Much of the attraction of Outsider Art derives from the astonishing range and commitment with which self-taught artists will reinvent the whole process of art from the ground up. Artists like Henry Darger and Daniel Martinez operated in a kind of void. Nobody saw Darger's work before his death, and Ramirez was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic because he was deaf and couldn't lip-read spoken English.

The Creative Growth Art Center makes these tragedies feel out of date. It's a place where all difference is enjoyed, and communication is constant and intense. But that deeply inventive quality of the artists' work continues for all of that. I think this quality is what people have in mind when they use the word "naive." But these artists aren't unexposed to the image culture that's everywhere around us, and they seem more socially able than your average art-school class. What they're new to, and at the same time completely committed to is the fact that they can make the stuff themselves. That long moment of discovery, when you see that you can actually make this stuff, is probably the best moment of any artist's career, and in this workshop that moment has an amazing and delightful attenuation.

The September show at CGAC is a portrait collection. Much of the work on display is by the Center's stars: Donald Mitchell and the late Dwight McDonald, for example, both of whom have authored books which the Center published and offers for sale at its store. A good third of the show resulted from a collage/portrait workshop led recently by local artist Deborah Barrett. The basic game of production for most of the work involved building a bust, either frontal or in profile, out of scraps of old ledgers and legal documents, and then furnishing the face in primary colors with letterform stencils. The invention with which letter, numbers and their parts stand in for noses and ears is constant and, taking the group as a whole, wonderful.

In addition to the workshop and artists already named, this show included work by regular CGAC artists David Alvares, Marion Bolton, Terri Bowden, Kimberly Clark, Louis Estape, William Scott and Ernest Spears. The gallery and workshop are open Monday through Friday from eleven in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon, but not on weekends

"Identity Theft," the portrait show.
Creative Growth Art Center, 355 24th street, Oakland, CA 94612

Sept. 15 to Oct. 14, 2005
Opening Reception, Sep. 15, Five to Eight, P.M.