Marianna Green, California - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Twenty Seven

I met the wonderful Marianna Green in her New York apartment when she held a cocktail party during the Outsider Art Fair in New York, showcasing some incredible work by Creative Growth artists in her home. It was a fun-filled evening of great talk, great champagne and of course incredible art. So in part twenty-seven I wanted to find out more about Marianna and why Creative Growth is so dear to her.

Marianna Taylor in Doris Duke's house in Honolulu

1. When did your interest in the field of outsider/folk art begin?
My great aunt and uncle, Josephine and Bonnell, had an amazing apartment in Peter Cooper Village, in Manhattan. PCV was a MetLife development designed for returning veterans of WWII; the buildings themselves are not special. But the interiors are large with walls good for hanging paintings. Bonnell was an architect and Josephine worked in the arts. They transformed a utilitarian space into a colorful, modernist wonderland using furniture he designed and what would now be considered “outsider” art. Their friends were artists - some now famous - and they would trade art for Bonnell’s architectural renderings. Among and between all of these abstract paintings were masks, textiles, wooden sculptures, river rocks sent from a friend in California, and a giant Italian bird cage. It was all glorious to me as a teenager. And, as an adult, I recognize how very respectful their approach to art collecting was, how deeply they cared for their art, and for the people and cultures that produced it.

I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in Pebble Beach, California.  Pebble Beach is a golf resort; it isn’t even a town, never mind a city. It’s an incredibly beautiful landscape constructed for and by vapidity. Living with Josephine and Bonnell in the summers in Manhattan as a teenager recreated me. Each morning I would wake up to a list of to-dos from them and a small pile of subway tokens. I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and on my own, and I went to museums. It was at the American Folk Art Museum (then a small-ish space in the physical shadow of the MoMa) that I understood that Josephine and Bonnell were not only modern art collectors, but folk art collectors as well. Every object in their home had both historical and aesthetic significance, even the jars in the kitchen.

Nicole Storm, 2018. Artist from Creative Growth

2. When did you become a collector of this art?  How many pieces do you think are in your collection now? And do you exhibit any of it on the walls of your home or elsewhere?
I have to admit to difficulty with words around art and consumption; I think of myself as more of a “supporter”. “Collector” to me is a sort of ugly word. My mother had a vast collection of Edwardian clothing, the acquisition and care of which ruled her life. In the scheme of things, it was an innocuous obsession, but as a child it didn’t feel much different from addictions suffered by other family members.

All of which is a long way of saying that my art collection is the result, largely, of falling in love with a local arts organization, Creative Growth in Oakland, California, and a desire to support artists with disabilities. If the art produced by the artists at Creative Growth wasn’t so exceptional I probably would not have purchased so much of it. But I am moved, largely, by the artists themselves, and the incredible human potential that is being actualized through this organization. My first purchase there was of a Dan Miller nearly seven years ago. I probably have around fifty total pieces, all of which are hanging on walls to be enjoyed. 

William Scott, 2019. Artist from Creative Growth

3. Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Before the pandemic I was at a party in New York and somebody said to me, “Where have you been hiding all this time?” and my reply was, “Behind the wheel of a car.” I’m a mom. Women face absurd pressure to disregard their motherhood both personally and professionally. When somebody asks a stay at home mom about her day, they don't really want to hear about her day. So, with the exception of a few friends, I keep my life to myself. 

As for my more formal background, I have an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Michigan from ages ago and a degree in English from U.C. Berkeley from before that. I’m currently getting an M.S.W. from Columbia, in my free time. I’m deeply and somewhat frantically interested in social justice, literature, real estate, the protection of the vulnerable, and loving the people I love as much as they will let me. This virus and subsequent lockdown have thrown into great relief, for me, the temporary structure of my family of four. I feel grateful to be able to do the mundane caretaking, feeding, cleaning, and educating of my children without worry of anything but our collective health. It is deeply wrong that most Americans have to fear unsafe working conditions, economic ruin, poverty, hunger, educational gaps, and further disenfranchisement. 

Alice Wong, 2016. Artist from Creative Growth

4. Would you say you had a favourite artist or piece of work within your collection? And why?
My favorite piece has to be an Alice Wong family portrait in which she has turned a stodgy, staid photo taken at the turn of the last century into a brightly colored, radical fairytale. You’ll see she gave the patriarch a black mustache, the matriarch red crown and high collar, and one of the boys a pink leg with a big yellow shoe.  

Years ago, when I lived in Michigan, I would frequent a thrift store run by retired nurses. Vintage family portraits and black and white travel postcards made up a large part of their inventory. I would wonder who would get rid of family photos and why. The making of a family, and dissolution of families, was very much on my mind. I was planning my wedding, hiring a photographer, and writing about formal and informal family systems. One day I found an entire album of family photos for, I think, $15. The album is three maybe four inches thick and faded turquoise velvet with a silver latch. I bought it and, nearly two decades later, gave it to Alice Wong. 

So much of us spend so much time trying to understand our history, adjacent personal histories, looking for truths when no stable truths about families exist, not really. I was in my early 20’s when I found that album and I had no idea what would make a person throw away an album. Now, in my early 40’s, I do: abuse, alcoholism, suicide, intractable mental illness, poverty - so much destruction. Alice’s portraits take this pain and disappear it by giving the people in the photos a superior life. Returning to the portrait I have and love - there was a family there, at one time, much like my own. Two parents, two children. The facts of their lives are gone forever, but to me they are royalty in a psychedelic kingdom, and I feel love for them, not just for the portrait.

Dan Miller, 2019. Artist from Creative Growth

5. Where would you say you buy most of your work from: a studio, art fairs, exhibitions, auctions, or direct from artists?
My dear friend, Sarah Galender Meyer, is the Gallery Director at Creative Growth. I could run around and buy stuff all day and it would be fine, but Sarah really has an amazing eye, and she steers me toward the best pieces for any given space. I purchase most of my art from her. 

In some hopeful future we will all have the ability to be mobile and congregate again, and my kids will be older, and I’ll be able to have fun at the art fair circuit, at auctions, etc. if the mood strikes. But for now, art really has to come to me. Creative Growth is five minutes from my house and is the most wonderful environment to be in, ever. I would love nothing more than to just hang out there. So, if Sarah tells me there is something special to see, I’ll run down the hill for the art, for the friendship, for the incredible vibes at CG.

Latefa Noorzai, 2018. Artist from Creative Growth

6. During the Outsider Art Fair in New York this year you held a cocktail party at your house, exhibiting much Creative Growth work on the walls. Can you tell us when your interests in Creative Growth started, and what it is about this studio that draws you to it?
That was my favorite party, what an amazing group of people. The trick really is good people and good champagne.  I think you can measure a lot of things by a person's attachment to an organization like Creative Growth: sense of humor and joy, personal creativity, desire to help. Creative Growth fans, collectors, supporters, whatever you want to call them, are helpers. And I think that it is imperative for us to continue to champion these organizations because they are the basis of a community for people who have been historically denied community. When you walk into the studio at Creative Growth, what you see is utopian. People who would have been institutionalized not long ago are coming together to socialize and to work, and what they make is deeply valued by the community, and they make money making art.