The Creative Growth Art Center is the first U.S. organization dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities and serves as worldwide model in the field of art and disability. To honor its 50th anniversary and its partnership with SFMOMA after its recent acquisition of over 80 works from paintings and drawings to ceramics, sculpture, and film, the museum presents “Creative Growth: The House That Art Built.”
The beginning
Creative Growth was founded by Elias Katz and Florence Ludins-Katz and serves more than 140 artists each week in its Oakland studios and presents artists’ work in galleries and exhibition venues worldwide. The Katzes also founded two similar organizations, NIAD (Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development) and Creativity Explored. With SFMOMA’s acquisition last fall from all three Katz-founded organizations, it is now home to one of the largest holdings in the world of art by artists with developmental disabilities.
Tom di Maria, the Creative Growth’s director emeritus said, “By amplifying the artistic voices of individuals with developmental disabilities, this collaboration breaks down barriers within an often-overlooked community and offers an exciting opportunity for museum visitors to experience these visually captivating and deeply personal works.”
William Scott commission
For Creative Growth’s 50th anniversary, SFMOMA commissioned a site-responsive wall project by William Scott. The expansive commission merges two of his interests: Map-like renderings of San Francisco and portraits of the people who populate his life and dreams. Cameo appearances are made by the Alice Griffith public housing development near the city’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood where the artist was raised. Scott and his mother also appear as younger versions of themselves, smiling in their church congregation along with singer Diana Ross. Scott’s hope for the future, his sense of fun and fantasy culminates in a monumental celebration of “Praise Frisco: Peace and Love in the City,” his name for the San Francisco he envisions for the future. The commission is located on SFMOMA’s second-floor galleries within the museum’s free art–filled public space and serves as an entry into the galleries.
Imagination in daily life
With limitless creativity and vision, the Creative Growth artists create visually captivating and deeply personal works. Joseph Alef produces rhythmic pictures reminiscent of abstract expressionists like Cy Twombly. In Untitled, repeated brush strokes invoke a kind of musicality on the surface. Camille Holvoet finds the richness of daily life in her drawings of memories and current events, including subjects ranging from the prescribed medicine she takes to her disorienting move to a new home in Camille is moving to a new home. In Laundry, Holvoet turns a basket of laundry sitting on a washing machine into a still life, the colorful array of fabric in the foreground posed like a bouquet of flowers. Her humor comes into play in PSYCHEDELIC PICTURE OF BART TICKIES, in which the artist depicts an everyday Bart ticket floating in a field of swirling colors.
“… this collaboration breaks down barriers within an often-overlooked community.”
— Tom di Maria, Director Emeritus, Creative Growth Art Center
Block-like bodies in dense crowds are alone and yet together in the artworks of Donald Mitchell. His untitled pictures of people in groups feature smears of color or blocks of black and white. In busy urban scenes, the figures imply a kind of anonymity and loneliness. Judith Scott achieved international notoriety and was featured in a retrospective organized by the Brooklyn Museum in 2014 and she participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale. Scott started working at Creative Growth at the age of 43 and created art there until her death in 2005. Her mixed media assemblages utilize yarn, twine and strips of fabric wrapped and knotted around mundane objects with a dazzling sculptural effect.
Ron Veasey creates brilliantly colored paintings of charismatic and quirky individuals inspired by a wide range of source materials including fashion magazines, photography books and National Geographic. His figures gaze at the viewer directly, and their forms are typically blocked out in strong black outlines against brightly hued backgrounds. Another figurative artist, Alice Wong, uses vintage photographic portraits donated to Creative Growth as the foundation for her paintings. Using acrylic markers and enamel, she obscures the forms and faces to reimagine them in bright, artificial colors. The decades-old portraits of unknown people are reimagined and reintroduced to the world as though they’re being given a second life.
Art in your life
Coinciding with the opening of “Creative Growth: The House That Art Built” is the debut of a new space on the museum’s second floor dedicated to visitor participation. Interpretive displays, comfortable seating and opportunities to respond to the artwork will facilitate learning and communication. The new space, called Art in Your Life, aims to foster human connection, deeper meaning-making and increased.
In addition, exclusive merchandise from clothing, patches, and pins to book and prints featuring the “Creative Growth” artists’ designs are available in the museum store with a portion of the proceeds from each sale benefitting each organization and its artist.
Creative Growth: The House That Art Built through Oct. 6, SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, sfmoma.org