n OUTSIDER ART
“I look at art as the great
equalizer. It’s all-encompassing
— all socioeconomic groups, all
abilities. If you spend any time at
our center with these artists, you
get the sense that it’s a real, true,
pure form of art they’re doing.
These people aren’t getting caught
up in the scene, it’s just what
comes out — it’s a creativity you
don’t see anywhere else.”
— John Berger, program director,
Short Center North
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comstocksmag.com | May 2019
stream of thought — if someone is operating outside of that
dialogue, there’s a fascination with how that’s happening,”
Moe says. “It’s interesting when somebody challenges the
mainstream paradigm and makes you consider where aes-
thetic decision-making comes from, how the brain works,
where inspiration comes from. It gets back to the core phil-
osophical issues of art theory — why are we doing this in
the first place? What makes art?”
For others like John Soldano, an avid outsider art collec-
tor and co-owner of the Toyroom Gallery — which exhibit-
ed work by SCN clients for years starting in 2001 before the
Sacramento gallery went entirely online — the best way to
define the genre is by the makers of the work.
“The only way for me to honestly define outsider art is by
artists,” says Soldano, who estimates he’s collected rough-
ly 30 outsider artworks over the years, including the work
of Chris Mars, a self-taught artist from Minnesota. “Chris’s
paintings are mostly done in oil or pastels and they’re usu-
ally nightmarish portraits of distorted figures. Chris … was
inspired by his brother, who was diagnosed with schizo-
phrenia and institutionalized. I think of his paintings as a
ref lection of what his brother might be going through. Chris
has said, ‘In each piece, I am freeing my brother. I am creat-