'The Working Homeless'

You see them on the sidewalks and street corners. They may just hold up a sign, or they may ask for change. Maybe you look away when you pass them or just file them away in that mental box labeled "the homeless." The sad truth is, few of us take the time to think of these men and women on the streets as people. Daniel Rudin, a second-year graduate student in the studio art program at the University of Texas, has undertaken a project to address that attitude and related issues: the daily existence of people without homes; the physical, mental, and economic problems they face; and the economic gap between them and the middle class. He's recorded video conversations with homeless panhandlers and included them in the exhibition "The Working Homeless," opening this week in the Visual Arts Center in the University of Texas Art Building. "This exhibition can't provide social services," Rudin writes, "but it can humanize and visualize a discourse that is more often than not repressed. More importantly, in times of economic hardship, it is important to reactivate the conversation about the result the current economic crisis has on the least privileged of Americans."

In conjunction with the opening of "The Working Homeless," the VAC is hosting a panel discussion on the topic, moderated by Rudin and VAC curatorial fellow Noah Simblist and including:

Scott, a construction worker, carpenter, and former owner of a trucking company who has been on the streets since 1997;

Khrysttey DeLoach Bowick, a licensed veterinary technician who is homeless and has been Scott's partner for six years;

William Bernard Stringfellow, an interior designer and former showroom manager at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles who has been living on and off the streets for several years;

Sanna J. Thompson, an associate professor at the UT School of Social Work who focuses on high-risk youth and their families, with a special emphasis on runaway and homeless youth populations;

Ben Callaway, a graduate student in the UT School of Social Work and former case manager at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless; and

Tiffany Ryan, a doctoral student at the UT School of Social Work who is studying homeless youth but has experience working with adults and families that are homeless.

The panel discussion will take place Friday, Feb. 25, 6pm, in the Center Space gallery of the Visual Arts Center in the Art Building, 23rd & Trinity, on the UT campus. The event is free.

"The Working Homeless" runs Feb. 25-March 12 in the Center Space of the VAC. For more information, call 471-1108 or visit www.utexas.edu/finearts/vac.