POVA IN THE NEWS: USA Today - Homeless woman finds refuge in art

Kateri Pomeroy’s artwork. Shelley Mays, The Tennessean.

By: Jessica Bliss

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kateri Pomeroy's hands hover over a cardboard canvas, crumbling vibrant shades of solidified water colors into tiny piles.

With her stained fingertips she spreads the bits in streaks across the flat black surface.

The texture and smell of the colors are like earth after a rain, she says. It reminds her of the red soil in the small Colorado town she called home as a child.

Home, these days, is a tenuous term.

Pomeroy is homeless.

Dropped on the side of Interstate 40 with her rags and bags three years ago, she came to Nashville seeking direction and purpose.

Instead, she found hardship.

She lived on the streets. In a shelter. In a campground littered with tarps and tents, pants and pots, people stripped of roots.

It wasn't until she wandered into the art room at Room in the Inn that she found her place.

In that room in Nashville's downtown shelter, she met her future fiance. There, she connected with Poverty & the Arts, a nonprofit whose mission is to cultivate the talents of the needy. And emboldened by the support, she showed and sold some of her artwork.

That has led to a rekindling of relationships she thought long lost.

Pomeroy may not have a permanent home, but through her art she feels rooted in a way she has long missed.

"It's like you've been given that key to open the door, so people can actually come into your home, which is yourself, and see who you really are," she says. "You are a person like anyone else."