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Less than zero

Artist Russell Freeland went from Boston to Austin — and gave up absolutely everything in the process
By IAN SANDS  |  October 8, 2009

0910_freeland_main
STARVING ARTIST: Bostonian Russell Freeland lived on the streets of Austin for one year, peddling art for food and lodging.

Three years ago, Russell Freeland had what most would consider a settled life. He was working at Harvard University and was financially comfortable enough to own an expensive condo with his wife in the Boston area. Just two years later, though, Freeland was hungry, exhausted, and homeless, trying to survive in Austin, Texas. The 39 year old found himself sleeping in full public view — on bus-stop benches, along the Colorado River — and worrying for his safety.

VIEWPhotos of Freeland's adventures in Austin

"I just felt very vulnerable," says Freeland, "like anybody could come up and kick me in the head because they thought I had something."

His is a disturbing saga, where every sunset stimulated fears about where he might take sanctuary for the evening, and where even finding refuge in safer, out-of-the-way grassy fields had its own traumatic consequences, such as the hungry bugs who had their way with him as he dozed. But it wasn't the sudden turn in the economy that put our subject out on the street, nor were his circumstances similar to those of the thousands of other homeless people in this country.

Freeland's predicament was entirely of his own making. Pursuing a self-imposed assignment called the "Absolute Zero Project," the abstract artist had given away or sold all of his possessions — including his money — and boarded a plane at Logan bound for Austin, a city to which he had never before traveled, and where he knew no one. In the Texas capital, he vowed to live solely off of his art — selling and trading it for sundry goods as well as places to stay.

It was a brave, perhaps insane experiment, one that Freeland partially attributes to a desire to challenge himself artistically. After all, the sheer number of works he was going to have to produce, realistically — just to stay alive — would be considerable.

But his journey also had a spiritual component. "I had an overwhelming desire to strip down to the core essentials of who I am," he told INsite magazine, an Austin-based publication, once word got out about his experiment, "someone who's good at making things and someone who does his best to be kind to the people he comes into contact with."

The question was: in our modern world, would these qualities be enough to let him survive?

Just living
"A lot of time, I just feel asleep day to day," confides Freeland now, comfortably back in Allston after nearly a year on the edge in Texas. "You know what I'm saying? You're not putting anything to the test — you're just living."

The Hawaiian-born artist, who sometimes goes by the art handle "Rocduv," has dark blond hair and a fondness for sunglasses and collared shirts. You might know his work from the countless sidewalk paintings he's done in neighborhoods throughout Boston with his pal Robert Guillemin, a/k/a Sidewalk Sam. The two are part of Art Street, Inc., in Newton, a nonprofit organization that creates populist art events.

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  Topics: Lifestyle Features , Boston, Harvard University, Austin,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY IAN SANDS
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  •   LESS THAN ZERO  |  October 08, 2009
    Three years ago, Russell Freeland had what most would consider a settled life. Just two years later, though, Freeland was hungry, exhausted, and homeless, trying to survive in Austin, Texas.
  •   WHEELS IN MOTION  |  September 02, 2009
    David Branigan, who recently returned to town after more than a year in Koforidua, in Eastern Ghana, says what he missed most about Boston is the "efficiency." That might come as a shocker for those of us here who have ever waited for the Number 66 bus in the thick of winter.
  •   APARTMENT AID  |  August 31, 2009
    Back from an arduous vacation full of nail-biting beer-pong battles and vigorous Wii tennis matches, you enter the dilapidated dorm or apartment where you'll be spending the next year doing much the same.
  •   FOR THOSE ABOUT TO LOCK  |  August 05, 2009
    It's too bad Skip Gates didn't have Schuyler Towne's cell number on that fateful day last month. If he did, the Somerville-based lockpicking champ likely could have gotten in to the good professor's home in no time at all, and a national controversy (and international beer summit) might have been averted.
  •   ONLY THE AWESOME NEED APPLY  |  July 22, 2009
    What if Eli and Edythe Broad, two important financial backers of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, had gone batshit crazy back in the early '00s and decided to go in a different direction with their philanthropy?

 See all articles by: IAN SANDS

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