friends and family — if their lives were assigned the same value as anyone else’s — the anonymity that allows us to not care would evaporate like the morning mist and we would begin to see.
We would open up our homes and begin the healing. This state of emergency on homelessness that exists in Seattle would be over tomorrow.
Every person depicted in the Portrait Project has a story.
The portraits are displayed with a brief biography, but as you view the paintings, you know that the histories of the subjects are as varied and complicated as life itself.
Behind every picture is a real person, and for every person depicted, there are thousands more in Seattle who struggle with homelessness.
People with families. People who, as children, never thought “One day, I’m going to be despised by society.” People who hang on to their sense of self in the face of daily assaults on their personal dignity.
People who I’ve come to know as complicated, beautiful individuals who get up every day and hope for something better.
People like Robert Wotjkiewicz, whose impossibly bright blue eyes stare out from his portrait like lasers into your soul. Who, as Real Change Vendor #133, has sold the paper for nearly 20 years. Who served in the Navy, hitchhiked across the country and has struggled with addiction and mental illness for much of his life, and is now stable in a Columbia City apartment provided by DESC.
I look at that painting and see a beautiful human being. A friend. A survivor.
People like Tricia Sullivan, whose middle-class existence was interrupted by a string of bad breaks. Who would end up living for a while in Nickelsville. Who overcame her shame and embarrassment to find a way out in selling Real Change. Who has now returned to her life as a successful professional.
People like Willie Jones, who overcame homelessness and crack addiction to gain a community college business degree. Who has been in low-income housing for years but still finds the community and meaning he needs in selling Real Change.
The partly cloudy blue sky that dominates the backdrop of his portrait is a symbol of the open possibilities that now stretch before him.
Please join us for the opening ceremony from 4 – 6 p.m. on March 1, and help us celebrate the lives of the people we care about. This is where the change begins.