The Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) is honored to have received the donation of a work of art by Marlene Aron, a local artist and poet who was tragically killed by a vehicle in a crosswalk in San Francisco in September of 2018.

Aron’s work has a strong spiritual and natural healing dimension. She was an artist, educator and published poet. She was educated in the Netherlands and in the United States and had solo exhibitions at Carnegie Mellon University, Butler Institute of American Art, McDonough Museum of Art, CA Institute of Integral Studies, Gallery Route One, and Galerie de Sfinx in The Hague. Aron loved Vincent van Gogh, and lectured extensively about his work, life and environment.

Her partner, Tom Wishing, with the help of close friends Tom Drohan and Gayle Schmidt, has taken responsibility for placing her works at organizations in the community whose work is consistent with Aron’s values.

The work “Weep at the Beauty of her Stones and Ground, the Brown Earth Accepts Everything: Forest Prayer” (2016) will be hung in the Zitrin Family Reception Area in the Tanya Neiman Building where HAP is housed. The art will be accompanied by Aron’s compelling poem, which is reprinted below, titled “Poem of Resistance/And This will be My Protest.”

HAP provides legal and supporting social services to individuals and families in San Francisco who are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness, prioritizing clients who have mental health disabilities.

Visit www.sfbar.org/hap to learn more.

Poem of Resistance/And This Will be My Protest

I’m going to make my Art
and that will be my protest.
I’m going to lift my face to the Sun
and that will be my protest.
I’m going to be thankful I can walk
on sand dunes
and pick up trash
and be grateful for the day
and talk to strangers…
and those will be my protests.
I’m going to make huge and small
and profound works of Art
and paint lots of faces of my brother
because if he were alive
he would also protest.
I’m going to listen to Music that friends make
and laugh and share a drink
or a dessert
and make new friends
and talk to strangers
and smile at babies
and laugh with strangers
and share meals with friends –
and that will be my protest.
I’m going to listen to a cello
and close my eyes
and smile inside…
and that will be my protest.
We won’t give up
and that will be our protest.
We’ll keep going
and that will be our protest.
We’ll laugh and drink
and say hell with you
and write Poetry
and make Art
and make Love
and walk on the beach
and be grateful for the Sun
and bare feet on sand dunes
and that will be my protest.
And that will be our protest.
And that will be our protest.

Marlene Aron