[Music Playing]
Oh, I like painting, I like doing clay.
I like all my artwork.
This is one of my square drawings
that I've done.
This, uh, drawing right here,
it makes me feel good
and I show my inspiration.
My name is Jackie
and I am going to take you on a tour.
I'll show you, that is a ceramics class.
This is the work class, right here
and there's sewing right here.
What're you sewing, Theresa?
My magic robe.
Oh, okay. Her magic robe. Okay.
And that's a teacher right here.
How're you doing?
Art is a great equalizer.
That transcends language.
That transcends culture.
That transcends disability.
Creative growth is about
artistic expression as a form of self empowerment
as a form of aesthetic development, as a form of saying
"this is who I am in the world".
Blue is cold and yellow is warm.
How do you know when you're reaching in there what you're getting out?
I can tell by the feel.
The feel?
Yep, the compartments, you know?
So what is the feel of green? What is that?
Green feels like freezing, red is hot.
So you're working with freezing and hot right now?
Yes.
Monica's been fascinated with color ever since she was really
a wee child, and I think losing her sight opened up a different connection
to the world of light, and shadow, and color.
Do you have a favorite foam shape to work on?
I like the logs,
the cubes,
the little tiny cubes,
and the spheres.
Logs, tiny cubes, and spheres.
Yeah, and the cakes too.
Yeah, and the cakes turned out great.
Yep.
I see her becoming more and more dedicated to her art
and it seems to fulfill her in deeper and deeper ways,
and for that, I feel so happy.
You know? Because she has so much to offer the world.
Yes, um, my name is Rosena Finister
[Crowd whooping and clapping]
and I'm from a small town in Louisiana, where all the poor people live at.
That's where I'm from.
This is the first type of art that I started doing.
Creative Growth currently serves 162 artists at our studio every week.
When people come to the Creative Growth studio, for the most part
they've never made art before in their lives,
and we kind of welcome that.
Because it allows us to see who they are.
And, you know, there's no right or wrong;
we don't teach in a traditional way.
We say, you know, "what would you like to do?",
"what are you thinking about", "what did you dream about",
"what color do you like"?
Tell us your story.
[Jazzy music playing]
I've been coming here since 1992
I like to paint, I like to draw, and I like paintings of people --
like, different people.
And stars -- movie stars.
There are wholesome people.
Wholesome encounters.
What do you like to look at?
I like that one.
This one?
Yeah.
Look at that one? This is what?
What do you call the name of this painting?
"Inner Limits".
William is just such a brilliant artist.
And look at this.
Beautiful piece.
Do you remember making this?
I remember.
That's what? Praise Frisco?
Yeah.
He envisions through his work a utopian reality that he creates
for us all to live in.
A world where people who have died come back to life,
places where bad neighborhoods are safe,
where his family is happy, where the world is peaceful.
And, he believes the painting will be powerful enough
to make that a reality.
Riding on the spaceship, wholesome encounter spaceship.
There's not gonna be no more evils. No more aliens, no more monsters,
no more evils.
Uh-huh.
Creative Growth is really a Bay Area story.
The disability rights movement in the early 1970s,
Creative Growth really comes from that.
So, during that time, people with disabilities in institutions
were suddenly deinstitutionalized.
So, artists came together in Oakland, and put paint on a table,
and said "well, these people are gonna come here; creativity is the path forward"
I'm just doing a tree right now.
And, people with disabilities can communicate and be a vital part
of society.
Part of the Creative Growth plan when you come here and make art,
is that we represent you, and you show your work in the gallery.
If the work sells, the artist gets half the money.
Creative Growth, the nonprofit gets half the money.
We buy supplies and support the artists with that money.
If you came to Creative Growth, you could buy something for 10 dollars,
and you can buy something for 75,000 dollars.
It's exactly like the contemporary art world.
As an artist's work develops, and it gets into collections, and museums,
and is highly sought after, the prices go up.
And Creative Growth artists follow that same path.
Judith Scott is one of the most well- known Creative Growth artists.
As an artist, Judith Scott transcended this difficult situation.
Where she was separated from her family and institutionalized
for almost 40 years.
She was Deaf and it wasn't known, so she never developed language,
and she was isolated.
So in her 40's, she comes to Creative Growth.
And, her method to talk to us
was art.
The process is very important to her
and the result of that process with these sculptures, with hidden objects,
and accumulated, protected things that were sacred or important to her.
I think Judith Scott's role in contemporary art is that
she has opened the door for a lot of people to see
who an artist can be.
[Mumbling]
Right?
Right.
[Mumbling]
You know, Dan's work is based on words.
He builds literally words on top of each other to form
his communication with the world.
Do you want me to pull it down?
Yeah!
Pull it gently, right?
Right.
[Mumbling]
Right.
We still don't know a lot about autism, but there's this big barrier there.
There's this person behind this barrier
and he can't communicate in a way that you and I can communicate with each other.
And to put himself down on this paper, that's Danny's opportunity to talk
to people.
Dan's work has definitely progressed in the years he's been here.
Dan became more and more interested in the graphic qualities of the letters,
of how to use paint, how to use the brush, how to work on massive pieces of paper.
He's very sophisticated, and he's a colorist.
He's clear about what he wants to do.
You know? And I think when you see that urgency in his work, it's because it's so
important to him, and because its so important for us to know who he is;
that he has thoughts like we do, that he's smart, that he's not to be dismissed.
[Music]
Dan Miller is in the Venice Biennale this year, which is this amazing achievement
for him as an artist.
It happens to be in the same room in the Venice Biennale as Judith Scott.
So, here are these two colleagues -- their work looking right at each other
in a pavilion of contemporary artistry, using color in a powerful way.
Not a pavilion of disability, not a pavilion of the self taught,
not a pavilion of the freak show.
It's presented as an artist, making a statement about the world today,
and that's what they both did.
They both have, like every artist, a history that informs who they are
in the world today.
We shouldn't need to exist.
Dan should've gotten this in school.
Or William should've had this opportunity his whole life.
It shouldn't be that Creative Growth has to be here for those people; I am thrilled
that we're here and we love our artists,
but they should have access to creative outlets.
It's a human rights issue -- to be diminished somehow.
To be seen as not creative.
When those prejudices go away, then our artists have the same potential
to lead the culture, to be a part of our world, to inform me of who I am
as a person.
Look at all these people who -- they're all coming back to new lives?
Yeah, they're families.
And what kind of lives are they going to have now that they're back?
They're gonna have good lives.
Uh-huh.
They're gonna have good lives.
Uh-huh
[People talking]
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