#RichmondSpeaks: Mural Art As Resistance

#RichmondSpeaks

Mural Art As Resistance

Online Artists’ Talk: Thursday, August 5, 7-8pm PST CLICK HERE TO RSVP or join using this link: https://zoom.us/j/93542104214

Online Exhibition: July 5 – August 6, 2021

Join us online on Thursday, August 5 at 7pm as photographer Robin D. López (Shots from Richmond) will speak with three artists about their recent mural projects in Richmond: Deontá Allen, Rebeca Garcia-González, and David Solnit.

Presented here in conjunction with the talk are photos and video by Lopez documenting the artists’ work.

RSVP HERE TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK FOR THE ARTISTS’ TALK
(You will receive an email 30 minutes before the event starts with a link.)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Deontá Allen is a Richmond-based artist who paints on canvas and apparel, and creates large-scale public murals. He is self-taught and his abstract style incorporates a signature color palette with iconic imagery from popular culture. In June of 2020, Allen in collaboration with Richmond Revolution and the community painted “Black Lives Matter” in large yellow letters on the street in downtown Richmond. Allen works for the East Bay Regional Park District and as part of the organization’s Diversity Committee which organized a successful petition calling for EBRPD to commemorate Juneteenth. www.deontaallen.com, @dallenart

Rebeca Garcia-González is a Richmond painter who grew up in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico. After earning a BFA at the University of Puerto Rico with a focus on printmaking, she came to San Francisco in 1985 to pursue a graduate degree at the San Francisco Art Institute, but studied graphic design and education instead. Working within the public school system helped me develop an awareness of various US social movements, among them, immigrant rights, marriage equality, and racial justice. In 2016, after working as program manager in a couple of non-profits she became a full-time working artist and since then has been involved in public art. rebecasart.com, @rebecathepainter

Robin D. López is a Richmond freelance photographer, who aims to produce visuals that represent the voices and cultures of our communities. Other work also specializes in nature/wildlife and urban ecology. López has been actively engaged in the Richmond/San Pablo community throughout the past decade, having been a lifelong resident dedicated towards empowering and inspiring the next generation of change agents. López is currently working on his doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, and has been a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab since 2012. www.shotsfromrichmond.com, @shotsfromrichmond

David Solnit is an East Bay Area artist and arts organizer who uses the arts to help win positive change and to protect our people and planet. He collaborates with communities and movements using: giant puppetry, street-pavement murals, guerrilla projections, 300 foot banners, theater pageants, occupying a McDonalds roof to support striking workers, and painting a giant modified-with-skull Chevron logo directly in front of Chevron’s refinery gate. He collaborates with fast food workers, Indigenous water protectors, public school teachers unions, health care workers, climate justice groups, and farmworkers. Art Builds for Climate Justice and a Better World (Facebook Group)

VIDEO

Video by Shots from Richmond. Music by Mark Anthony Nawman and Shots from Richmond.

ABOUT RAC LIVE

This series of four online monthly zoom talks highlights the work of Richmond artists and their peers. Recognizing that the Covid-19 pandemic has severely limited opportunities for artists to present their work, RAC LIVE utilizes virtual platforms to show how artists are showing up, naming this moment and moving forward. 

This Artists’ Talk and Online Exhibition are part of RAC LIVE, a project supported by a 2021 Neighborhood Public Art Mini-Grant from the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission.