Humble Beauty: Skid Row Artists

2013 • 56 minutes

About this movie

A story about talented homeless and formerly homeless men and women who, despite a daily struggle for survival, paint and create art in the worst area of Los Angeles. It's also about the ubiquity of art in human life. People strive to make art, no matter how humble the circumstances. For four years, we followed the lives and progress of several artists from LA's Skid Row, the largest concentration of homeless people in America. Some artists find their art supplies in garbage cans and dumpsters. They draw on old paper bags. Many have joined Art Workshops led by dedicated artist-social workers and are given paint, canvases, frames, easels and the technical, creative and supportive guidance to create remarkable, often therapeutic, works of art. Many of these Art Workshop members have shown-- and sold-- their work in downtown Los Angeles galleries. Art changed their lives dramatically. One woman told us that coming to the Workshop is the only reason she has for getting up in the morning. A directionless hustler has become a known, respected painter and employed community leader. A shy immigrant who creates, in classic primitive style, riotously colorful scenes from his childhood in a tiny Mexican village has suffered a major setback - he's been admitted to art school at University of California, Berkeley, and awarded a scholarship, but can't attend due to his immigration status. One artist was a 12-year old runaway from an Indian Reservation in 1941 and has been on the streets of Skid Row ever since. There are many stories among the artists of LA's Skid Row and unimagined talent to bring to the attention of a worldwide audience.

Ratings and reviews

What I love most about this film is its authenticity. It's about real people doing extraordinary art in the midst of chaos of Skid Row. These people carved out a space for sorely needed artistic expression the one of most adverse environments possible. What a great film!

With great warmth and dedication, this modest production, four years in the making, profiles a community of artists and social workers on downtown L.A.'s Skid Row, one of the largest homeless populations in the country. The film focuses on two social workers who also serve as art mentors and the homeless (or formerly homeless) atists whose work they encourage and support, one employed at the SRO Housing Corporation, the other at the Lamp Community. It blends probing interviews, vivdly affecting personal testimonies, and informative narration to cast a moving and revelatory light on the lives of all invovled -- the social networks based on a shared faith in the transformative and therapeutivc power of art. The artists featured work primarily in fine arts media, including watercolor, charcoal, acrylics, crayon and collage; several have had gallery showings. One of the most poignant figures profiled is prevented by his immigration status from attending a prestigious art school to which he was awarded a scholarship. Recommended for large public libraries and academic collections serving interests in social work and art therapy.

To qualify this, I am one of the figures covered in Humble Beauty, specifically being one of the "mentors" who designed and founded one of the art programs or collectives in Skid Row which the film covers. The film is authentic and takes the viewer into L.A.'s Skid Row, the highest concentration of homeless people and the homeless mentally ill in America, with the ironic result being an experience of beauty, meaningfulness and hope ...and actually more than hope, that being a hope realized. The film makers, both lifelong professionals in their field, nevertheless funded this project out of their own pockets, and this film represents a seriously self-sacrificial work of art and a rare piece of art in that it totally lacks self-serving agendas which can (and I say this as an artist, myself) otherwise heavily afflict artists in our society. Correspondingly, the artists in the film, (all homeless or recently homeless), live in the rarefied trying fire or crucible which is Skid Row and... Well just watch the film yourselves, and experience the creative fires of their lives. ...Rory White founder of the Lamp Art Project for Mollie Lowery and current head of Art Works project.