The Carl Hammer Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of artists using drawing as a means of capturing the essence of their own existence and, more importantly, affirming what it means to be Human.  Inspired by the Museum of Modern Art 2008 exhibition, Glassolalia: Languages of Drawing, this selection of artists represents two distinct groups of artists combining both self-taught outsider artists with idiosyncratic but conventionally trained professionals, some of whom have been inspired by outsider art.  The show does not distinguish between the two in either the labeling or in placement within the gallery space with the show occupying both 1^st and 2^nd floors.  From the beginning of Man’s existence, each generation has struggled with its own declaration of the significance of Human identity.  Produced by individuals who have had the compulsion to leave a record of their own behind, the art of the centuries acts as the mirror of the uniqueness of the Human predicament. 

 In 1943, a Collier’s Magazine journalist traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to write a piece about the strange 84 year old former slave and share cropper farmer, Bill Traylor, who was creating artwork curbside in Montgomery’s black commercial district.  The subsequent headline to that now famous article read “Man Lost 10,000 Years”.  Used as invented language,  the first images of Man and His surrounding world were drawn onto the walls of caves in Europe.  We marvel at the ingenuity of Human creativity in depicting itself, leaving such a fascinating record of our existence behind for posterity.  This exhibition is but a tribute to the diversity existing within this representation of who we are as a people living together on this planet called Earth.