Art and Society

Rebec­ca Mait­land Court­ney is a big believ­er in the heal­ing pow­er of paint­ing.

“Paint­ings come from pain,” said Court­ney, 56, Cre­ative Direc­tor of Roger Yost Gal­leries and Prop­er­ty Man­ag­er of the Reed Opera House in Salem. Paint­ing “makes life a lit­tle more bear­able.”

It’s what has helped her cope with prob­lems through­out her life both large and small. So when Court­ney saw a prob­lem plagu­ing the his­toric down­town shop­ping venue, the prob­lem of human waste being left in the streets by the home­less, she turned to the solu­tion she knows best.

“It’s a time where the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty can be a bless­ing to the over­all com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

And thus the Arta-Pot­ty was born.

For her TED talk, Court­ney will talk about how she helped cre­ate this ele­gant fit­ting of form and func­tion, this uniron­ic pair­ing of paint­ing with poop — in essence a Por­ta-Pot­ty with vibrant local art­work dis­played on their sur­faces — that is meet­ing a press­ing need while help­ing to revi­tal­ize Salem’s down­town with artis­tic panache.

The Arta-Pot­ty is a phe­nom­e­non that has tran­scend­ed its orig­i­nal use to become a “hap­pen­ing.” Enough of a hap­pen­ing to mer­it its own Face­book page; enough of a draw to host art exhi­bi­tions and music per­for­mances; enough of an inno­va­tion to elic­it inquiries from oth­er munic­i­pal­i­ties far and wide.

And it came from a sim­ple epiphany.

Toward the end of 2014 Court­ney noticed what she said was a sig­nif­i­cant increase in home­less peo­ple in the down­town busi­ness area sur­round­ing the Reed Opera House. With the influx of home­less, relat­ed prob­lems also rose, includ­ing what she said was an increase in human waste in the alley­ways and park­ing lots as well as an increase in inci­dents of pub­lic inde­cen­cy and prop­er­ty crimes.

 

Tra­di­tion­al approach­es to the prob­lem seemed both non­sen­si­cal and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Accord­ing to Court­ney, police would peri­od­i­cal­ly roust home­less camps in near­by Minto-Brown park, result­ing in the dis­placed home­less sim­ply migrat­ing down­town in search of shel­ter before being roust­ed once again. It made no sense to Court­ney, watch­ing the events unfold from her office.

“Until the big­ger sub­ject [of solv­ing home­less­ness] is dis­cussed, they will con­tin­ue to send home­less on pil­grim­ages,” she said.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing on a solu­tion with social wel­fare lead­ers like Ver­e­na Wes­sel of the Salem Home­less Coali­tion, and Pamel­la Phillips Wat­son, Janet Park­er and Emi­ly Goodall from the area reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty, the group soon real­ized that a large part of the prob­lem stemmed from peo­ple sim­ply hav­ing nowhere to go to the bath­room. The human waste, the pub­lic inde­cen­cy, the feel­ing of being unsafe – home­less men and women with no oth­er options were forced to expose and relieve them­selves in the street. Accord­ing to Court­ney it was also sti­fling the busi­ness envi­ron­ment, as passers­by became increas­ing­ly skit­tish about shop­ping or eat­ing in an area with such prob­lems, and the area increas­ing­ly looked run-down and dilap­i­dat­ed.

Today, thanks to vol­un­teer and local busi­ness efforts mar­shalled by the so-called “Arta-Pot­ty Five,” there are five Arta-Pot­ties with­in a sev­en-block area of high-den­si­ty pedes­tri­an traf­fic, with plans to expand even more. Accord­ing to Court­ney at least one occa­sion­al­ly plays host to an art exhib­it in which home­less men and women are invit­ed to min­gle with the greater com­mu­ni­ty.

The Arta-Pot­ty cause came around at the right time for Court­ney, a self-described “emp­ty nester.”

“At this point in my life, you’re not afraid to make a mis­take,” she said. “It’s kind of free­ing in a way.”

But it has also served to bring a deep­er sense of con­nec­tion to her com­mu­ni­ty, Court­ney said.

“Zero-degrees of sep­a­ra­tion,” she said. “It made me real­ize how close we actu­al­ly are to the highs and lows of soci­ety, the world of the fall­en and the world of incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

 

 

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