To raise awareness, man buys signs from the homeless, turns them into art

To raise awareness, man buys signs from the homeless, turns them into art
(Image credit: Twitter.com/BUnderwoodWKRC)

It started as a way for artist Willie Baronet to assuage the guilt he felt when coming across a homeless person. Now, it's turned into a large art project that took Baronet across the country to 24 different cities in one month, making connections along the way.

In 1993, Baronet began to buy the handmade signs homeless people created asking for food, money, and help, to use in his artwork. Recently he decided to create a bigger project, called We Are All Homeless. Making his way from Seattle to New York City, Baronet purchased more signs and took photographs, which he might use one day to create a documentary. He asked the homeless to set their own prices, and Baronet ended up paying anywhere from $4 to $40 per sign.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.