Over the past few years we’ve become big fans of the raw power of outsider art. It might sometimes (all right, often) lack in technical chops, but the work of inspired amateurs can be compelling precisely because their muse doesn’t know all the rules. For four years, the Northeast Minneapolis nonprofit I Love a Parade has been using art as a means to help the chronically homeless learn job skills, get their lives together, and, not incidentally, express themselves. Past projects have included fabric dolls and masks of remarkable grace and sensitivity, but the current exhibition is more personal and in some ways more affecting: Twenty plaster-casted life masks of Parade’s clientele, embellished by the artists themselves or their fellows. Eyes are closed and expressions placid-it’s the result of having to keep still while the mask is cast, but it gives these faces a dreamlike quality, an anchor for the literalized hopes and disappointments etched on their faces like stigmata. Meet the stories behind the faces at an artists’ reception 6-8 p.m. November 1.
First Congregational Church,
500 Eighth St. S.E., Minneapolis,
(612) 706-2740, www.iloveaparade.org
Leave a Reply