Creativity Explored Outer Space
June 6th - July 19th 2025
works
3 Bowies, 2008
|
mixed media on paper |
19 x 26 inches
Untitled, 2010 |
ink & watercolor on paper
|
22 x 30 inches
Untitled, c.2017 |
mixed media on paper
|
21 x 28 inches
Untitled, 2025 |
Oil pastel on paper
|
15 x 45 inches
Woman in Pencil, 2018
|
graphite on paper |
24 x 18 inches
Untitled (Cake), 2023 |
watercolor on paper
|
11 x 15 inches
Untitled (Apples), 2023 |
watercolor on paper
|
11 x 15 inches
Untitled (Little Rascles), 2019 |
mixed media on paper |
11.25 x 12 inches
Untitled (Fruit), 2023 |
watercolor on paper |
11 x 15 inches
Untitled, 2019 |
mixed media on paper
|
11.25 x 15 inches
Untitled, 2018 |
mixed media on paper
|
11.25 x 15 inches
Untitled, 2019 |
mixed media on paper
|
11.25 x 15 inches
Ray Edwards, c. 2013 |
ink an watercolor on paper |
10.75 x 14 inches
Untitled, 2018 |
graphite on paper
|
24 x 18 inches
Untitled (Pink Carrots), 2023
|
oil pastel on paper |
11.25 x 17.25 inches
Untitled (Blue Carrots), 2023 |
oil pastel on paper
| 11.25 x 17.25 inches
Untitled (Carrots, Yellow (Same)), c.2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
11.25 x 17 inches
Untitled (Yellow Trash Cans), 2004-2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
11.25 x 17.25 inches
Untitled (Cakes), 2004-2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
12 x 23.75 inches
Untitled (Green Carrots), 2004-2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
11 x 17 inches
Untitled (Yellow Carrots), c.2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
11 x 17.50 inches
Untitled (Carrots), c.2005-2009 |
oil pastel on paper
|
11.25 x 17.75 inches
Untitled (Fence with Spools), 2004 |
oil pastel on paper
|
12 x 23.75 inches
Untitled, (Frida Kahlo), 2016 |
mixed media on paper
|
10.75 x 15 inches
Untitled |
collage on paper
|
18 x 12 inches
Untitled, 2019 |
mixed media on paper |
16.25 x 20.25 inches
Untitled, c.2022 |
collage on paper |
18 x 12 inches
Untitled, 2021 |
mixed media on paper
|
18 x 22.50 inches
Untitled, 2009 |
acrylic marker, colored paper, and collage on paper |
30 x 22 inches
Untitled, 2022 |
mixed media on paper
|
14.25 x 22.50 inches
Untitled (flower #1), 2019 |
acrylic on paper
|
22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled (flower #2), 2019 |
mixed media on paper
|
22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled (flower #3), 2019 |
acrylic on paper
|
22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled (flower #4), 2019
|
mixed media on paper |
22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled (flower #5), 2019
|
mixed media on paper |
22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled (flower #6), 2019 |
mixed media on paper
| 22.50 x 15 inches
Untitled, 2019 |
mixed media on stretched canvas
|
36 x 24 inches
Untitled (flower #7), 2019 |
mixed media on paper
|
22.50 x 16.50 inches
Untitled, 2020 |
mixed media on paper
|
18 x 12 inches
press
Boston Art Review:
June 10, 2025
Off the Main Drag: Ten Summer Gallery Shows Worth the Visit
GERALD WIGGINS, Untitled, 2009. acrylic, marker, colored paper, and collage on paper. 30 x 22 inches.
artists
Creativity Explored is a celebrated nonprofit artist community and working studio where over 130 adult artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. Founded in 1983 by art and disability pioneers Florence Ludins-Katz and Dr. Elias Katz, Creativity Explored's programs and person-centered culture serve as an organizational model worldwide.
Located in the Mission District of San Francisco, Creativity Explored advocates for artists' work as a valid and increasingly important contribution to the contemporary art world. As a result, studio artists have seen their works exhibited in museums, galleries, and art fairs in over 14 countries and have directly earned over $2.3 million from the sale of their art. Recent interest in artists' work illustrates the long-awaited cultural expansion of who is collected, who is discussed and who is represented.
Evelyn Reyes worked at Creativity Explored from 2002 to 2017 and was known for her repeated abstract shapes in oil pastel on paper. Working on one specific shape at a time, her periods of abstract depictions included cakes, garbage cans, and carrots.
When Gerald Wiggins makes art, he is "not necessarily trying to say something to people. I'm just trying to make them happy, because there is not enough happiness." Wiggins’ depictions of human figures, animal life, and fantastical creatures are stunningly accomplished.
Andrew Bixler creates colored pencil and ink portraits of willowy characters accompanied by brief explanatory text. His direct statements of fact turn the outrageous into the everyday, as Vikings, tree surgeons, magicians, the famous, and the infamous all make an appearance. Bixler's line is free-flowing yet assured, and his palette is spare but energetic.
Cheryle Rutledge’s work involves a series of repeated images of hearts on matte-board and cardboard cutouts of a variety of shapes. Her process involves outlining hearts of varying size in acrylic paint to cover the picture plane and then filling them in with complementary colors.
Lance Rivers' art practice emphasizes the idea, above all others, of the local as monumental. No aspect of the processes that make a city function escapes him, and the attention he gives to the beauty of simple industrial compositions shows an authentic love for the Bay Area.
Thomas Pringle said of his portraiture, "What I see is what I draw," drawing portraits of people he sees in magazines or commercials, mainly of "pretty women". Whether painting or drawing, Pringle’s art practice is marked by an honest and true line. The erasures of its early attempts are in plain sight.
Focus is the foundation of Texas-born Nita Hicks' art-making process. Nita has spent her days working quietly and diligently, creating exacting portraits, primarily of iconic women. Hicks also enjoys drawing from National Geographic and photography of Indigenous peoples around the world, capturing the textures and layers of traditional fashions.
Walter Kresnik is known for his portraiture in which he captures physical qualities and personality effortlessly with very few marks. Charlie Chaplan, Liz Taylor, Bill Clinton, Gandhi, Chuck Close, and Yo Yo Ma are just a few of the subjects of Kresnik's portraiture. Kresnik’s instinctive delicate sense of line forms solid shapes and ephemeral wisps until the essence of a figure emerges.
Joseph Omolayole graduated from Skyline College with a degree in Fashion Merchandising. Omolayole remarks, "Art and fashion are my passion." Seamlessly merging art and fashion, Omolayole begins by first researching his selected subject matter. Then he draws and paints free-hand with marker, colored pencil, acrylic, and watercolor on paper.
Elana Cooper is primarily known for her striking, large-scale floral silhouettes, though animals are also a common subject of her work. Cooper paints in bold strokes, the background in one color and the subject in a contrasting color, giving her representational work an abstract quality.
It's an honor to present Creativity Explored Outer Space, in partnership with Creativity Explored, a nonprofit artist organization and working studio in San Francisco where adult artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. Founded in 1983 by art and disability pioneers Florence Ludins-Katz and Dr. Elias Katz, Creativity Explored's programs and person-centered culture serve as an organizational model worldwide.
On a personal note, I have been a fan of Creativity Explored since discovering them in the mid 2000's. I was lucky to be introduced to the organization by an artist friend when I was in my 20's, and without an expansive art budget! The work immediately hit me. I acquired works by Gerald Wiggins, Evelyn Reyes, Walter Kresnik, Lance Rivers, and others, all of whom are included in the current exhibition in Outer Space. I found their works to be honest, raw, visionary, colorful, uplifting, intense, and luckily for me, affordable. In addition, I was pleased to support an admirable cause.
After four decades of hard work, supporting many hundreds of artists, Creativity Explored’s efforts, and their artists' efforts, have been paying off in a larger context. In recent years, as the art world becomes more inclusive, artists with developmental disabilities have begun to be recognized as the legitimate artists they are, with important and unique voices. Prominent galleries and museums have started to exhibit their work along with artists from Creative Growth and NIAD (two sister organizations to Creativity Explored in the Bay Area, all founded by the Katz’s). Recently SFMOMA and Oakland Museum presented exhibitions of their work, and MoMA featured a solo show of Marlon Mullen, an artist from NIAD (Nurturing Independence Through Artistic Development).
-Roger Buttles, Curator
