New CG Book | William Scott: Painting Utopia

Painting Utopia - a retrospective book of William Scott’s career and creative process - is now available at the Creative Growth Gallery and online. William is a long-standing and treasured artist at Creative Growth and has spent the past 25 years developing a meticulous drawing and painting style that explores an alternative past, present, and future.

This publication is the first in a series of small books highlighting notable Creative Growth artists and activities.

63 pages Paperback with French Fold cover 5.5 x 7 inches Published by Creative Growth

For more information about William Scott and examples of his artwork, click here.

Directors' Note | Year End Letter

Dear Friend,

If you had to summarize your passion in life in just one sentence, what would you say? If you immediately know your answer, you’ll probably see a little bit of yourself in our artists, Elizabeth and Barry.

Elizabeth knew she wanted to be a fashion designer when she was just 10 years old. Growing up with Down syndrome in the 1990’s, she faced narrow-minded assumptions about her potential. Coupled with a sudden loss of her mother early in her life, she began sketching in an effort to heal. She dreamt that one day she’d transform her fashion ideas into reality. Then in 2011, Elizabeth came to Creative Growth and challenged assumptions head on.

She poured herself into her creative process, unlocked her potential as a designer, and hasn’t looked back since. Today, she’s developing sensational, fresh looks for our annual runway event, Beyond Trend, and is a featured artist in Nordstrom’s 2017 Fall Fashion Campaign - turning the traditional notion of who can be an artist and a fashion model today on its head.

By supporting Creative Growth with a gift today, you ensure over 150 artists with disabilities, like Elizabeth, have the opportunity to nurture their potential in a safe, supportive community year-round.

Like Elizabeth, Barry came to Creative Growth and discovered his potential to thrive as a visionary artist. Despite battling serious health issues, alongside complications from managing a dual diagnosis, his passion for painting has continued to grow. Because it calms him, Barry likes to work in our garden everyday. It’s this love of nature that has inspired the color and intricate patterns in his work.

Today, Barry is one of four artists with artwork featured in a brand new line of Method brand cleaning products, currently being sold in Target stores nationwide - extending the reach of his art to an audience of millions!

“At Creative Growth, I paint every day and spend time with friends.” -Barry

The support and opportunity Elizabeth and Barry receive at Creative Growth have allowed them to channel their determination and hard work successfully into their craft and reach new levels of success. We hope you’ll join us in our mission to push the innovative work of artists with disabilities further into the mainstream by contributing today.

In 2017, many of our artists who are paving the way for others in the contemporary art world, gained unprecedented levels of mainstream exposure.

*The work of Dan Miller and Judith Scott (d.2005) was included in the 2017 Venice Biennale - a historic first for artists with disabilities.

*Artists Barry Regan, Aurie Ramirez, Maureen Clay, and Allan Lofberg have artwork paired with four limited-edition Method home-cleaning products - which hit Target stores across America in October 2017.

*We published Volume II of the Creative Growth Magazine to rave reviews, effectively allowing our artists to control their own narratives in their communication with the public.

*Artists Elizabeth Rangel and William Scott were featured in Nordstrom’s 2017 Fall Fashion campaign.

*William Scott’s work was accepted into the permanent collection of SFMOMA, his hometown museum - marking another remarkable achievement on his path forward.

Even with these incredible strides, we have so much work left to do to ensure all artists with disabilities have the chance to thrive as contemporary artists. Creative Growth artists are passionate about their work. Your annual gift offers them the encouragement and the tools they need to advance for another year.

Thank you for making their work possible!

All the best, Tom di Maria, Director Becki Couch-Alvarado, Executive Director

P.S. Make a contribution of $250 or above and be the first to receive a copy of a new book about Creative Growth artist, William Scott, to be released to the public in January 2018.

Shop New Creative Growth Gifts

Creative Growth has new artist-inspired gift items for sale! We're pleased to offer the Creative Growth Coloring Book, filled with over 50 pages of illustrations by Creative Growth artists; William Tyler and Juan Aguilera tees and sweatshirts available for the whole family; one-of-a-kind artwork sticker packs; and greeting card packs with holiday themes or an assortment of Creative Growth artwork.  And, for the first time ever, you can take home work by Charles Smith in the form of limited edition prints, available as individual prints or as a set of three.

Find the perfect gifts while supporting Creative Growth artists and programs!

Shop the gifts in person at our Gallery or online here.

Creative Growth + method and Cheeky | Limited Edition Home Products at Target

Creative Growth is thrilled to partner with Method and Cheeky in the creation of limited edition collections of their home products. Method's line of hand washes and home cleaning products is inspired by the work of four Creative Growth artists: Maureen Clay, Allan Lofberg, Aurie Ramirez, and Barry Regan. The collection features the artists' work paired with four limited edition method fragrances to showcase how art can enrich everyday life. Cheeky's paper cups and plates are designed with work by Aurie Ramirez, Regina Broussard, and Susan Janow. Both collections are available exclusively at Target stores nationwide and are dedicated to empowering artists and designing for good. “Creative Growth’s powerful work inspired us to tap into method’s design legacy for a collection that is a reflection of our mission,” said Doug Piwinski, CMO of People Against Dirty. “Because sometimes the idea can be simple: by empowering artists, you can uplift communities and create a better world.”

In the words of Creative Growth Director, Tom di Maria: "Our mission is to understand how everyone is a part of the creative community. Our partnership[s] are about valuing how our artists can be seen as contemporary designers, and how their art can enrich the everyday experience of people.”

More about the limited edition collections can be found at method and at Cheeky or by following method and Cheeky on Facebook @methodhome and @cheeky or Instagram @methodhome and @cheeky_home.

Nordstrom Fall 2017 Campaign features Creative Growth

Creative Growth artists Elizabeth Rangel and William Scott and Director Tom di Maria are featured in Nordstrom's Fall 2017 campaign. Olivia Kim, VP of Creative Projects describes the campaign:

“People are the foundation of Nordstrom. They are our friends and our friends-of-friends, and in our Fall 2017 Brand Campaign we wanted to convey a sense of community and celebrate real people who are doing great and extraordinary things, who inspire us in our everyday lives. We always do our best to reflect the diverse customers and communities we serve so we work to represent all kinds of diversity in our campaigns whenever possible.”

We're thrilled to be part of such an amazing community! See the whole campaign, including videos, at nordstrom.com

Creative Growth + Museum of Ice Cream

From the Creative Growth creative community to the creative minds at Museum of Ice Cream, thank you for your support and welcome to the Bay Area! We're thrilled to be the non-profit partner of Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco. The Museum of Ice Cream is a pop-up experience that celebrates ice cream, imagination, and play; their mission, "to design environments that bring people together and provoke imagination" is one we share and celebrate!

Museum of Ice Cream opens Sunday, September 17 at 1 Grant Ave in San Francisco.

Follow them on Instagram @museumoficecream

Cedric Johnson Featured | Ceramics Monthly | September 2017

CLAY CULTURE growing creatively
A community of artists working together at a non-profit in Oakland, California, is shattering stereotypes by finding ways to overcome disabilities while creating in-demand artwork that helps them to make a living.

By Dawn Starin
September 2017

One small, non-profit organization in Oakland, California, has been at the forefront of changing perceptions of what individuals with intellectual, emotional, physical, and/or developmental disabilities can do.

For over 40 years, the Creative Growth Art Center has focused on encouraging and supporting artists with disabilities by providing a professional studio environment for artistic development, gallery exhibition and representation, and nurturing a non-competitive, collaborative, and collective community of artists where both imaginative creativity and creative camaraderie blossom.

While the program is artist run and artist led, it does not, according to the director, Tom di Maria, “teach, guide, or steer people in one direction or another.” It does not offer therapy or instruction and it is not a drop-in center. There are no specific tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, or certain models of success and there are certainly no failures. In this non-competitive setting, the artists proceeding at their own pace in art-making are exercising total personal choice and personal control over their own work.

An Artistic Oasis

The center—thought to be the oldest exhibition space dedicated to the art of people with disabilities—is home to over 160 adult artists engaged in a range of artistic mediums: ceramics, collages, drawing, dressmaking, fiber arts, painting, photography, printmaking, rug making, tapestry, video animation, and woodworking. A variety of cultures, backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and disabilities are represented and many languages are spoken, though some artists do not speak or are unable to use language.

All of the artwork on display (and much of the work that is not on display) is for sale. Everyone here, even if they don’t sell anything, gets a quarterly check because there is a communal pool made up of proceeds from the sale of items priced at less than 25 dollars. This program not only provides the artists with an income, but also ensures that they receive recognition, encourages participation in a community while decreasing social isolation, and increases their sense of self-worth and self-sufficiency. Individuals who often have no access to complete self-expression and total creativity have been given an artistic oasis. And, the center’s safe and encouraging environment has made it possible for this community of creative individuals to reach out to the larger outside community and be accepted. Artwork fostered here has been the subject of articles, books, and films and has been included in numerous gallery shows, international collections, art fairs, and prominent museums throughout the world.

Possibly the most celebrated of the Creative Growth artists, the late Judith Scott, was born with Down syndrome and became deaf as an infant. In 2014 she had a one-woman show at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and today her sculptures sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Speaking about her sculptures, di Maria says “Her work is astonishing, rich, and varied. Her elaborate, enigmatic forms capture our imagination. I think of this work as a language understood only by the artist; a language without words for which there will never really be a translation. And, when we experience it, it resonates with us and we bring our own meanings to it.”

Walking around the center’s gallery and studio and witnessing the creativity and energy bouncing off the walls, floors, and ceilings and spilling out of the cupboards and off the shelves, it is clear that Scott is not the only master artist to have been nurtured here. It is also clear that the art created here has the ability to move an audience—perhaps the very definition of the value of art itself.

A Member Artist’s Perspective

Beanie-clad Cedric Johnson, a natural salesman, leads me through the studio and around the gallery, proudly showing me his work. Born in 1952, in Corpus Christi, Texas, Johnson has been creating a wide range of art forms at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland since 1980. Exuberant, extroverted, highly animated Johnson, who “always knew he wanted to be an artist,” works in a wide range of artistic formats—ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, textile work, and woodwork—there is very little he does not attempt. When he creates, which he does five days a week, ideas “come to him through his imagination, from what he sees around him in the studio, or from pictures,” according to Jessica Daniel, Creative Growth’s marketing and community development manager. Like Scott, and many of the other artists working here, his imagination is surprising and his work is both intense and astounding.

Johnson has exhibited in group shows at Creative Growth, as well as at Rena Bransten Gallery and Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. Ampersand, a Portland, Oregon, gallery that specializes in contemporary artwork, held Cedric Johnson’s first solo exhibition where he exhibited 20 artworks, including 6 ceramic pieces.

Myles Haselhorst, the curator of the exhibition, met Johnson when visiting Creative Growth for the first time. Haselhorst recounts seeing Johnson drawing a mask-like face on the pages of an old atlas. “I’ve always been drawn to masks of all kinds,” Haselhorst notes, “so I was thrilled to see that nearly every page of the atlas featured drawings that were suggestive of masks one might see in primitive cultures, but in Johnson’s distinct visual style.” Like his drawings, many of his ceramic pieces allude to masks and hang directly on the wall. “It’s remarkable,” Haselhorst continues, “how Johnson is able to translate his drawing style to his ceramic pieces, each one portraying a different character or state of mind. They are a bit larger than life, which, in addition to his bold color choices, makes for pieces that have an otherworldly quality.”

While their various disabilities lend significance to the Creative Growth artists’ creations, they, and their work, are not simply defined or limited by these disabilities. Looking at Johnson’s vibrant, glossy, Cubist-style, fantastical ceramic masks and clay whistles, and the artwork from many of the other artists working here, it becomes clear that he and his community of fellow self-taught artists are shattering stereotypes, creating works of distinction, and achieving recognition in today’s art world.