Gregory Alan NortonNorton has been an activist in the civil rights, peace, and labor movements. He served as an organizer and newspaper editor for the United Steelworkers and has served in other unions as well. Before moving to Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, his familycame from Pays des Illinois, specifically that part of Old Upper Louisiana around Vincennes, Indiana. Born into the Vincennois community, he is a French American writer with relatives on both sides of the Atlantic. For artists living in the United States, I think one of our responsibilites is to try to understand the socail decay occurring all around us as the Psychotic Atomik Empire continues to decompose. As in the days of the decline of the Roman Empire, we see wonderful roads being constructed, permanent imperial warfare, strange new apocryphal religions arise, outrageous public corruption, and a growing sense among people that it's all going to end badly, says Norton. I like art that tries to look at society in terms of social class mediated by a variety of other social phenomena such as race, gender, age, and nationality. When that analysis is tempered by an interior psychological exploration of personality, then, rich, meaningful, art seems to be produced. So, what is psychosocial art? I think that it's art that examines a human society splintered by social class, gender, race, and nationality. It's the kind of art that investigates the driving forces deep within the human psyche. And it's art the mediates between the outer and inner worlds of the human being. Read More Read Less