AU Grad Student, Homeless Men Unite to Create Shelter Mural
By Theola S. Labbe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
The small art studio on the campus of American University was packed with graduate students and art professors, all waiting for 25-year-old Joey Tomassoni to present his master's project.
Tomassoni was nervous. He had just sat through the critiques of two other students, during which the professors were alternately intrigued, skeptical and disapproving.
Phillip Peace was in the room as well. Peace, a father of twin boys, lives at the Central Union Mission homeless shelter at 14th and R streets NW after more than two decades of drugs and petty crime. He listened as Tomassoni explained how he had painted a mural at the 130-bed shelter with the help of Peace and other residents.
But was this really art, one professor urgently wanted to know.
"The art for me becomes the act of interacting with other individuals . . .," Tomassoni explained. "The art is in the organizing and collaborating."
"That's teaching," the professor said.
"I consider that art," Tomassoni replied.
Tomassoni, a native of Bowie, has traveled to South America to paint murals. But for his master's project in fine arts, he wanted to do something closer to home that involved others -- perhaps even people who were not trained artists.
He called several D.C. shelters before he found David O. Treadwell, executive director of Central Union Mission. It is privately run and has a mandatory Christian component that includes nightly chapel and a drug recovery program steeped in religion.
Treadwell told Tomassoni he could paint a mural with the residents as long as it was Christian-focused and uplifting. "We always want to show these guys hope," Treadwell said.
But when the artist arrived in April to spend a weekend at the mission, he was met with strange looks and distrust. He tried to talk to one man who was tight-lipped; he later learned that the man thought he was an undercover cop. And when a shelter official announced plans for the mural that Friday night, there was silence.
"It was really discouraging," Tomassoni said. "I thought, 'Wow, is this even going to be able to work?' "
Steve Grady, 44, who had been at the mission since October, recognized Tomassoni from his earlier visits with the director. He, too, was skeptical, but he agreed to help.
Peace, 46, who used to doodle in his schoolbooks, also stepped up. By that Saturday afternoon, Michael Cain, 35, and Michael Smith, 34, had joined the group, and the four men and Tomassoni sat around a table with sketch pads and haggled over the vision they wanted to convey.
Should the mural feature a homeless man staring out at a desolate, winding road, a symbol of his life's twists and turns? What was the best way to show the spiritual education and possible life transformation that the Christian shelter could provide?
They decided on four themes: food, shelter, education and worship.
Tomassoni returned to his Crofton home at the end of the weekend, unsure if the project would work.
Left alone, the men began to organize themselves. Cain was the introspective one who weighed in with artistic insights at just the right moment. Peace was agile with the paintbrush and liked to spend hours at the canvas. Grady was the motivator, always reminding the group how well things were coming along. Smith, who had never painted before, praised God throughout.
Tomassoni came back a few days later, excited to find that the men had been hard at work. They grew so attached to the mural that "sometimes I would come in in the middle of night, just to check and see if it was still there," Grady said.
The mural bursts with color and characters who take the spiritual and emotional journey through homelessness, stretching across four panels that each stand seven feet tall and four feet wide. The painting, which the men worked on in the building's garage, soon will hang in the chapel. Tomassoni will help the shelter plan an art opening within the next two weeks.
The project created a bond among the five men. Tomassoni asked the others for baby names for his child, due in August. Smith loaned Tomassoni a gospel go-go tape for his ride home to the suburbs.
During last week's presentation at AU, Peace waited for Tomassoni to finish fielding the professors' questions. Then it was his turn to explain the mural.
"It's a religious mission," Peace said of the shelter. He pointed to the four photographs of the mural tacked to the wall. "It's a transformation program that gets you to give yourself over to Jesus Christ."
By early evening, Peace and Tomassoni had returned to the mission to report that the professors were supportive. Cain, Grady, Smith and Peace soon were back in their usual roles, talking, working together and ironing out the latest artistic squabble.
Smith had decided to paint a large cross that was supposed to represent the cross of the mission. No one else shared his vision.
"You want this cross smaller?" Smith asked.
"I want it off," Peace replied. "The cross looks so big, it looks like a Red Cross."
"Okay, I accept that, I can take that," Smith said, breaking into a smile.
Grady and Cain laughed.