Homeless woman finds refuge in art

Pomeroy may not have a permanent home, but through her art she feels rooted in a way she has long missed.

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Kateri Pomeroy's hands hover over a cardboard canvas, crumbling vibrant shades of solidified water colors into tiny piles.

With her stained fingertips she spreads the bits in streaks across the flat black surface.

The texture and smell of the colors are like earth after a rain, she says. It reminds her of the red soil in the small Colorado town she called home as a child.

Home, these days, is a tenuous term.

Pomeroy is homeless.

Dropped on the side of Interstate 40 with her rags and bags three years ago, she came to Nashville seeking direction and purpose.

Instead, she found hardship.

She lived on the streets. In a shelter. In a campground littered with tarps and tents, pants and pots, people stripped of roots.

It wasn't until she wandered into the art room at Room in the Inn that she found her place.

In that room in Nashville's downtown shelter, she met her future fiance. There, she connected with Poverty & the Arts, a nonprofit whose mission is to cultivate the talents of the needy. And emboldened by the support, she showed and sold some of her artwork.

That has led to a rekindling of relationships she thought long lost.

Pomeroy may not have a permanent home, but through her art she feels rooted in a way she has long missed.

"It's like you've been given that key to open the door, so people can actually come into your home, which is yourself, and see who you really are," she says. "You are a person like anyone else."

PROVIDENCE

Pomeroy, with her silver-flecked black curls that display her 63 years, shares a name with Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonized as a Catholic saint.

Her mother, however, called her "gypsy," a young woman with a wandering spirit.

She left home at age 18, carrying with her memories of playing jacks and coloring pictures on the floor with her mom.

Those were her first experiences with art.

Life was colorful. She traveled from one city to another — always employed. Her parents gave her a good work ethic, she says. The American dream, having a home and a family. Then she lost her job as an airport shuttle driver. She had a little money saved, but problems with her teeth ate it up.

There were some bad decisions, too.

And then, she was homeless.

She traveled to Florida, where life on the streets would at least be warm. She worked one Christmas season for Salvation Army, but never found a permanent position. A couple took her in for a few months. She connected with a religious group, but it didn't fit.

They drove her north to Music City. A woman at a bus stop directed her to the local women's shelter. Temporary respite for the wandering turned out to be the first step toward what Pomeroy calls "providence."

PERCEPTION-CHANGING

On her thin, single-size mattress in the space she now shares with two other women at Room in the Inn, Pomeroy sits and reflects. She is here, in this homeless haven, as she recovers from knee replacement surgery. When she moves, it is with a walker or a cane. The streets would not be good to her right now.

The room's surroundings are stark. A single metal dresser houses what few belongings the women have. The tan walls are empty except for a calendar and a single poster — an advertisement for Poverty & the Arts' Saturday-night gala, which will raise funds to support the Adopt a Homeless Artist program. Pomeroy served as the inspiration for the program's creation.