By David J. Glenn
But the last thing they'd probably think is that the person they see crunched up under a tattered blanket or sitting against a building holding a cardboard sign with a scrawled plea for money might be an artist.
Actually, it's the first thing that Robert Sarnoff of Belle Harbor in the Rockaways thinks about the homeless. An administrator with the city Board of Education and a trained artist himself, Sarnoff directs “The Art of Renewal,” a project that he founded with the help of Ed Geffner, whom he had grown up with in a Bensonhurst, Brooklyn apartment building.
Geffner, executive director of Project Renewal, a private agency reaching out to the hard-to-reach homeless of the city, was looking for someone to help offer more than just food and shelter to the homeless – programs that would help them reclaim their lost lives. So when his daughter and Sarnoff's son bumped into each other at Hunter College High School, Geffner didn't have to look far – he knew immediately that his childhood friend would be the one for the job.
An exhibit of the original paintings and sculptures of Project Renewal men and women will be at Malca Fine Art, 580 Broadway between Prince and Houston streets in SoHo, from Tuesday, Dec. 5, through Sunday, Dec. 17, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, free and open to all. A reception is slated for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6. (Call 212-244-6220).
Sarnoff knows that doing art is very therapeutic for people fighting homelessness and the contingent problems of substance abuse and mental and physical illnesses. “I don't call it therapy,” Sarnoff said in an interview. “I talk about light and shadow. I try to get them immersed in the work.”
Painting and sculpture are not pursuits that homeless people tend to give much thought to, so when they first enter the basement studio of the Project Renewal facility on 8th Street in Manhattan, “they often come with trepidation,” Sarnoff said. “But I tell them, 'I think you've been in scarier situations.'”
Once they get started, the pride of creativity and signing one's own work soon kicks in. “They're supposed to be 'tough guys,'” Sarnoff said, “but they'll see other guys in the park and start telling them about their paintings or sculpture. We're always hanging up their work.”
At the exhibit, some of the artists will be there, dressed in suit and tie, offering little hint that perhaps just a few weeks before they were in filthy, torn clothes scrounging for dimes and quarters.
The work will be for sale, with 80 percent of the money going to the artist, and the remainder going to the project.
Sarnoff has written and illustrated two art books, “Cartoons, Comics, Ideas and Techniques” (Davis Publications 1988) and “Paper Mache” (Jay Weston Welch 1986), as well as screenplays for film and TV. His most recent play, “Men of Substance,” dedicated to the people of Project Renewal, is now being developed with Chet Walker, choreographer of “Broadway's “Fosse.”
“We're all dealt a hand in life,” Sarnoff said. “Some of these people come from really bad situations.”
As he has shown, art can help.
