White Crow Workshop

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an ethos, not a place or a space

The White Crow

БЕ́ЛАЯ ВОРО́НА

In Russian, the idiom бе́лая воро́на or “white crow” is used to describe an outsider, a person who is different from their surroundings or who goes against the tide. The term can be used in a positive sense, as here, or in a negative one when it would mean something like the English idiom “black sheep”.
The creative output of such a maker, one who has had little or no contact with formal art education and who is self taught may be referred to as Outsider Art in the English-speaking world.

The Outsider

Outsider Art doesn’t need to be overtly naive. Neither does it need to eschew the standards and qualities of cultural expectations in their entirety. But making the deliberate choice to avoid institutional constraints is what makes being a White Crow inevitable. Having spent many years in other careers battling against a tide running towards conformity with unsatisfactory and nonsensical standards and norms, creating the White Crow Workshop environment is the path towards embracing and relishing being the round peg in an endless landscape of identical square holes.