The Joy Project: Re-envisioning Portland with Love
Saturday, September 9, 2023
11am-4 pm
Pioneer Courthouse Square
The Joy Project showcases the artwork of 100 artists experiencing houselessness and poverty, expressing their ideas of home! Gather:Make:Shelter launched The Joy Project in early 2023 when artist Thomas Orr donated a hundred house sculptures for unhoused artists to paint with their dreams of home. Participants have been paid for their work at citywide painting workshops and they are donating the finished houses for the exhibition and auction.
On September 9, 2023, The Joy Project will culminate with a festival at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland, Oregon! The festival will include an exhibition of the artworks created, a mutual aid fair, live entertainment by DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid and Edna Vazquez, a catered lunch by Stone Soup, and foster meaningful connections. The Joy Project festival will create space for community members to collectively reimagine ideas of home and belonging in our city!
The Joy Project festival and mutual aid fair is free to attend and will include:
• Exhibition & auction of 100 ceramic house sculptures by 100 houseless artists
• Artists’ mercantile
• Live music by Edna Vazquez & DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid
• Food & drink, including 500 meals from Stone Soup
The exhibition at the festival will express participants’ vision for the city they call home. Project participants will activate Pioneer Square with a 600-square-foot installation in collaboration with architect Miles Woofter from Woofter Bolch Architecture. It will feature a large-scale topographic model of the city where the house sculptures will be displayed.
The Joy Project brings together a network of sister nonprofit organizations and houseless artists who are working together to address the houselessness crisis and create meaningful change. Organizations who hosted Joy Project workshops include Rose Haven, Street Roots, Maybelle Center, p:ear, Ecumenical Ministries’ HIV Day Center, WeShine’s Parkrose Community Village, BIPOC Village, Queer Affinity Village, Hazelnut Grove Village and Cultivate Initiatives’ Menlo Park Village. These and other partner organizations will have information tables at the festival where houseless and housed attendees can learn about resources and opportunities for creative solutions and collaboration. The event is intended to build community and strengthen mutual support; and proceeds from the auction will be shared among partner organizations. Above all, The Joy Project celebrates our shared humanity through art.
Major support for The Joy Project is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Joy Project is also funded in part by Oregon Cultural Trust, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation, The Zidell Family Foundation, The International Paper Foundation and Killian Pacific.