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In the park, Home is where the art is

By ALISA ULFERTS
Published March 31, 2007

When seven local artists began thinking of a place to house a public art exhibit exploring the concept of "home," they looked no further than Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg.

The park is home to many of the city's homeless, who favor the park's soft grasses and proximity to bus and other services.

The organizing artists said they didn't want the Project: Home exhibit to be an explicit protest in support of the homeless or in opposition to recent local policies that affect them. But they did want to take advantage of the park's status among the homeless to explore what, in fact, a home is.

The exhibit opened Friday and runs through tonight.

"For me, no matter where I am in the world, if my friends and my family are with me I'm home," said local artist and designer Allen Loyd, one of the exhibit organizers.

Loyd's interpretation of home, titled Home Is Where I Am, was a temple-like structure fashioned out of bamboo, the roof of which hung from a tree.

Loyd said he chose bamboo because it has a lighter, temporal quality that he wanted to emphasize.

"It can be temporary," Loyd said.

In all, 23 individual pieces formed the exhibit, and all but one of the artists is from the Tampa Bay area. The works ranged from an arrangement of photos of houses , titled A Set of Houses by Tampa artist Kara Holland to Shrine to the Homeless by Clearwater artists Bonnie L. Bowman and Sarah Butz. That piece that included scrap materials woven into the work.

Loyd and other organizing artists said several homeless individuals helped set up the pieces and some even contributed their own drawings to the exhibit.

Ray Hargis is such an artist. Seated on a blanket with his possessions and dog he said he was watching for someone else, Hargis flipped through a notebook filled with exquisitely drawn sketches. One was of Spider-Man, another of a dragon.

When asked what he thought home was, Hargis tapped his fist to his chest.

"Right here in my heart," said Hargis, a North Carolina native who has spent the past seven months in St. Petersburg.

"I may be residentially challenged, but I'm not homeless."

[Last modified March 31, 2007, 01:19:52]