The Outsider  Courtesy Kohn Turner Gallery ARTIST BRUCE CONNER
TELLS A STORY THAT CONVEYS everything you need to know about
"Looking for Mushrooms," an exhibition of 35 drawings he
completed in the '60s, which is currently on display at Kohn
Turner Gallery.  "When I was 11 years old, I was in my room late
one afternoon and the sun was shining in through the window,"
recalls the 65-year-old artist during an interview by phone from
his home in San Francisco. "I was lying on the floor looking at
the light on the rug, and I went into a state of consciousness
that I couldn't describe afterward. I changed. I changed
physically and conceptually. It took hundreds of years, I grew
old, and I moved through worlds of totally different dimensions.
Then I again became aware of myself being in a room. 'Here I am
in a room,' I thought, 'and I'm enormously old. How can I get
up? I've practically disintegrated. I'm an ancient person and my
bones are falling apart.' Then I looked down at my hands and saw
that they were not old