Much of Honolulu's homeless population lives in or around Chinatown. When art galleries and their patrons started cropping up in the neighborhood in the 1990s, these two groups didn't have much contact. "Shelter," the new show at The ARTS at Marks Garage, tries to get them talking to each other — about one of Hawai'i's hot-button issues.

Estimates suggest 6,000 O'ahu residents are without permanent homes, and 13,000 statewide. Since the 800-plus page Hawaii Housing Policy Study was released in 2003, media attention has increased (even The New York Times got into the act in 2006, with a feature about homelessness on the Wai'anae Coast) and slowly but steadily, the number of advocacy groups and charitable organizations that deal with the issue have made headway, often by pooling efforts.

"Shelter" is an extreme example of this phenomenon. Described as a "six-week event" by its principal organizer, local activist and former state Senate candidate Charmaine Crockett, "Shelter" has brought together visual artists, activists and community outreach programs to explore the basic themes of "Food, clothing and shelter ... basic human need or unobtainable luxury?"

"Shelter" is an art show. It's also a film festival, an essay contest, a poetry reading, a community outreach project, a series of public discussions and some other stuff, too.

So really, "Shelter" is an experiment. "I personally wanted to make a connection between art and human rights, art and social justice, so I engage in projects like this," said Crockett, who organized 2005's "The Art of Truth: A Dialogue on the Future of Media and Politics," which addressed the First Amendment through art. "I've worked with ARTS at Marks before, and their mission is art and community. So they jumped on it, and that's how we became partners in the 'Shelter' project. The 'Shelter' project actually is a huge effort. It's not just an art show."

ARTS at Marks creative director Rich Richardson agrees. "The subject matter should tie it all together," he said. "As I see it, the exhibit works as a creative environment for conversations to happen. The gallery space is an environment for considering the topic."

The ARTS at Marks Garage solicited work via the usual channels for themed shows, in addition to schools, shelters and community centers. Jurors, selected from the local arts community, rated the entries like Olympic judges, holding score cards numbered 1 to 9 in the air.

Local found-object sculptor Christopher Reinert drew inspiration from the Oct. 15 earthquakes that caused $200 million worth of damage statewide and all-day power failures. "Everyone was so helpless," Reinert said, "but they still had food, clothes and shelter."

Reinert's response is the striking and clever installation "Adrift on a Chinatown Junk: homeless, powerless ... human," a boat made of corrugated sheet metal and wood, just long enough for an average-sized human to lie down in. A thick blanket lining the floor encourages the viewer to do just that. The boat is electrified with a 110-volt outlet. If powered with an extension cord, it provides the inhabitant with a clock radio, light, a laptop and a 13-inch television. The vessel has wheels and can be pushed from the stern. It also has a rearview mirror on the bow. "That's so you can see who is pushing you," Reinert said. "That's important."

Molly Turner, 28, from Victoria, British Columbia, responded to the call with "Tent Dress," a blue gown that extends improbably into a one-person nylon tent. The hypothetical wearer is totally protected from rain and insects — and totally unable to move.

Madeleine Soder and Mary Babcock's "Outopia" and Betsy Baxter and Steven Coy's "We Believe Everyone Should Own a Piece of Hawaii!" take shots at the role of real-estate investors in O'ahu's inflated housing prices. "Outopia" is a tent-size structure made of melted plastic shopping bags, accompanied by a jargony sales sheet that reads: "Easy to show, vacant unless someone else found it before you did." Baxter and Coy's five glass trays, each filled with differing quantities and combinations of grass, topsoil, sand and concrete, represent different O'ahu neighborhoods (Manoa, Waimanalo, Waikiki, Kahala and Hawai'i Kai) and are offered sardonically to the viewer as investment properties.

Some of the best work in "Shelter" was produced through community outreach programs: photographs by clients of the Institute for Human Services, pictures drawn by children from the Kaka'ako shelter, and a collection of six-inch high banks — colorful little houses — made by VSA clients. The "Shelter for All" banks are available for sale.

Students, mostly from McKinley High, created "Got Shelter?," a photographic display using inexpensive China-made Holga cameras, whose unpredictable lighting effects have earned them a cult following.

Art galleries having something to offer to the communities they inhabit remains an unrealized ideal in most American cities. "Shelter" appears to be on the brink of actually doing it. "Projects like this are bringing in the community in ways that a lot of shows don't," Crockett said. "It's not one of those things where you walk in and look at the art and walk out."

Wendy Kamai made candy-colored banks in the shapes of houses for the "Shelter" show. They're lined up alluringly on a window ledge at The ARTS at Marks Garage. Kamai, a Ho-nolulu resident, has been discovering her creative abilities with Vision, Strength and Artistic Expression, the local branch of an international nonprofit whose mission is to ensure that disabled people have full access to art as consumers and producers.

The Hawai'i-Pacific branch, in Pearl City (it will move to Wai'anae this year), was founded in 1984 and has been an integral part of "Shelter."

VSA Hawaii-Pacific board president Richard Wolenta got involved in the organization by watching the positive effect it had on his son, now 45. Wolenta sees art accessibility as a way of ending social exclusion for disabled people. The organization's other projects include an arts outreach program on Lanai working with more than 200 children.

Founded in 1974 by the late Jean Kennedy Smith as "Very Special Artists," VSA today has affiliates in most American states and 60 more worldwide.

"We're giving our clients the opportunity to be functional members of society," says Wolenta, "to bring them in from that marginal place, by making their art as available as that of any other artist."

So far, for Wolenta, the project has been a success. "Many of our clients start off as learners and become teachers, so you see the full cycle there."

— Joel Tannenbaum