In his room Ishmail begins another life. As long as Ishmail's Algerian born mother, Myriam, can remember his son has loved to draw. Ishmail draws to comfort himself, to face reality which has no sense of order, and often no sense at all, or to speak of things that he can find no words for. For years Ishmail Sandstroem's art was enjoyed by just a small circle family. Things changed when DeeDee Rockefeller, the black sheep of the Rockefellers, aqcuired a series of Ishmail's drawings to his DeeDee Rockefeller Foundation of Outsider Art. In this series Ishmail's sensitive and sensuous line tells stories of fantastic bird like creatures, Ishmail's dead dog and his father, Goran Sandstroem, the famed chemistry professor, who is on a never ending lecture tour around the globe. My friend Ishmail Sandstroem may be invisible, but his art speaks to ever growing masses.It speaks of mess and order, light and darkness, and of being inside in the outside. Petri Lehtinen, Curator