Three years ago, when artist Wynde Dyer was revisiting themes of childhood trauma and poverty, she used colorful pieces of tarp to create a quilt.

"Tarp is very different from fabric," she said. "When you think of a quilt, you think of something nice and warm and soft and flexible, and using tarp in quilting subverts that notion. It's hard, it's crunchy, it's cold, you can't really use it to keep warm, it's not something that you can curl up in and feel safe in."

Dyer's new installation at Portland State University's Littman Gallery takes her tarp art from the personal to the political by calling attention to the city's housing and homelessness crisis.

"Camp Here Tonight" features four A-frame tents -- the tallest reaching 8-and-a-half feet -- made from colorful tarp pieces sewn together. The plastic strips of red, blue, yellow, black, brown and orange give the tents a circus-like quality. It's a jab at the city's approach to the housing crisis, which Dyer says "has been an awful lot like a circus without a ringleader."

But Dyer's art show offers more than a passive viewing experience. It invites some civil disobedience through the sale of quilted tarp yard signs - $40 for large ones, $20 for small ones - that read "Camp Here Tonight."

Dyer wants Portlanders to place these signs on their lawns and invite people to camp in their backyards.

"Maybe just open your fence up, figure it out as you go," she said. "Do you let them in to go to the bathroom or do you just give them a safe place where they won't be raped or have their stuff stolen? You work out the logistics of how you can help, but consider the possibly of opening the unused resource of your yard."

Ptery Lieght, a resident of the Hazelnut Grove encampment in the Overlook neighborhood, made 20 "Camp Here Tonight" signs.

"I feel like City Hall and all these other agencies are not going to be able to solve the problem," Lieght said. "I think people have to. We have to have a change in culture."

As I've written before, the issue of homelessness can seem overwhelming to the average resident who isn't sure how to help. Dyer's installation suggests one way - by either offering a yard or just offering solidarity.

"I'm in an apartment complex, I can't let anybody camp here," Dyer said, "but I want the homeless people who come to collect my cans to see my sign and know that person's a safe person."

While she can't offer a yard, for the past year Dyer has offered her home, inviting residents of Hazelnut Grove to shower and create art in her apartment. She helps them sew their own tarp artwork, which they in turn sell as a source of income.

Jaison Kirk is a homeless artist who has used sales from his tarp quilts to start construction on a tiny home at Hazelnut Grove. Many of his 12-by-12-inch tarp quilt designs feature abstract images of tiny homes.

"Those seem to be resonating with people," Kirk said. "That's what we all want, kinda, is to have our own little space."

Dyer knows about wanting that little space. For about nine months in 2012 and 2013, she was homeless. She showered at friends' homes and lived out of her 1988 Volvo station wagon.

Dyer was able to pull herself out of homelessness by driving a cab, getting a few art grants and landing a place in affordable housing.

Not everyone is so lucky.

"Camp Here Tonight" also shines a light on two very different sides of Portland: One where homeless sweeps occur, and another where travelers pay for urban camping. The installation includes framed photos of actual Airbnb listings for tents in the Portland area.

Right now, for $73 a night (with services fees), you can sleep on an air mattress in a tent in a neighborhood backyard.

The listing is by a self-described "health-minded," "environmentally friendly" couple who perhaps doesn't realize how tone-deaf their listing sounds in the midst of a housing crisis.

Camping in a backyard inside the city limits is, technically, illegal. Dyer knows this. She also knows the city uses a complaint-driven system of enforcement, and if people can get away with Airbnb listings for backyard tents, she supposes good Samaritans can get away with offering shelter to the homeless.

Dyer's artwork essentially asks us to take personal responsibility for homelessness - not in the sense that it's our fault, but in the sense that we each have some obligation to mitigate it.

If we reframed homelessness in this context - as something for more than just nonprofits and governments to solve - what other creative solutions might we come up with?

IF YOU GO:

"Camp Here Tonight" is on display through Oct. 27 at Portland State University's Littman Gallery, room 250, on the second floor of the Smith Memorial Student Union, 1825 S.W. Broadway. Hours are Monday through Friday, noon to 4 pm. For more information on Dyer's art, or to purchase signs or tarp quilts, visit wyndedyer.com or follow @wyndedyer on Instagram.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com