Lucy Picasso was in her element.
She was showing her paintings at the Outsider Art Fair, a high-profile international exhibition in New York City this February. Big-name curators, gallerists and critics were there; Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi and David Byrne reportedly stopped by. And Lucy Picasso was chatting away, giving out buttons with her artwork, selling original paintings and signing autographs.
Artist Scott Sorensen demonstrates painting one of his ceramic masks at Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul on Jan. 8, 2025. Sorensen was one of five local artists selected to show work at the high-profile Outsider Art Fair in New York City in March 2025. (Courtesy of Interact Center)
She and four other local artists were featured in the exhibition thanks to Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, a St. Paul program that serves artists with disabilities, including Lucy Picasso. Art by Scott Sorensen, Carl Clark, Janice Essick and Matt Zimdars was also shown at the fair.
(Lucy Picasso’s birth name, Louann Johnson, went out the window years ago in favor of tributes to comedian Lucille Ball and the Cubist master.)
Interact, founded in 1996, is a progressive art studio, part of a national movement of nonprofits dedicated to supporting artists with disabilities in building careers in the arts. Many staff members at the organization are both professional art instructors and disability support professionals, said Interact executive director Joseph Price. More broadly, the model aims to challenge perceptions of disability and the societal roles people with disabilities can hold.
“We believe that our artists are just as able and capable of creating great works of art as any professional, and we want to keep focused on the idea that our artistic standard is no different than any other professional artistic standard,” Price said.
Take Lucy Picasso herself, for instance. Today she is, by any metric, a successful full-time professional artist. Fifteen years ago, she was working in downtown Minneapolis, vacuuming carpets at a furniture store. It was not until she joined Interact that she discovered her artistic talent, her sister Debb Masterson said — and without Interact, she, like others with intellectual disabilities, might still find herself stuck doing rote jobs like stuffing envelopes or taking out garbage.
“I don’t want to do that, that’s boring!” Lucy Picasso said, sitting next to Masterson. “Or clean toilets, or wash floors, or put paper towels in the paper towel holder. Who wants to do that? There’s lots of artwork I would like to do. That’s my passion.”
“It’s really transformed her life,” Masterson added. “Without Interact, who knows what she’d be doing.”
For the Outsider Art Fair, Lucy Picasso, Sorenson, their families and Interact staff including Price were in New York for about a week. And they made time for tourist stops at the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and plenty of art museums, Lucy Picasso and Masterson said.
“I really loved New York,” Lucy Picasso said. “All the different museums and paintings really inspired me.”
Interact’s presence at this year’s Outsider Art Fair is the result of more than a decade of effort, Price said. The show is extremely competitive and the organization has applied many times previously, he said; for this year’s successful bid, Interact enlisted the help of guest curator and noted artist Lauren dela Roche.
Besides generating potentially transformative buzz about the artists themselves, Price said the experience reinforces Interact’s central message to both its roster of artists and the wider public: Creative, fulfilling careers in professional art are within reach for people with disabilities, too.
“Beyond the daily support that our folks need, they also deserve a life that is interesting and vital and where they get to call the shots,” Price said. “We belong, and our artists belong, in a national conversation — an international conversation — when it comes to art collection and galleries.”
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