Dressed in paint-splattered denim and a gray sun hat that droops over his ears, muralist Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen steadies his paintbrush from a mechanical lift 20 feet in the air.
Below him, the headquarters for Health Care for the Homeless along the Jones Falls Expressway brightens with each stroke as he carefully restores the landmark mural he helped create in 2010. Alongside and helping him in the restoration process are artists Gail Evans and Edwin Calderon–who participated in the original creation of the mural as an art student.
After years of the mural weathering and fading from the sun, Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen knew it was time for a refurbishment. In September, he met with Kevin Lindamood, CEO of Health Care for the Homeless, who was able to raise the funds for the restoration.
The refurbishment began Oct. 7 and is expected to continue for about two weeks. The project focuses on touching up, repainting and brightening the mural. As the refurbishment began, Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen reflected on returning to the piece.
“Confronting my own work from 16 years ago has been fascinating. I’m restoring it, but I’m also brightening it,” Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen said.
Originally installed in 2010, the vibrant mural depicts a colorful landscape of stylized homes, geometric shapes, and abstract figures, faces, and hands. Across the bottom is a statement: “Everyone deserves to go Home.” The 25-by-120-foot piece was originally created as part of Health Care for the Homeless’ expansion and was incorporated into the budget for its newly built headquarters near the intersection of the JFX and Franklin Street.
“We thought it was a wonderful opportunity to have a mural on the side of the building, but not one that we just hired someone to envision and paint, but one that would involve a very intensive community building process,” Lindamood said.
The mural, he said, was meant to represent and reflect all of the partnerships and relationships that make the work of Health Care for the Homeless possible. Lindawood said he wanted the mural to have “widespread community participation.”
After interviewing various artists to actually create the piece, they landed on Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen as lead artist. Before creating the mural, he hosted community design workshops for inspiration, asking participants to draw and respond to different prompts.
Between designing and actually painting the mural, around 800 people participated in the original creation, including elementary and college students, and community partners.
“Every person’s voice is heard through their writing, their individual paintings, or team collage cutouts,” Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen said.
Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen’s current art partner, Edwin Calderon, was among the many voices that helped create the original mural. At the time, Calderon was a student at Morgan State University and volunteered through one of his art classes to work on the project. It was there that he first met Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen.
“That experience really opened up my eyes to doing community work and bringing in the community to assist and be a part of the entire process rather than just the audience,” Calderon said.
He said projects like these allow everyday people from the community to “voice their views and their perspectives”
In addition to students, a large portion of homeless people contributed to the workshops as well. Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen recalled a particularly impactful drawing during a workshop. He said a young man, who had experienced homelessness at the time, drew a yellow circle with two black lines, resembling a power outlet.
“He told me, ‘Sometimes I feel plugged into the world and everything is good. But most of the time I feel unplugged and floating in the nightmare that is homelessness,’” Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen said. “That’s when I knew what the mural was going to be about.”
After the workshops, Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen created the design, then traced it onto 135 panels of parachute cloth canvases. Parachute cloth, also known as Polytab cloth, is a thin nonwoven material that, when primed, can act as a canvas. To paint, Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen and his team use Nova Color Paints, a low emission paint used for murals, film making, and theatre.
Community organizations and students were each assigned a portion of the mural and helped paint the canvases. Once painted, the canvases were adhered to the building.
Lindamood said the mural holds deep meaning not only for the organization, but for everyone who sees it or helped create it.
“I have had the opportunity to know many of the people that helped to paint the mural. I look at pieces of that mural and I know the stories behind them,” Lindamood said.
The location of the mural, he added, has allowed it to become an iconic Baltimore landmark.
“You’ve got lots and lots of people every day literally driving home and seeing a message like this. For me, that encapsulates what Health Care for the Homeless is trying to do–trying to bring people home, not just to housing, but to more sustainable communities,” Lindamood said.
Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen hopes the mural and its message continue to be a beacon of light for the community.
“I like to make a difference with my art,” Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen said. “We all are fighting for this. We’re not going to give up.”
