Norman Ballou. Beatles, 2009; mixed-media. Image courtesy of Creativity Explored.

Walking down Valencia Street in the Mission District of San Francisco, one might be suddenly attracted by two store-front windows filled with fantastic art. One window vividly displays two large white drawings inscribed on black scratch board (scrafitti), by Jay Herndon entitled Dinosaurs 1 and 2 . They are hung together with Norman Ballou's compelling mixed media pieces, Beatles 1, Beatles 2, and A Hard Days Night, in which he built up layers of collaged Beatles images into large bulbous shapes. These works are part of Inscriptions, curated by Miranda Putman at the Creativity Explored gallery.

The Creativity Explored studio in San Francisco is an artistic center which includes artists with disabilities, their teachers, collectors, and an enthusiastic extended community. It has nurtured many of the resident artists to find their own voice, while honoring their compulsions and obsessions. One of three full-time art programs started by Elias Katz, a psychologist, and Florence Ludins-Katz, a painter, for adults with disabilities, the others include Creative Growth in Oakland, and National Institute for Arts and Disabilities (NIAD) in Richmond (All three centers are now independently run). Their mission vision included: art centers that would be closely connected with the arts community and the art world; an "open studio" where the participating artists with disabilities would be free to select their space to work, with freedom to create; and a place where professional artists would be employed to encourage the artists with disabilities. Historically, their art centers coincided with the deinstitutionalization and release into the community of this population from California state hospitals.

The majority of the work in this show is from Creativity Explored II (CEII), a second branch located nearby.

"In these works of art, all of which employ inscription in some form, line and demarcation convey the artistic hand of the artists and establish the structure and composition of the works on view. Gestural range, feeling, and ways of seeing are revealed in each artist's personal style, which in some cases includes calligraphy or incorporates text,"

writes curator Miranda Putman. [1] Inscriptions features a number of pieces done on scratch board, as well as foam prints, ink and graphite drawings, mixed media, and charcoal on paper. Strung across the ceiling is a mixed media piece by Amani Swalim entitled the Eleven Surrahs. It consists of a series of small boards that have chapters of the Koran, written in Arabic on one side and English on the other. Tolbert Calonico's Hot Cakes and Moons 1,2, and 3 are calligraphic circles lain over circles endlessly repeated, building up a surface of memory and intent. I like that the titles refer to things one can eat and see in front of one on a plate, as well as something faraway, mysterious, and out of reach.

Thomas Pringle. Diamond Lady, 2009; work on paper. Image courtesy of Creativity Explored.

The term inscription also can refer to memories fixed or deeply impressed in the mind, engraved words or symbols on a surface, a book or a song dedication, or a figure drawn within a figure so that boundaries touch, as in geometry. The refined lines of Thomas Pringle's drawings are erased and redrawn, erased and redrawn again as he tries to locate the figure on the page. One particularly haunting piece by Thanh Diep depicts a charcoal portrait of her mother. Diep lost her mother when she was six, according to Amy Taub, director of Creativity Explored. Portrait of my Mother is drawn from memory and based on an original painting that Diep has copied several times.

The question of whether or not outsider, folk, or visionary art has a direct line to cosmic consciousness is difficult one to answer. Many artists including Paul Klee, Max Ernest, Jean Debuffet, and the Surrealists were deeply interested in African art, children's art, primordial, and early Christian art. Art historian Caroline Douglas notes that there was a "flight from the exhausted and over-determined formal vocabulary of Western art towards what was seen as a more innocent, spiritual experience of unmediated and uncorrupted expression." [2] The Surrealists believed they could conjure automatic writing and drawing from the subconscious and reveal feelings that would otherwise be repressed. However, Surrealist Andre Masson admitted that his 'automatic' imagery involved some form of conscious intervention to make the image or painting visually comprehensible.

These artists also celebrated the Prinzhorn Collection of art. Assembled between 1918 and1921 by psychiatrist Franz Prinzhorn of work created by patients of the University of Heidelberg psychiatric hospital, the collection sets an important historical precedent. Concerning the Prinzhorn collection, Douglas writes,

"what strikes one about so many of the works is that they do not lack logic or rationale; in many cases there is an emphatic logic evident in elaborate systems, charts, and calculations and a lucidity in the drawing.... One has a sense of logic operating in parallel to 'normal' logic- tantalizingly close for us to follow it, yet running a course which may never intersect with ours... Perhaps this instinctive self -defense is the true genesis of the spontaneity of artistic production..." [3]

At Creativity Explored there are no clear logical lines of demarcation, in part because some of these works are collaborations between teachers and resident artists, and because many of the Creativity Explored artists have worked for years as independent professional artists. The beautiful and rewarding artwork created here is really the result of a collective effort by a supportive community of artists and teachers, mixed together with highly developed individual sensibilities, and access to a wider art public.

Tolbert Calonico. Untitled, 2009; mixed media. Image courtesy of Creativity Explored.

Inscriptions is on view at Creativity Explored through August 5, 2009.
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[1]. http://www.creativityexplored.org/press/2009/05/inscriptions/

[3]. Ibid.