I think the hype behind it was so high then that it burned so fast and so quick and just disappeared for a while afterward. It’s been slowly bubbling away for years, even from my side of it. I’ve been involved in this thing for about ten years and it’s always had a healthy following. It just seems to have slowly and organically gained momentum.

I’m sure the irony of outsider art becoming mainstream isn’t lost on you.

At some point you have to grow with what you’ve done or it all just dies. You can’t stay appearing to be a young, angry, cutting-edge person the whole time when you’re doing something this vast in a space in Beverly Hills. You just look stupid. There’s a certain process of me and the artists growing up together. I’m 40 and I’m probably the oldest one out of the whole stable. I think you have to be gracious with it. We did something that’s caught on. It’s been popular, it’s made it possible for us to sell art as a living so we can go on and do other shows. It doesn’t mean that it suddenly becomes overly commercial. It doesn’t stop us from coming out and doing crazy pop-up shows. Nor does it really influence the nature of the art the artists make. But I’d be a liar if I didn’t say it wasn’t a great byproduct.

What is the essence of outsider art to you and why is it important?

A lot of the people I work with are kind of mavericks in the art world. You’ve got someone like Polly Morgan who’s a taxidermist. You’ve got Mark Jenkins who’s a sculptor and puts all this stuff out on the street. You’ve got JR pasting photos six stories high. You’ve got Vihls who chips stuff out of walls. Even though stylistically there’s a lot of difference between them, in terms of state of mind they’re all incredibly hard-working, like to push boundaries, and they’re an interesting group of people to work with. It makes my life very pleasant.

What’s your response to critics who continue to question the legitimacy of outsider art?

They seem to be putting up a really convincing argument but people keep buying it and sticking it in museums, so they can criticize as much as they like.

Do you consider yourself a visionary?

Not particularly, no. I consider myself lucky.