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This
year’s Outsider Art Fair held at the Puck Building in Soho over this past
weekend received more press than ever before. Because of the increased
attention, our expectations walking into the Fair were extremely high. Inside,
we found a series of impressive paintings by William Hawkins of a quality that
we hadn’t seen at the Fair in years - with bright swatches of color hiding
cutout magazine images that seemed to peek through the canvas. Overall, the
quality of art this year was better than ever.  Of all that we saw, we
especially liked a series of pieces from Clint Griffin that consisted of stacks
of photographs nailed together with elements of the top image dug out and
written upon. In years past, the themes of the Fair had been both religious and
sexual. This year, the general theme was quite dark and more violent then we had
seen before. It felt to us as if the terrorist attacks of September 11th had
only now fully caught up with the consciousness of these instinctive artists. 
For us, the highlight of the weekend were a group of paintings by Benjamin Jones
- whose images of skulls, birds, and zoo animals were both spooky and
dynamic.

—Hoodie