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Facing Homelessness:
A Community Mask-Making Project
A creative collaboration between Studio Pardes and
West Suburban PADS
To learn more about West Suburban PADS go to video "Beyond Shelter: The Story of West Suburban PADS."
Video produced by A Squared Productions, Pat and John Allen, and designed to educate the community about the many services PADS provides in addition to the overnight shelter.
“Facing Homelessness” was
a year-long collaborative effort between West
Suburban Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS)
and Studio Pardes, a
private artist-run community studio in Oak Park,
Illinois. The goals of the
project were to raise awareness about issues of
homelessness, to break down
stereotypes about who is homeless, and to experiment
with art-based social
action as a means of creating community and exploring
a social problem.
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Close to 300 people were
involved in creating, exhibiting, and finally
auctioning over 100 plaster gauze masks that
were uniquely created and
embellished. Each participant was interviewed
and, in three exhibitions
around town, vignettes from each interview were
posted next to the mask
along with myths and facts about homelessness,
and inspirational quotations. The silent auction of masks,
along with a spin-off project
creating note cards featuring a selection of
mask images, contributed to
raising over $3000 for PADS programs. Part of
the initial funding for the
project came from the Oak Park Area Arts Council,which
also helped secure
two of the public spaces for exhibition of the
masks: a community bank and
the Village Hall gallery space.
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