Antidote to Hard Time: An Artist Gets a Break

In the city of myth, everyone finds true love, starving artists are discovered and endings are happy. In reality, the streets all so smell of urine, beggars troll the subways,denouuements are not neat. Morgan Monceaux has lived both versions of New York.

Mr. Monceaux is an artist, Less than three years ago, he was homeless and foraged for food in dumpsters. He is today signing copies of a new book on jazz musicians that he wrote and illustrated, "Jazz: My Music, My People" (Alferd A. Knopf, $18). This week some of the collaged like paintings featured in that book of biographies and personal recollections made its debut in the windows of the Barneys store on Madison Avenue.