YA'SHALAN NELSON - [X]PRESS Artist Ruvano Maxio, 20, was a runaway who now lives in a hospitality house and works on his art at the Roaddawgz studio in San Francisco. Roaddawgz is an art studio that hosts and assists homeless and at-risk youth.

He reminisced as he said, “I really don’t know what I would do without this place. [I’d have] no outlet, no channel for anything I do.”

Maxia is a regular attendant of the Roaddawgz drop-in center in San Francisco, where homeless youth from all over the world, ages 16-25, can come to express their artistic abilities, connect with others, and hang out for a while.

One time, Maxia reached the end of his rope. He couldn’t feel, smell, or taste, but could walk. “I had somehow navigated through the city from a cliff on Ocean Beach high on weed, beer and acid, and pretty much made like a zombie from the bus stop into [Roaddawgz],” said Maxia. “[Machiko Saito, the director of Roaddawgz] told me, ‘Stay here, eat, and rest.’ I am really thankful to [Saito] for not kicking me out, like so many others would.”

Once a homeless runaway, Maxia goes at least once or twice a week to draw, paint, and write for the Roaddawgz zine and Web site.

The Roaddawgz center opened its doors for the first time in 2000 by a group of homeless youth in San Francisco. Saito became director after the originial founder left the center a year later. Roaddawgz was about to close, but Saito wrote out grants for it to stay open.

“When [Maya, the founder] left, she told me, ‘Keep this place alive. A place like this has got to exist,’” Saito said.

Since then, Roaddawgz has been a flourishing art studio for many; a safe haven for those in dangerous life situations to create art. It’s nearly filled to the brim with artwork and writings created by the 110 to 200 people who walk through their doors every year. Hundreds of hand-drawn images, paintings, collages, embellished skateboard decks, and even an altered Zohan movie cardboard cutout, color the room.

New material is published weekly on the Roaddawgz website, Roaddawgz.org, and periodically, a zine is released to San Francisco and New York bookstores for $10 each.

Saito explains how grateful she is to see the artists’ ideas and ambitions manifest.

She recently read the autobiography of a Roaddawgz contributor who ran away from home only to be accepted by an abusive couple. They would lock the girl up in a bare room and shoot her up with heroin. She ran from them too and became a heroin addict on the streets.

“Eventually, she made it [to Roaddawgz] and still comes every so often, sharing her love of art with anybody who might be here,” said Saito. “I learn so much from these incredible people.”