For artist Ann Salviazul, her newest show is personal.
“Reflections on Homelessness,” which opened Friday at Studio & and runs through Feb. 2, is a study of not only Salviazul’s time she was without a home, but that of people she met as well.
Last year, Studio & had an anonymous donor offer a $1,000 grant to an artist who would create an exhibit on the theme of “Cultural Consciousness.” The gallery put out a call to artists and accepted applications, and then chose the one they felt best fit the theme, the gallery said in a news release. The winner was Salviazul, who approached the topic by highlighting homelessness. She and the gallery have chosen to donate 10 percent of sales from the show to Manna.
Salviazul ended up in Durango in a roundabout kind of way. In 2011, she moved from Utah to the Midwest.
“That never worked for me. I wanted to be back in the West, I wanted to be near family,” she said. Working at The Home Depot at the time, Salviazul put in for a transfer, and the Durango store was the only one that offered her full-time work.
“I looked online for some housing. I didn’t find out until 30 days before I had to vacate that I had the job here. As you night guess, there was a little stress getting ready and packed,” she said. “When I looked online for housing, I couldn’t seem to find anything that was reasonable. I thought, ‘Oh, surely, I can find something when I get there.’”
She headed to Durango, car-camping along the way. Her first night here, she met a couple of people on the River Trail who recommended a place to car-camp, and told her about the resources at Manna.
One of the men who helped her said, ‘I volunteer at Manna soup kitchen, we start serving breakfast at 7 in the morning. Why don’t you come join us?’” she said. “And that’s how I ended up going to the Manna soup kitchen and getting to know them.”
Salviazul then began working to find a home, which was easier said than done. Each day, she’d visit the library and search online for housing.
She began to become discouraged, but a chance meeting at Fort Lewis College helped turn things around with offers of places to stay until she found a place of her own.
Salviazul said the show will be made up of 12 pieces that will include charcoal drawings, watercolors and prints made from sketches.
“I have drawings from my time at Manna, and other interactions with folks around town in the last three and half years that I’ve been here. Some are of people, others are scenes, for example, the Manna garden because while I was there, I volunteered in the garden and continued even after I left and until my work schedule wouldn’t allow for it,” said Salviazul, who has a fine arts degree with an emphasis on painting. “The scenes are watercolors, so I have a view of where I was car-camping: I woke up one morning to a gorgeous morning and so I did a little sketch and made a print of that.”
Salviazul said the show is important because it helps bring awareness of not only a Durango homeless problem, but one that is also nationwide. Low wages and exponentially higher housing costs make for an impossible situation when average people look for homes, she said.
There’s also the personal connection to homelessness that make this so powerful, Salviazul said.
She lost a brother to homelessness in Utah. He was on the streets of Salt Lake City for about four years and ended up freezing to death in an alley after he slipped and fell one night, she said.
“My experience of being at the soup kitchen and being with other people helped me to look within and re-evaluate my judgments, not only of my brother, but of other people, and to recognize what a close ... I was really not any different than the people I was sitting with and eating with for the time I did at Manna,” she said. “It’s been a big learning curve for me, and I just felt a need to express this.”
katie@durangoherald.com
If you go
What:
“Reflections on Homelessness: New Work from Ann Salviazul,” opening reception.
When:
5 p.m., Friday.
Where:
Studio & Gallery, 1027 Main Ave.
More information:
Visit
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