Artist William Scott walks down the runway dressed in a Barack Obama mask and suit he created during Creative Growth’s Beyond Trend fashion show at Ciel Creative Space in Berkeley.
When the visage of Barack Obama appeared on the runway at the Creative Growth Beyond Trend fashion show, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe applauded with the rest of the sold-out crowd of 700 at Ciel Creative Space in Berkeley.
“I’m so inspired and moved by all the creativity and heart that went into this,” Stipe, a longtime art collector and fan of the Oakland nonprofit, told the Chronicle on Saturday, May 30. “It’s my first time at the show. But it won’t be the last.”
Modeling the papier mache mask of the former president he made, artist William Scott danced ecstatically as he showed off the suit jacket and pants he painted with portraits of the president and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
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At the show’s conclusion, Scott unmasked and boogied with his fellow artists-models.
The moment captured the spirit of Beyond Trend, where the runway is a paragon of accessibility and includes models with walkers, in wheelchairs, artists who have down syndrome and vision impairment.
Michael Stipe of R.E.M. claps as Kim Hastreiter speaks during Beyond Trend.
Scott is among the most well known artists to come out of Creative Growth, the 52-year-old Oakland art center that works with artists with developmental disabilities. His paintings are in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art and Studio Museum in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of California.
Fantastic Negrito performs during the Beyond Trend Runway Show and Fundraiser at Ciel Creative Space in Berkeley, Saturday, May 30, 2026.
His 2024 mural “Praise Frisco: Peace and Love in the City” was the centerpiece of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Creative Growth: The House That Art Built” highlighting paintings, sculpture and other works from their historic acquisition of more than 100 pieces by artists from Creative Growth as well as sister organizations Creativity Explored in San Francisco and Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development in Richmond.
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Scott’s rise in the art world along with fellow Creative Growth artists Dan Miller and the late Judith Scott has been a sign of the overdue integration of artists with developmental disabilities into the mainstream canon.
“Your presence here is a reminder that creativity lives in every body and belongs to everyone,” Sunny A. Smith, the organization’s executive director, said during the presentation to the sold-out crowd of 700. “As Creative Growth artists like to say, ‘Fashion is the sunshine that spotlights everyone.’”
Sunny Smith walks the runway with artist Joe Spears during Beyond Trend.
The event has become a tradition for Creative Growth since it was first launched in 2010. It has evolved from a small studio presentation to now include a runway show with trunk sale, gala dinner and live performances. It is now also the organization’s biggest fundraiser, which Smith said is becoming more essential than ever amid cuts to funding to Medicaid and decreasing charitable giving.
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That urgency was one of the reasons why the gala’s hosts were motivated to make this edition of Beyond Trend its most successful ever.
New York author and Paper magazine co-founder Kim Hastreiter has been at the center of culture for five decades, but she said that when her friends, Ben and Chris Ospital of the San Francisco boutique Modern Appealing Clothing, introduced her to Creative Growth more than 30 years ago, “I came out five hours later and my whole life and concept of art had changed.”
This year, Hastreiter and the Ospital siblings co-hosted the gala as a team to help Beyond Trend surpass its goal of raising $450,000.
“We live in odd times where one of the hardest things to find is unfettered truth,” said Ben Ospital.
Creative Growth’s authenticity is what continues to draw them to the organization.
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“The artists at Creative Growth are true blue and honest, and what moves them moves us,” said Chris Ospital.
Monica Valentine and Anne Meade Paden on the Beyond Trend runway, the annual fashion show and gala presented by Creative Growth.
Following the runway show, Matthew Higgs, director and chief curator of White Columns Gallery in New York, was honored by the Ospitals with the Catalyst Award for his work “keeping the margins in the center and being an unwavering champion of Creative Growth artists on the global stage.”
Higgs, a frequent curator with Creative Growth, said that while he had been to several Beyond Trend shows, “I’m in tears at every one.”
“I genuinely believe Creative Growth is one of the most important organizations in the United States, and probably the world,” he added.
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Hastreiter then presented Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz with the inaugural Kim Hastreiter Amazing Award. Saltz has been a longtime advocate for greater accessibility in the art world, and removing what he sees as reductive labels like “outsider art.”
Saltz said that Creative Growth and its artists “have changed what gets seen, how it gets seen, and the way it’s talked about.”
“I cannot tell you what you’ve given to the world,” Saltz said in accepting the award. “I thank you from the bottom of the art world’s heart.”
For self-described foodies Hastreiter and the Ospitals, the idea of “another overcooked chicken dinner” at the gala was abhorrent. Instead, Hasteiter organized one of her famous soup parties, having last hosted one in the Bay Area in 2025 at the Heath Ceramics studio to celebrate the launch of her book “Stuff: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos.”
With 20 acclaimed Bay Area chefs creating soups — including Amaryll Schwertner of the now-closed Boulettes Larder (chilled eggplant soup), Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese (“Kim’s Congee” pumpkin soup) and Craig Stoll of Delfina (chilled cherry soup) — it was the largest such dinner Hastreiter has ever organized. Guests gleefully carried multiple bowls of soup to their tables, with aprons designed by Creative Growth artist Aurie Ramirez available for sale for anyone afraid of soiling their evening clothes.
Fantastic Negrito performs following the soup battle at the Beyond Trend gala and runway show.
Following a parade of sparkler-laden cakes decorated by students from the Oakland School of the Arts, Grammy-winning singer Fantastic Negrito (an alumnus of Berkeley High School, as he reminded the crowd) took to the stage for a rollicking performance of his signature folk-rock tunes.
But for all the spectacular additions to the celebration, the emphasis still remained firmly on the art.
For longtime fan John Gatewood of Oakland, who estimates that he and his wife, Catherine White, have collected roughly half a dozen works by Creative Growth artists over more than a decade, the attention the center has received in recent years is long deserved.
“I remember the first time we walked into the studio I thought, ‘I want to stay here in this joyful, creative space,’” said Gatewood. “People in the art world are just opening up their eyes to the work of disabled artists, but we’ve known about it for decades in the Bay Area.”
