Art education beyond the classroom

"The subjects of this book belong to a population that is marginalized and isolated. They are children and adults with disabilities--artists who make art in special classrooms, prisons, rural back roads, backwaters, and institutions. By focusing on this population, editor and key author Alice Wexler provides a common thread that unites traditionally separate fields of art criticism, art education, and art therapy. With firsthand experience in the field, each contributor to this volume offers critical research which challenges the non-transferable divide between us and them, encouraging art teachers, therapists, critics, and general readers alike to uncover their biases regarding the nature of art and education. "-- "This compendium engages art critics, art educators, and art therapist in a conversation about artists with disabilities in non-traditional settings. For the sake of clarity, this population is subsumed under the term "Outsider."The idiosyncratic, often passionate and self-taught nature of "Outsider" art has captured the interest of the members of these fields, posing provocative questions about the social order and its inherent exclusion. What the authors hope to arrive at is not further division, but rather a continuum suitable for the human condition"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.