by Blaire Dessent
– France –
When the family of Ramon Avalos, a blind and mentally disabled man in his 50s, received a check from Center for Creative Growth for a few hundred dollars from the sales of his artwork, they sent the check back thinking it was a mistake. Founded in the mid-1970s in Oakland, California, The Center for Creative Growth (CCG) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing those with mental, physical and emotional disabilities a place to make artwork. Avalos had been working at the Center for years and was known for his colored pencil on paper abstracts.
The Center for Creative Growth is an innovative organization that has not only paved the way for a better understanding of people with mental and physical disabilities but also maintains an unfailing belief in the healing power of art. Led by its dynamic director, Tom di Maria, the Center has built a solid board of directors that includes leaders in the fields of contemporary art and business. Most of the onsite staff members are professional artists.
Before accepting the position at Creative Growth eight years ago, Di Maria worked for a contemporary art institute. Di Maria and the board realized the potential of developing a unique connection between the Center, art galleries, and other art institutions – an idea that will be further explored through Galerie Impaire, started by CCG, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
Galerie Imparire opened in June with a group exhibition of work by several Creative Growth artists and a series of photographs taken by New York artist Cheryl Dunn. Included in the exhibition are several works on paper by Ramon Avalos, drawings by William Tyler, Dan Miller, and paintings by William Scott – who will also be in a two-person show this fall at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Creative Growth artist Aurie Ramierez, is also included in this exhibition and recently had a solo show at White Columns, the non-profit space in New York City. A Filipina in her 40s, she makes lovely, detailed drawings and watercolors of semi-androgynous figures, sometimes wearing cat-like masks. Though these artists may not exercise curatorial input, Tom Di Maria says that like anyone, they love to see their work on the walls and especially on the opening night.
French artist Jean Dubuffet is credited with coining the term art brut in the late 1940s to refer to the idea that raw, uninhibited creation and free association was the way to create a pure, “real” art. This was sometimes seen in works by people with mental disabilities, but also by those with little or no education, those living in rural poverty or those in prison who used found materials. During the 1970s and 1980s emerging “outsider art” or “naive art,” markets in the United States were championed by places like the Museum of American Folk Art in New York and the Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. As people started collecting this work in a serious way, market values took off. Numerous catalogs, exhibitions, art fairs (including the large scale Outsider Art Fair that takes place in New York City each January), have developed around this art.
My first encounters with so-called Outsider Art began when I was a child. My mom was an early collector and filled our house with pieces by well-known folk artist such as Clementine Hunter and Mose Tolliver, but she also collected small objects and paintings by unknown artists who spent their lives in obscurity, perhaps in a hospital or prison. For a brief time I worked as a weekend gallery manager in the late 1990s at the Museum of American Folk Art, a leader in promoting the diversity of work produced by self taught, handicapped artists or others outside the mainstream. For me, identifying with this work was instinctual. I suppose it is this purity that Dubuffet referred to that has always appealed to me. There can be a real spirit and passion that is not always part of the agenda of contemporary art.
Scholarly research contributes a good deal of the dialogue as well. Judith Scott, now deceased, was an artist who worked at Creative Growth. Scott’s twin sister Joyce found a place for Judith there in the 1980s after she had spent thirty-five years in a mental institution. She started creating bound sculptures using tons of yarn woven around various objects and debris, including a skateboard, rocks, paper, tree branches, pens and shells. The work is sometimes suspended from the ceiling or placed on the floor. Numerous articles, films and books have documented her life and work, demonstrating the possibility of a greater understanding not only of contemporary art, but also the potential of every human being.
Some people will remain skeptical about the abilities of these artists. Others, like the family of Ramon Avalos, will not believe that he made art that actually sold. Tom di Maria states, “it’s just another way that Creative Growth confronts the notion of who the artists of our era are, what people with disabilities are capable of, and how, as human beings, each of us has an inherent and necessary passion to express ourselves creatively.” The multi-faceted nature of Creative Growth gives it a leading edge as an art center and organization. With the new Paris gallery it will provide an interesting new voice to the contemporary art world.
About the Author
Blaire Dessent was born in La Jolla, California and recently settled in Paris after ten years in New York City where she worked in contemporary art. She was formerly the Director for the Art Omi International Artists’ Residency, a non-profit arts organization based in Columbia County, New York. She holds a Masters in Art History from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Writing has always been a passion and recently Blaire started developing a blog, deuxfrontieres, which centers on food, culture, politics and random thoughts about Parisian life.
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