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Creativity Explored Celebrates 25 Years

Benefit Event

Gallery Exhibition/Event

SAN FRANCISCO…25 years ago, Melody Lima showed up at the doors of Creativity Explored (CE) only because her mother had insisted she go. She was greeted by Elias and Florence Katz, a married clinical psychologist and artist, who believed that making art had a unique ability to foster creativity, independence, dignity and community integration for people with developmental disabilities. Lima didn’t see anyone else and wasn’t sure what to do. But as she recalls, the couple cheerily invited her to have a seat and offered her some paint and paper, the only art supplies they had at hand. “I sat down and painted a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge,” says Lima. “It’s the first picture ever made at Creativity Explored.” Lima, who still comes everyday to this vibrant art center and gallery, is pretty sure she sold the picture long ago and, like any successful artist, can’t even begin to guess how many pieces she has made, exhibited and sold at CE. “Thousands?” she ventures.

In just 25 years, Creativity Explored has earned a reputation as one of San Francisco’s best art galleries and one of its most beloved arts organizations. Creativity Explored is more than just a gallery and a studio — it’s a spirited community of more than 120 artists with developmental disabilities creating some of the most profound, fearless and innovative art on view in galleries today. This May marks the 25th year that this extraordinary art center has been changing lives through art. To celebrate this important milestone, the gallery at 3245 16th St. hosts “Quarter Century” — a rare display of its archives and permanent collection May 1 through June 18 and celebrates with a gala event May 15 at Foreign Cinema — the Mission District’s hot spot for food and film.

Until the late 1970s there were no facilities like Creativity Explored in the country. Attitudes about and protocols for people with disabilities were very slow to change. Will Connelly, whose sister Ann is an artist at the studio, remembers a physician telling his mother back in the 1950s that Ann was basically ‘broken’ and should be put in a home and forgotten about. Not one to be told no, his mother Margarete Connelly began to organize other parents into a grassroots movement that set its sites on Sacramento and would not be moved. “My mother could chase a legislator into an elevator like no one else could,” says Connelly. “There was no escape. She was very determined.” Eventually the band of parents got the ear and support of key politicians like Willie Brown to pass a number of important pieces of legislation. The landmark Lanterman-Petris-Short Act that went into effect in 1972 guaranteed services for all people with developmental disabilities in the state and began to make a place like Creativity Explored financially feasible.

But CE in the early days ran more on the sheer power of enthusiasm than on largesse. Irna Hennessey, one of the organization’s first board members and mother of CE’s second studio artist, Heidi, remembers driving around town every week looking for free art supplies to keep the program going. Longtime CE volunteer Ella Tamkin, who was friends with co-founder Florence Katz, credits the sheer force of the Katzes’ willpower for CE’s success. “Elias and Florence were just so full of energy for this,” she says. “They knew how important this was and what an impact they were having on people.” Creativity Explored was the second of four studios around the Bay Area that the couple started. Today three of those still exist including Creative Growth in Oakland and NIAD in Richmond.

Originally housed in the lobby of the Mission Cultural Center, CE always made outreach to the surrounding Latino population a priority. Early on, Spanish-speaking staff was brought on and it became one of the only places where Latino immigrants could be placed for services. Today, CE is affectionately called ‘The United Nations’ by its staff. Studio artists come from all over the world –- Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America.

The program quickly outgrew the Mission Cultural Center and moved first to 24th St. and then to its current location on 16th St., but it was always a part of the Mission District. Well-known Chicana artist and Creativity Explored instructor Ester Hernandez says the organization was a pioneer in the Mission art scene. “We were really the first art organization in the 16th Street area,” she says. “It was sort of a seedy area, but we were always open to the public and the artist community really embraced us early on. They would come here to hang out and get reenergized.”

One of those early supporters was critically acclaimed African American artist Joe Sam who felt an affinity for the artwork coming out of the CE studio. “It’s spontaneous. It’s indigenous. It’s colorful and beautiful,” he says. “The artists are completely intuitive. There are no Euro-centric art school parameters with it. It just really comes from the soul.” When the annual Holiday Sale would come around, Joe Sam would gather large groups of friends and line up early to be the first in the door. “I think the largest collection of art I have is from Creativity Explored,” he says.

Internationally known contemporary artist Harrell Fletcher found Creativity Explored while he was in the Bay Area getting his MFA. For Harrell, his days volunteering at the studio in the 90s were formative. “Nothing I or my fellow students were doing could compete with the amazing work that was being produced by CE artists like Michael Loggins, James Miles, Andrew Li, John McKenzie, and David Jarvey,” he says. “My experience working with those folks totally re-calibrated my way of thinking about art and life in very positive ways.” Fletcher poured his energy into creating a CE zine called “Whipper Snapper Nerd” that highlighted a different studio artist in each issue. It was due to Fletcher’s efforts that CE got its first full-scale museum show in 1998, a major exhibit also called Whipper Snapper Nerd at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that later traveled to Los Angeles and New York.

Fletcher increasingly found national and international exhibition opportunities for CE artists, even managing to find a way to involve CE’s Michael Bernard Loggins in the Whitney Biennial. Loggins’ increasing visibility eventually led to the release of his first book, “Fears of Your Life”, an illustrated list of more than 100 of the things that scare him. The book published by Manic D was excerpted in Harper’s and read on NPR’s This American Life.

CE continued to expand with the opening of a second studio dubbed Creativity Explored II. Now located in Potrero Hill, this second studio allowed CE to work with people with more severe disabilities including physical disabilities. Here, an ambitious film and animation program allowed artists with extremely limited mobility like Than Diep, who is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer, to tell their stories at film festivals locally and nationally.

Another key expansion, the opening of the gallery at the space on 16th St., was made possible by a family whose personal tragedy led them to the doors of Creativity Explored. In 2000, the Hsiang family learned that their son Curtis had unexpectedly died at the age of 37. When Curtis’s parents came to clean out his apartment in San Francisco, they discovered a place full of colorful and unusual art. They learned from their son’s girlfriend that the work came from Creativity Explored and that he had been an ardent fan, so they paid a visit. “They walked in, took a look around and asked me what my wildest dream was,” says Executive Director Amy Taub. “I told them we desperately needed a gallery. They went home and scraped the money together little by little with the help of relatives and friends. It was an amazing act of generosity. But almost all of our big donations have come about in this way. People are touched by us and believe in what we are.” The gallery, which opened in 2001, is dedicated to Curtis’ memory.

Since 2001, the gallery has hosted over 50 exhibitions featuring the work of its artists. Art sales are an important component of the organization’s mission. The marketing of the art provides visibility for the experiences, talents and works of artists with developmental disabilities. Art sale proceeds are split 50/50 between CE and the studio artist. For many of the studio artists, the sale of their art is the only means of supplementing their fixed disability incomes.

Ted Frankel, owner of Sideshow, the store at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, never regrets spending a single cent at CE. And that is quite a pretty penny since Frankel has collected over 1000 pieces of artwork. Fifteen years ago, Frankel saw a poster for a showing of CE art while in San Francisco and now returns at least one or two times a year to buy work. “My house is full of it and I love it for so many reasons,” he says. “It’s such a springboard for conversation. People just really want to talk about the work and the artists and the place. It really makes me happy. I’m just addicted to it.”

These days, Creativity Explored art is turning up in more places than private residences. A new corporate art partnership program has placed CE art in high rises offices and residences around San Francisco. For the artists, these growing opportunities for CE mean more choices than ever with an active visiting artist program that has included instruction on everything from printmaking to drawing nudes. Artists also can choose to go on any number of weekly trips to local galleries, museums and destinations to learn more about the work of other artists and the cultural resources in the area.

For Melody Lima, these past 25 years at Creativity Explored have gone quickly –- full of new experiences and new people. “Doing art makes me happy,” she says plainly. Her colleague Michael Bernard Loggins sums up the days at CE this way in his book, “Magnificent hours of our Lives in an arts zone of our Future and time and life is what we spent doing art and sell our Fantastically works of Art and Enjoy what we get. We make a Living off our Works. Liferrifically.”

ANNIVERSARY EVENTS
EXHIBITION: Quarter Century
Creativity Explored’s 25th Anniversary exhibition will feature many treasured artworks set aside over the years for the gallery’s permanent collection, highlights from past exhibitions including the critically acclaimed “Don’t Call Me Retard” and select pieces from the traveling Steele Art Collection. The exhibition also offers fans of some of CE’s most highly regarded and widely collected artists such as John Patrick McKenzie, Michael Bernard Loggins, Douglas Sheran and Vincent Jackson a chance to see early works that trace their creative evolution. A special memorial wall honors the work of studio artists who have passed away. Videos made by and about the artists will also be a featured part of the display. The exhibition is on view May 1 through June 18, 2008; Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursday until 7 p.m., Saturday 1 to 6 p.m. The gallery is located at 3245 16th St. in San Francisco.

GALA EVENT: 25th Anniversary Celebration
To celebrate 25 years of changing lives, Creativity Explored hosts a gala event May 15th at the Mission District’s hot spot for food and film, Foreign Cinema. The evening features a screening of selections from Ben Wu’s Academy Award-winning student documentary about the artists of Creativity Explored “Cross Your Eyes, Keep them Wide” and a silent and live auction of tantalizing items and exceptional artworks by studio artists and some of their nationally-known colleagues. Partygoers will enjoy delicious gourmet treats and an open bar while listening to the Parisian café stylings of The Baguette Duet, western swing and cowboy music by Chris Leone and the Spurs of the Moment plus special performances by surprise guests. The event takes place May 15th from 7 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $100 per person in advance; $125 per person day of the event. Foreign Cinema is located at 2534 Mission St. in San Francisco.

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT EITHER EVENT OR TO PURCHASE TICKETS FOR THE GALA, THE PUBLIC SHOULD CALL (415) 863-2108 OR VISIT WWW.CREATIVITYEXPLORED.ORG.

Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art.

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Press Contacts

Barbara Traisman: publicity@creativityexplored.org
Amy Auerbach: (415) 863-2108 · gallery@creativityexplored.org
Amy Taub: (415) 863-2108 · director@creativityexplored.org

# Posted on April 14, 2008