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Seeing The "Invisible" At The Oceanside Museum Of Art

Portraits Of San Diego's Homeless Population On View In Oceanside

San Diego artist Neil Shigley is using his creative skills to spread awareness about what he calls "invisible people," the estimated 2,400 people living on San Diego’s streets without shelter. He's created a series of portraits called "Invisible People," now on display at the Oceanside Museum of Art.

"I think for most people who encounter people in the streets they ignore them, avoid them, act as if they're not there," he said. "So by presenting them in this large format, it kind of forces people who are in a room with these images to confront this person and maybe the situation they're in and making them visible again, in some way.”

Shigley said in 2006, he had a brief encounter with a homeless man. Back then, he said, he had no idea it would turn into a series of portraits.

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"I found a man who was standing outside a gallery in Little Italy as I was going into this opening and I was struck by his face," he said.

He said when he produced his first print he was hooked. Now, the portraits are as varied as the faces.

"I carve them by hand, I print them by hand, and I don't want them to be alike," he said. Using large-scale block prints and graphite on paper, he writes their name, age and where they met, all by hand.

"I was trying to describe with marks the form of the face and how light hits that face like a landscape," he said. "But the more I did and the more people I talked to, and heard their stories, the more I became interested and compelled by their stories."

So far, he's produced about 35 portraits. One of them is in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.