Building Success, One Little Piece at a Time
The Joseph House Workshop is a residential program for homeless men that teaches life-skills needed for employment. It is not an emergency shelter, but a long-term therapeutic program that provides men a supportive place to live and opportunities to grow in all aspects of life.
Men who enter the program spend the first three months in Phase One. They do volunteer work and take skill-building and inspirational classes, including an art class with Sister Virginia. They also learn to cooperate in a small community of men—no more than eight in all—which means a lot of cooking and chores and struggling with the challenges of communal living. After three months they enter Phase Two, the period during which they find training and employment, with the ultimate goal of becoming stable and independent.
The art class is part of the holistic approach taken by the Workshop. The goal is to form well-rounded individuals. It’s important to have learning experiences that stretch the residents in ways that might be new to them.
In the fall of 2018, three newly arrived residents—Charles, Maurice and Leonard—took on a mosaic sign as their art class project. The sign would display the street number of the Workshop, which is located at 816 Boundary Street.
The men came up with the idea of setting the “816” in a scroll design. They then chose a typeface, drafted the design, and devised a color scheme using red, green, white and brown glass tiles. They completed the sign and are now in Phase Two. This spring, Karl, a graduate of the Workshop and a skilled craftsman, kindly framed and hung the new mosaic by the front door of the Workshop.
This is the second mosaic project completed by Joseph House Workshop residents. The first mosaic sign reads “Joseph House Workshop” and hangs above the Workshop entryway. A third mosaic sign is planned for the new class starting in September.
The men are proud of the finished result, and rightly so!
Read about the creation of the first mosaic: Look Up For A Sign