User:Artchangeslives/sandbox

Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. As an organization, it is committed to supporting people with developmental disabilities to become working artists, and to promoting their work as an emerging and increasingly important contribution to the professional art world. Creativity Explored provides workspace and materials in ongoing studio sessions facilitated by a team of professional artists who support and assist studio artists. Creativity Explored’s professional exhibitions program promotes studio artists’ work through a wide array of local, regional, national, and international exhibition venues including commercial galleries, and corporate and public spaces.

Mission

Creativity Explored advances the value and diversity of artistic expression. It provides artists with developmental disabilities the means to create, exhibit, and sell their art.

Beliefs

1) All people are creative, given a supportive environment. 2) Creative expression fosters personal growth. 3) Self-worth, a sense of purpose, and community are essential for all people. 4) Visual art is language everyone can use. 5) Disability is not a boundary. 6) Art making is a viable career path.

History

Florence and Elias Katz founded creativity Explored in 1983, on the principle that all people have the ability to create, and that visual artistic expression is a viable means to self-growth. Since that date, people with disabilities working at Creativity Explored have established themselves as talented artists making significant contributions to the Bay Area and beyond.