Whipper Snapper Nerd
Selections from the Zine, featuring Artists of Creativity Explored
Whipper Snapper Nerd is an unexpected compilation of divergent artwork and writing created by ten artists at Creativity Explored. Originally appearing in the 1990s as small-edition photocopied zines produced by Fletcher and Meyer, each of the first eight issues was devoted to an individual artist, including Michael Bernard Loggins, James Miles, John Patrick McKenzie, Barbara Doehrman, David Jarvey, Andrew Li, Robert Margolis, and Diane Scaccalosi. Celebrating the original Whipper Snapper Nerd's 25th anniversary, this snappy compilation also includes excerpts from two new zines featuring work by Gerald Wiggins and Christina Marie Fong. Fletcher and Meyer also curated Whipper Snapper Nerd exhibitions at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and at Los Angeles and New York galleries. In addition, many of the ten artists featured have won recognition through exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Outsider Art Fair, and galleries in Japan, France, Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. Founded in 1983, Creativity Explored is a San Francisco art studio and gallery that gives adults with developmental disabilities the means to create and share their work with the community.
Harrell Fletcher has produced a variety of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects since the early 1990s, and was a participant in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Fletcher's work is in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, SFMOMA, the Hammer Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the de Young Museum. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University in Oregon.
Elizabeth Meyer has worked in programming and development at several Bay Area arts and media organizations, including Artists’ Television Access, Independent Television Service, and Not In Our Town. She currently serves as a grants officer at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
