ARTICLE
How a Revered Studio for Artists with Disabilities Is Surviving at a Distance
Creative Growth is a place for artists with disabilities to gather, work, talk, and think without fear of reproach or dismissal. In 1974, the organization’s founders, Elias Katz and Florence Ludins-Katz, opened the studio in response to the closure, in the sixties, of many of California’s psychiatric hospitals, which caused a spike in the number of homeless and incarcerated people with disabilities. A thriving arts center, the Katzes wrote, would demonstrate that such ostracized people “not only belong in the community but should be active members of the community.”