Friends,
For a while now I've been interested in artworks that weave together beauty, community, and social transformation. Often named socially-engaged art, this approach to making art takes people and place into account. Rather than only looking at art on a museum wall (which I very much love to do!), socially-engaged art practice is less about art-for-art's-sake and more about art-for-our-sake, beyond the walls of the museum. Who do we want to be together? What needs repair? How might the arts inspire us toward long-term change?
For the artist Rick Lowe, one way answer these questions was to buy up a group of run down shotgun homes in Houston's Third Ward and turn them into artists studios and affordable housing. A few decades later, this effort of “collective creativity” turned one of the most dangerous and under-resourced areas of town into a national art destination. Year after year, artists take up residency in the homes, developing paintings and sculpture and performances that respond to and enrich the needs of the community and the larger country.
So how long did it take to turn the neighborhood around? Only 25 years. This wasn't some clickbait trend or viral post—durable social transformation needs persistent hope and collective joy and artmaking and whole communities of people inspired by a more generous future than the anxieties of today.
“This concpetual idea that has transformed into what many consider to be one of the greatest social sculptures in the world,” says Eureka Gilkey, the current Executive Director. “It came out of this idea that art can transform and enrich a community.” You can learn more about the first year of Project Rowe Houses through Rick Lowes’ own words below. This week, let’s wonder together: what social sculptures are already forming in our own communities? What might happen if we grabbed a hammer and joined in?
Take care,
Michael
“The Power of Social Sculpture” by Rick Lowe (2022)
I just was spending a lot of time volunteering in the community and working with the activists that were in this neighborhood. And one day they were organizing a tour of dangerous places within the community. And they had representatives from the city and the county on a bus, and they were driving around saying, this is a place for harboring drug activities. This is a place for prostitution. They were asking them to be torn down. They stopped at this little block and a half of shotgun houses. There was 22 of them. And they said, “And this is the absolute worst place in the entire neighborhood.” And they said it just needed to go.
And I was just sitting there on the bus with them. I had no thoughts about it until later, going back looking at those houses and then thinking about [the artist] John Bigger's glorification of the shotgun house or shotgun communities, then it just kind of hit me. I was like, “Well, wait a minute. This could be an ideal place for social sculpture,” because it had a deep level of history and it could symbolically mean something….”
I thought ”These houses mean something and we should do something” without a clue about really how to manage it. But it was just really taking that first step, knowing that there's meaning and there's value there, and with a trust that somehow it will unfold. And I think that, to me, also became the point when I learned really and truly the value of social sculpture is that if you're sculpting in society, you can't do it alone. You must do it in a way that rely on the gifts and strengths of other people.
I didn't even know the first thing about real estate. I had never purchased any real estate anything in my life. So immediately all of a sudden it was like, “Oh, I had to find people that knew something about real estate.” Then it was like, “Oh, well, the houses, they were all falling down.” It was like, “Okay, so now we have to find somebody that knows something about construction.” It's interesting because the six other artists that I was working with, they were all behind me. They were interested in this.
Once I was able to get a lease purchase agreement on these 22 houses, we just started cleaning up. In fact, there was an elder lady who had lived behind this particular property. She was the only person that was still living in basically a four block area. And she had lived there, she had bought her house in 1949. And in the midst of all that chaos around her, she still had her picket fence and white house...She said, “If you want to do something in this place, clean this mess up.”
And that was our first cue. It's like, okay, we've got the houses, let's call people out and say, let's clean up this block. Let's clean up these two blocks here. And so that's kind of how we started was just people with shovels and rakes and trash bags. And it was almost like excavating because so much had overgrown. We were just having fun cleaning up a place. When we start cleaning them up, just a handful of us artists, all of a sudden, children from the neighborhood started coming. They were curious about what we were doing. And little kids, the ones that are 5 to 10, 12 years old, they would just come and hang out, and we would buy lunch and stuff and hang out with them and mentor them.
And so that was our first unofficial program: a youth program. Just being older adults there to talk to children about what are you doing with your life and what do you want to do? What are you dreaming about and giving them meaningful things to do....But then, we also wanted to make sure that artists were at the forefront. So instead of having an education coordinator, we just said, we'll allow artists, we give artists stipends and let them do what they do and educate people in the process. So then we started this art program that had eight houses where artists could do art projects, and we had the five houses in the back, little school houses and stuff. That was the first year or so…
"When Someone Deeply Listens To You" by John Fox
When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered.
When someone deeply listens to you
your barefeet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
Make your own musical garden on the internet—why not?