Brush with Fate

The world is a very strange place, and artists have traditionally been the visionaries who help us navigate it. The fact that most of the visionaries at Creativity Explored struggle with developmental disabilities doesn't change this one iota — in fact, it sometimes gives them greater access to insight. For “Legend: Myth and Memory,” curator Gilles Combet asked the nonprofit's studio artists, some of whom are nonverbal, to illustrate text they wrote about their own personal memories. Combet wondered, as he says in the press release, "How deep do these images go?" The result is a sometimes affectingly personal and sometimes astonishingly universal narrative. Autistic 21-year-old Daniel Green shows detailed drawings that mix text and drawing to depict the minutiae of popular TV shows such as Saturday Night Live. James Miles transcends particularity with his drawing of a man on a horse accompanied by the text, "On Friday at eight twelve Dave was riding his horse to the East." And Camille Holvoet shows a whole series of noteworthy moments in her life, including an illustration reflecting that "Menopause feels like getting over a long crush." Everyone is a legend in his or her own mind, but rarely do we get to glimpse so clearly into others'.
Jan. 8-Feb. 25, 2009