Wolfram Alderson

Ok, first you might be wondering…isn’t this the same Wolfram guy who founded the first Certified Farmers’ Markets in California, a leader in the horticultural therapy movement, and is a firebrand in the food and nutrition field? Well yes, but I have more than one act as they say.

Surviving and thriving in the social sector for nearly four decades requires some creative thinking and restorative practices that sustain you and prevent burn-out. For me, that is my art.

While I am a life-long student and practitioner of art, I am primarily self-taught (but grateful for all the important influences in my life) and remain a primitive artist by some standards. To be clear, I use the term “primitive” in the sense that I strive to stay centered in my authentic being, my personal mythology, my connections to the earth, to find inspiration for my work. I also happen to have more neanderthal genes than 70% of the population, according to my DNA analysis. Neanderthals might have been the earliest known artists. This artist-being is a dedicated member of the tribe of humans who care deeply for the planet and for social justice.  No matter how fantastic or imaginative my artistic visions may be, they are rooted in the same place where my passion for social and environmental justice comes from… a place that is primal in my spirit and nature.

Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
-Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Impediments

Early in life, an art teacher told me I couldn’t paint the sky purple, so I developed a resistance to becoming more “cultivated.” Although I have been making art since I was a child, I came out as an Artist (with a capital “A”) publicly when I was 30 years old and working with Cuban refugees. When my Grandmother Winifred passed in December 1986, her spirit communicated to me in a powerful way that I am an Artist. Thankfully, I happened to be working with a world-class artist at the time, Leonardo Ibanez, and he encouraged me to flourish and shared my “junk yard dog” attitude toward materials. Watching an artist like Leonardo work is liberating – and you see that, despite his considerable education and advanced experience with art and art techniques, he approaches every new work like a child who knows no limits and disobeys “the authorities” with glee.

“Make your life a work of art.” -Sheila Rubin

My circle of influential and supportive artist friends also includes artists such as Solomon Huerta, Yolanda Gonzalez, Dolores Carlos and Rude Calderon. Early in life, I was fortunate to spend some time with Calvin Douglas, a member of the Spiral Arts Alliance, among other New York artists that were close to my mother.  I’m also grateful to have taken a neon course with the great Neon Artist and Light Worker, Lili Lakich, and was blessed to exhibit my work in one of her shows. The term “self-taught” is clearly inadequate when I factor in how important these artists have been as friends and mentors. Knowing a few real-live artists helps one to imagine a life as an artist – to believe it is possible. I encourage you all to believe it is possible!

“Becoming an artist does not always begin with formal lessons or study in an an academic setting. For many self-taught art artists, following their impulse to create is the unintended first step towards a life-altering passion.”

– Oakland Museum of California (at an exhibit of Roy De Forest‘s work)

Running wild through Michigan woods and having a garbage dump next door had major influences on how I think about materials, both natural and unnatural. My art mentality and focus lives somewhere between the woods, the junkyard, and my personal mythology – an insider/outsider artist. My mother was a writer, an artist and poet—her art and inner light resonate through my life and creative works. She wrote about moonshine, getting on the love bus, and life as it is. A dominant theme in her writing, which I carry forward in my own work, is “Moments of Magic, Places of Rescue.” An influence for both of us was the poet and artist Kenneth Patchen and his “picture poems.” Alexander Calder is a also an influence, especially “Calder’s Circus.” Another artist I find tremendous inspiration in is Paul Klee, especially his hand puppets. Roy De Forest, who lived and worked here in the San Francisco Bay Area, is another favorite. These artists inspire me by blurring the lines between poetry and visual art with kinetic expressions that jump into your heart and soul.

“Imagination is the precursor to policy, the precondition to action. Imagination, like wonder, allows us to value something.”

-Beatrix Potter

I have served as curator and lead artist in several public exhibitions. I also developed two major art therapy and rehabilitation programs in the Los Angeles area, one for Cuban refugees and the other for severely abused children. My art and creative imagination have always existed in relationship to my life-long social change career, and have intersected in powerful ways with the populations and the communities I have served – at the intersection of human and environmental health.

-Wolfram Alderson