1. Jean-Michel Basquiat – Artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the seminal modern
American artists. He also struggled with homelessness in his early years
as an artist. Basquiat’s passion was neo-expressionist art and
graffiti art. He tried hard to practice art as a homeless New Yorker
while battling a drug addiction. When he was discovered by Andy Warhol
in the 1980s, his innovative art-making was finally recognized; and he
became the first African-American international art star. Basquiat will
always be remembered for the hardships he had to endure, but especially
for changing the art world for the better.
2. Nathaniel Ayers – Musician
Nathaniel Ayers was a double bass player and one of
the only black students at Julliard in the 1970s. After his third year
in school, however, he suffered a mental breakdown. From there, he
moved to Los Angeles, where his schizophrenia, and inability to get a
job, forced him to live on the streets. He didn’t mind street life –
surviving on little and improving his musical talent. But Ayers would
make a comeback. It was when journalist Steve Lopez found Ayers on the
streets and learned his story, that Ayers became an icon for talent and a
masthead for homelessness and people coping with mental disability. The
2009 movie based on Lopez’s book, called “The Soloist,” put him in the
national spotlight and on the big screen.
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