The healing art takes on a new hue at clinic for the homeless

Gonzalez fingers a white plastic cross dangling from a string of beads that match her Jell-O-red socks. Her head, wrapped in an apple-green scarf, bobs as she pours out her symptoms in Spanish.


	Mary Larson, a nurse at Harborview's Pioneer Square Clinic, goes over paperwork with a patient before seeing him. Larson paints portraits of some of her patients, a few of which are hanging behind her on the walls of the clinic. Gilbert W. Arias / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

"Perfecto," Larson says. She rolls down Gonzalez's chalk-pink sleeve and reassures her that her temperature and blood pressure are fine.

"Perfecto" could also describe the colors Gonzalez is wearing, a palette seemingly lifted out of one of Larson's paintings that hang on the clinic walls.

A nurse and artist, Larson, 29, brings an uncommon combination of the healing arts to this free clinic in Pioneer Square.

Whenever she's not working, she paints -- sometimes abstracts, but mostly portraits. And mostly portraits of the patients she treats.

Her paintings of the homeless do more than brighten the institutional white brick of the clinic. They've rendered transformations in some of her patients.

Strong color, like strong medicine, defies a drab existence.

"When Mary first put up her paintings, there was a man who showed up frequently very disheveled, (with) a very down-and-out attitude," says Dr. Leslie Grefenson, who works at the clinic.

"The next time I saw him, (it) was an amazing turnaround. He came in a hat and suit coat. He used to be a dancer and an actor. You could just see some sense of self returned.

"I didn't recognize at first it was him. The painting was more about who he is in a bigger sense than homelessness."


	David Terry stands beneath a portrait of himself at the clinic, one of many painted by nurse Mary Larson. Terry, who is vague about the injury that put him on disability, and on and off the streets, says he knows most of the patients, if not by name, "by their face." Gilbert W. Arias / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

Henry "Harry" Bell once shared a show bill with Mickey Rooney. Now his face peers down from the wall in a beret and jaunty cigarette. And when Bell comes to the clinic, he wears a bandbox hat, a polka-dot tie and a double-breasted blazer with a pocket square tucked just so.

Bell's not the only one.

"Zoraida screamed when I asked her if she would like me to paint her portrait," says Larson. "She showed up in her best hat."And a woman named Veronica cried when she first saw her own face released from the ravages of a hard life."These paintings help them remember who they are, aside from their daily struggle," Grefenson says. "Mary takes such an interest in each one. She asks them questions about themselves -- besides the medical ones."It seems to reawaken them. I've seen people take improved care of themselves, better hygiene. ... Also, the fact they make a good personal connection that keeps them coming back is good for their health."The streets are a hard place to stay well. Addictions put some people there. Chronic and mental illness evict others from their regular lives. Sometimes just plain bad luck forecloses on opportunity.Dan Szewcik, a security guard who sits at the front door, has seen the changes in Larson's patients. "It's awfully flattering to have your portrait made," says Szewcik, a strapping man in a bulletproof vest. His eyes redden.

"I tear up when I talk about it," he says, regaining his composure. "Anybody could end up here."

Portraits of the homeless

Early Monday morning, rain pours from a galvanized gray bucket of a sky. The clinic waiting room has been filling steadily as patients trickle in.

Men with hats pulled low, some with American flags tucked in their pockets, sit quietly under a bulletin board pegged with missing-person fliers. A man clutches a spray bottle and rags for washing car windows, as though they were a lifeline.

This time of year, when it's cold and wet, it's usually standing room only -- up to 40 people waiting by 7:30 a.m.

The clinic sees 70 to 120 patients a day, about 60 percent of them homeless. The rest are elderly and the working poor.

A team of five doctors, four primary nurses, two nurse practitioners, a physician's assistant, interpreter and assorted staff handle the load. The two security guards frequently step outside their job description to hand out toothbrushes, change light bulbs or plunge toilets to keep the place running.

Larson, whose own face is as unlined as a fresh canvas and whose eyes are the same cerulean blue that saturates many of her paintings, recalls a new patient gazing at the gallery of images in the clinic.

"They're homeless, aren't they?" the patient asked. "I know that look. It's the same everywhere."Some of them may have no homes but their faces, remodeled by the elements, look lived in.

"As a nurse, I've always been interested in people's faces. I was always telling them, you'd make a great painting," Larson says.

It occurred to her one day that it might also be good medicine.

Most who come here have legitimate health concerns, although a few come by just for a dose of company.

"We see lots of coronary artery disease, and diabetes, lots of severe emphysema, acute respiratory infections, sexually transmitted diseases," says Grefenson. "Homeless people have all the same illnesses as everyone else, but it's usually exacerbated by inadequate access. There's no good access to diabetic meals when you're homeless."

"Some people don't have shoes," Larson says. "A lot don't have socks, or they've worn them so long without washing they're as hard as. ..." She raps on her desk.

That's how she got the idea for pricing her most recent work.

So far she's done about 50 acrylic-on-canvas portraits, and sold about 20, many of them through Starbucks at University Village -- the first public place she's showed her work outside the clinic. Paintings on display there carry price tags ranging from "300 pairs of gloves" to "400 pairs of underwear."

It's not enough to give money for the supplies. Buyers have to be "lending a hand, really being a part of it," she says.

A portrait of Clarence sells for 650 white tube socks. He always asks for them at his frequent appointments.

With his lean features and graying Afro, Clarence is a bit of a mystery but has charmed the staff.

"I'll say, 'It's good to see you, Clarence,'" says Larson. "And he'll always say: 'Tell me something I don't know.'"

When he found out his portrait was worth 650 socks, he said: "Wow, can you imagine that?"

Johnny and Lou

Larson, an only child, grew up in Seattle and first worked with the homeless at the St. Martin de Porres shelter through a volunteer program at Blanchet High School. That fanned her desire to devote more time to the poor and eventually led her to one of the nation's grittiest 24-hour medical shelters, in Washington, D.C.

"My first night there, a patient had to walk me home," she says. There had been a murder that day on the sidewalk outside the shelter.

To unwind, she would go to the park at DuPont Circle to play chess.

"Isaac was one of my chess teachers," she says. "He lived in the park."

Years later, he would also be her first portrait.

She left that shelter six years ago, but the stories and images of the men she worked with never left her.

So she painted them.

Several of those portraits now hang at the Pioneer Square Clinic, operated by Harborview Medical Center. At the entrance is a painting called "Johnny and Lou." Johnny was a man she knew from the D.C. shelter who loved cigarettes and baseball, not necessarily in that order.

He eventually left the shelter for a facility operated by Mother Teresa. For months after, he would call Larson weekly, whispering, "Mary, you will never believe where I'm sitting right now. I'm sitting in Mother Teresa's rocking chair, the actual rocking chair that Mother Teresa sits in when she visits. Can you believe it?"

In the painting, Johnny sits in the rocker, smoking, with a favorite major-league baseball coach, Lou Piniella, by his side.

Hanging next to Johnny is "The Captain," a Vietnam vet who lived in a D.C. park with someone from the same unit he had once commanded.

Once, on a cold night, shelter workers tried with no luck to get him to come inside to get warm, Larson says.

Tipper Gore, who knew the captain from her own work with the homeless, explained the situation to her husband, then-Vice President Al Gore, who wrote the captain, pleading with him to come in from the cold. He did, clutching the note.

"No one sets out in life with a goal to stand on a street corner and hold a sign," says Larson. "Who knows why they're doing it, whether there's something shifty about it, or they are truly in need. Everyone wants something more than that."

Larson's loft apartment overlooking Sand Point Way doubles as her studio.

A large easel takes the place of a dining room table. Photographs of faces are stacked everywhere. A sculpture of a nose hangs on one wall; an etching of eyes peeks from another.

Large, bold prints by two of her favorite artists, Chuck Close and Mark Rothko, hang on the wall along with a William Hannum landscape done in strong, wide swaths of Crayola colors, the same hues she uses to create the landscapes of her faces.

Larson, who lives alone, is largely self-taught as an artist, but she's been around the medical community her whole life. She has wanted to be a nurse ever since a broken nose landed her in Children's Hospital and Medical Center, where her mother has worked as an X-ray technician for 31 years.

On this day, Larson is adding turquoise shading to a portrait of a Guatemalan woman, the mother of a patient. Larson layers on more paint, her jeans now a canvas of careless hand swipes.

"Bright colors help bring out their spirits," she says.

"For me, some people's faces just tell a story. She's waiting for her son. She looks worn."

In the background, letters spell out part of "Greyhound." The patient comes here legally to earn money to help his mother build a house in her country, she said. He lives in the bus depot.

Larson takes lots of pictures of her subjects before settling on the one to use for each portrait. Each photo reveals something new.

A work in progress

"I'll see a spark I hadn't noticed, hadn't taken the time to appreciate," she says. "You see the hard living. You also see the beauty."

It's midmorning now and David Terry, 63, slips into the clinic like a shadow. He's in and out all day, keeping an eye on things, a quiet watchman.

He takes his post beneath his portrait, right beside the "No Loitering" sign.

There is a kind of dignity in his face with its crooked teeth, faded eyes and grizzled beard.

"I do a lot of volunteer work, different places," Terry says. He speaks barely above a whisper. A former Army cook, he's vague about the injury that put him on disability, and on and off the streets.

Larson, a stethoscope draped around her neck in lieu of jewelry, has been steadily interviewing patients. Her hands are swiped with red felt pen marks from writing names on appointment slips. The front desk pages Larson.

She juggles charts to pick up the phone and gives another patient a wide smile as he comes in the door. On the phone is Jim, a hospitalized patient, wondering whether she's finished his portrait.

"He calls every day," she says. "He's a work in progress."

By day's end, Larson will have logged some 10 miles up and down the clinic's short corridors.

She's often the last to leave. Sometimes she sits a while to gather the energy to go home.

It's 10:15, the first lull of the morning. She rests for a moment against a wall.Across the room, Terry stands under his portrait and surveys the patients. He knows most of the people here.

"Not all of them by name," he said. "But by their face."

P-I reporter Carol Smith can be reached at 206-448-8070 or carolsmith@seattlepi.com

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