Despite the difference between Interact's collaborative approach and the more hermetic conception of outsider art that has prevailed in the art world, Calvit does see some of what Interact strives for as falling into accepted outsider categories. The Gallery currently presents a number of works by Interact artists on paper and with paper, from watercolors to collage pieces, and foregrounds several penetrating female nudes by Bill Crane. That is the appeal of outsider art for her, and for a growing number of people outside the fringier communities that have traditionally made up much of the audience for pieces like Madame Josette's cabaret. As a result, the audience has expanded, especially on the strength of the last Madame Josette run in the spring. We are more and more getting an artsy audience of people who just don't want to go to the Guthrie.
Outsider art is, to an increasing degree, in.
And so the boundary between inside and out has become fuzzy, as lines that were always imaginary tend to become, when one looks closely enough at them. The strength of Madame Josette's Nothing Sacred Cabaret and the Inside Out Gallery is perhaps that these unique institutions force us to wonder about why we drew those limiting lines there in the first place, all the while encouraging us to cross over them ourselves.