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“Outsider Art” Comes in from the Cold at Barron Arts Center May 22-June 12

WOODBRIDGE – The upcoming exhibit at the Barron Arts Center illustrates what happens when you feed chicken soup to the artistic soul. Literally.

You get back a generous helping of high-quality artwork that uplifts and transforms the human spirit – specifically those spirits who receive the bulk of their daily sustenance courtesy of the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK).

The A-TEAM Artists of Trenton Show opens Sunday, May 22 from 2-4 p.m. at the Barron Arts Center, 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge. The 21 participating artists are clients of the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, a facility that serves nearly 200,000 meals a year to the hungry of Trenton.

The A-TEAM artists create Outsider Art – a term scholars use to describe visual art that falls outside standard fine arts categories. Typically, Outsider Artists have no formal training or links with the academic or commercial art worlds. This blend of isolation and idiosyncrasy endows Outsider Art with striking uniqueness and searing intensity.

At the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, Outsider Art has helped bring a sense of much needed inclusiveness to those struggling to survive on the social and economic margins. “The access to supplies and group support that the A-TEAM provides and the opportunity to have their art seen and appreciated by others seem to be very positive elements in the artists’ lives,” says Susan Darley , the TASK volunteer who coordinates the A-TEAM cooperative. “The artwork provides a bridge between the artists’ world within the confines of Trenton and the broader community beyond.”

The A-TEAM took shape in the mid-1990s when a group of soup kitchen clients who regularly participated in TASK’s Arts and Ideas program were invited to exhibit their work at several local churches and galleries. The success of the shows sparked more artistic activity andresulted in a full-fledged artists’ cooperative that hones the creative and entrepreneurial skills of men and women who initially come for a meal but leave behind a tangible and graphic personal record of their frustrations and failures, hopes and dreams.

The kitchen donates studio space and many art supplies, and A-TEAM artwork is always on display at TASK. Proceeds from A-TEAM art sales go directly and fully to the artists. Although the group has had exhibitions in Trenton and surrounding towns, the artists have never had a show as far from home as the upcoming show in Woodbridge.

The Barron Arts Center exhibit is sponsored by the Woodbridge Township Cultural Arts Commission chaired by Dr. Dolores Capraro Gioffre with support from the Woodbridge Township Arts Council and Mayor Frank G. Pelzman.

“The Township is pleased to host this exhibit,” says Mayor Pelzman. “Despite their struggles and hard times, these artists have not given up on themselves. Their dedication to art is evidence of how hard they are working to fulfill their potential and regain purpose and direction.”

Barron Arts Center Executive Director Cynthia Knight says that Outsider Art emerged as a bonafide artistic genre in the 1920s when a Swiss psychiatrist published a treatise analyzing thousands of art pieces created by patients in his asylum. “ Outsider Artists were believed to have a unique, visionary perspective that existed outside the norms of established culture and society,” says Ms. Knight.

In the 1940s Outsider Art attained international notoriety when French artists Jean Dubuffet and André Breton espoused the Art Brut (Raw Art) movement praising certain art as “uncooked” or “unadulterated” by mainstream artistic influences. Today, Outsider Art is often juxtaposed alongside terms that include folk, primitive, intuitive, marginal and naïve.

You won’t find much naïvete in a soup kitchen. Yet the A-TEAM oeuvre reveals an abundance of creative expression that is strikingly fresh, honest and original. “There is something about the immediacy and the highly personal content of Outsider Art that speaks to people and grabs their attention right away,” says Susan Darley.

The A-TEAM artists are unconcerned with labels. They are happy to have found a way to express themselves and gain respect from a world that usually ignores them. “Doing art makes me feel great, like I’ve accomplished something,” says Dlaby Hodges-Woods.

“I feel like I’m escaping when I do art,” says John Hayes. “I lock myself into whatever picture I’m drawing. The house could be burning down, and I’d still be drawing.”

Dennis Randall says he tries to capture emotions. “I want my pictures to help people bring back their own memories and feelings.” Texas native Jean Davis uses her art to recapture the sense of open space and unlimited possibility she felt as a child. “Doing art relaxes me and occupies my mind,” she says. “It keeps me level.”

Rosalyn Anderson admits the genesis of her art is “the anger that I have inside. When I get mad, I use bright colors, and when I’m furious, I do dark colors. Altogether, it comes out to be a picture.”

The A-TEAM exhibit at the Barron features an extra dimension: the illustrated poetry book by 54-year-old Annabelle Rose, a founding member of the A-TEAM Artists. Homeless since her teens, Ms. Rose has recently run the gauntlet thrown down by laryngeal cancer and emerged even more committed to her passionate pursuit of art. Climbing the Mountain is a powerful documentation of her life experiences and includes 43 poems and 28 illustrations.

he A-TEAM Artists of Trenton Show opens Sunday, May 22 from 2-4 p.m. at the Barron Arts Center, 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge. The show runs through June 12 with gallery hours Monday-Friday from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday from 2-4 p.m. For more information about the A-TEAM Artists of Trenton Show call the Barron Arts Center at (732) 634-0413