Remember when the Show Pony Ladies participated in the PAPER mag 24-hour dept store event here in L.A.? Well also in attendance were the folks from Creative Growth out in Oakland, CA. They brought a dazzling array of paintings and sculptures from various artists. Their center and gallery space are home to adults with developmental disabilities who communicate their thoughts and ideas through art. I mention all of this because my latest inspirational artist is Aurie Ramirez, a 46 year old Filipino-American woman, who worked for approx 20 years with Creative Growth! I read someplace that she may have suffered slightly from a form of autism and perhaps dyslexia. Whichever the case, she speaks to me. She expresses herself in a colorful language that is dreamy, haunting, fashion inspired and humorous at times.
Writer and artist Roberta Smith said this about her show at White Columns (New York Times):
Ms. Ramirez, who has a thing for pinstripes, makes extraordinary watercolors that delineate a stage-set universe populated by sometimes androgynous doll-like figures whose cutaway jackets, lacy collars and pink or green pants give them the look of old-fashioned vaudevillians. Their luxurious black hair and white rouged faces suggest a variant on Raggedy Ann and Andy, though they also evoke clowns, hockey masks or clock faces.
These figures cluster in groups, like a theater troupe posing for a group portrait; they inhabit Victorian settings or plainer ones that suggest contemporary California. There are signs of violence and surgical scars; frequent indications of romance, sex and family dysfunction; odalisques reclining before paintings of odalisques.
Ms. Ramirez also isolates her rainbow palette in small striped abstractions. Though there are no indications of it here, the artist, who understands English, speaks in a language of her own devising, which she also writes, filling tablet upon tablet with its somewhat Greek lettering.
I like that on the Creative Growth site itself Aurie's work states that she is categorized and influenced by...
sophisticated, delicately rendered watercolor and ink compositions create an ever-expanding fantasy world where fragments of 18th century dandyism, neo-Victorian decorum, psychedelia, Venetian masquerade, Glam Rock sex and Punk fetishism are repeated and transformed. Aurie's work has been inspired by her interest in the Adams Family, and the rock band Kiss. Most recently Aurie has exhibited her work in shows at White Columns and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles, ABCD in Paris, and Collection l’Art Brut, Lausanne.
**YOU have to click on these to see entire image-my typepad settings cut off the goodness that lies to the right of the frame
These are from a semi-recent show at the Jack Hanley Gallery:
Creative Growth Art Center began in 1974 in the Oakland, California, living room of psychologist Elias Katz and educator Florence Ludins-Katz. With the belief that art is a universal means of expression, and one that people with disabilities could use to communicate and contribute to society, the pair provided art supplies and workspace to a handful of adults with disabilities. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Growth established a gallery in 1980; like the studio, it was the first of its kind.
For more than 20 years the studio and gallery have operated in concert out of a warehouse in Oakland’s Auto Row. Curatorial manager Jennifer Strate O’Neal calls it the “homestead” of a now-flourishing creative community. The studio itself has blossomed into a daily workshop for 148 artists working in mediums that range from pottery, weaving, and woodworking to film and painting.
