Creative Growth vs Anne Collier / Trisha Donnelly / Chris Johanson / Nate Lowman / Laura Owens Through August 15
Part of Creative Growth’s mission is to challenge the distinctions that divide the art market into a tangle of hierarchies that ultimately inhibit some artists while privileging others. Thus, it’s apt that the art center dedicated to supporting artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with a show that muddles notions of singular authorship and its attachment to art-market pricing conventions. For the show, Creative Growth vs Anne Collier / Trisha Donnelly / Chris Johanson / Nate Lowman / Laura Owens, curator Matthew Higgs asked each of the titular artists to design an original screen print. Then, fifty prints of each were brought to Creative Growth (355 24th St., Oakland) to be artistically elaborated on by one of the center’s 150 artists. The result is a roomful of unique characters represented through a diversity of media, yet tied together by an underlying commonality. Rather than a direct collaboration, each piece is a personalization — a nod to the importance of artistic communities, and the sentiment that each piece of work takes, to some extent, from the inspiration of another’s work. In addition, all the works are being sold for the same price, regardless of the artist’s level of artistic acclaim. Catch it before it closes.
— Sarah Burke