NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT

How Poverty and the Arts kindles community in times defined by distance

BY JUSTIN WAGNER

Those experiencing homelessness face a bevy of challenges, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. Edwin Lockridge knows those challenges well — but he also knows the elation of sharing art in a public exhibition.

“That is an experience. There are no words,” Lockridge said. “It’s you, yourself, your art and the world. It’s amazing, it really is.”

Lockridge first held a paintbrush in his hand as an infant; it’s a means of self-expression he’s always found a natural fit and it’s a skill passed onto him from his father, he said.

And while maintaining the ability to create art is difficult when you lack a consistent roof over your head, Lockridge has not stopped for anything in 50 years. In fact, he’s spent the last three years in a space where he can create, sell, exhibit and collaborate to his heart’s content.

This space is Poverty and the Arts, a nonprofit artists’ collective based in Nashville. As the organization looks toward a full-scale rebrand and expanded opportunities for artists, it remains focused on building community for its cohort.

Lockridge is one of many platformed in some part by the local nonprofit, from simple provision of art supplies to joint projects with the Frist Art Museum.

Like Lockridge, painter Thaddeus Tekell has carried artistic ambitions with him his whole life.

But when he had to reckon with homelessness in his late 20s, finding ground to cultivate those ambitions was a challenge.

He didn’t stop creating or showing his art, but he found little in the way of accessible platforms or local communities. After all, Tekell isn’t enamored with group settings.

“Group things are really hard for me,” he explained. “I’m schizophrenic… I get upset about things other people don’t even notice, and things that upset other people, I think are funny.”

Despite this, Tekell has spent the last three years involved with Poverty and the Arts. He spends his infrequent visits committing his experiences and hallucinations to vivid, introspective watercolors, preparing them for exhibition and sale.

“I came here one day just to check it out, I wasn’t really thinking of joining,” Tekell says. “But I met some of the people and before I knew it, they were signing me up… it’s good, what this place does.”

It’s at POVA that Tekell met Lockridge, now a close friend and collaborator. They’re able to bond over their synchronous experiences — not just histories of homelessness and artistry, but also appreciation for jazz and Picasso.

“He has a beautiful spirit and is a gifted artist,” Lockridge says of Tekell. “I’m blessed and privileged to call him my friend.”

According to founder and Executive Director Nicole Minyard, connections like these are at the heart of POVA’s potency.

“When we started interviewing and asking questions about ‘what's your favorite part,’ it always came back to community,” Minyard says. “It came back to feeling like they never fit in, and they finally belonged.”

Minyard explained that homelessness can be an isolating, traumatic experience — and solutions to the problem of homelessness are incomplete without an attempt to foster real community and allow for expression.

“Providing marginalized populations with art gives them a voice to reclaim their narrative and reshare it,” she says. “A lot of times when you're homeless, these talking heads get to paint the picture of who you are.”

These ambitions arose organically from a much smaller POVA, which Minyard first envisioned almost a decade ago as a college student looking for ways to assist the homelessness community in unconventional ways.

Since then, the collective has grown to include 16 active artists and a team of workers and volunteers who make outreach, management and sales possible. Minyard said POVA even has plans to diversify its services further within the next year, including a graduation program whereby artists can find their way into housing and further navigate a career in art.

Despite these plans, a major obstacle — COVID-19 — has been a pressing source of turbulence for the nonprofit as these plans come to fruition.

“During COVID … we didn't recruit, it was really hard to bring on new artists. And we were also in a transition, figuring out how to adapt during that period,” Minyard says.

The pandemic has hit the artists hard too, with a lack of in-person interaction leaving artists hamstrung in trying to market their work.

“You get used to selling a certain amount a month, and then it drops off to nothing,” said Tekell. “We had, it was the third gala I’d been in, it was virtual this year … I don’t think this kind of art comes off as well online.”

For artist A.M. HASSAN, even more pressing was the lack of safe access to a community she loved.

“It’s like a family, artistic brothers and sisters,” she says. “The pandemic really put a damper on it, it’s like someone broke up our family.”

But, as A.M. HASSAN noted, the community she found at POVA was a source of hope for things to get better.

It’s a hope Minyard shares as she looks forward to POVA’s next steps. But above all, her interest is in keeping the family of POVA empowered by their collective work, she said.

“You know, you really start to see how it can become fundamental,” she says. “Even to their motivation to get out of their circumstances ... just having some light and joy to connect to.”