Teaching Artists
Eli Africa
Pronouns: he/him
A multimedia artist by choice and educator by accident, Eli Africa has created illustrations, graphic design, photography and short-form videos for nonprofit, for-profit and educational institutions on both sides of the Pacific. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Visual Communications from the University of the Philippines and a Master of Arts degree in Multimedia Communications from San Francisco’s Academy of Art University. www.elicreates.com
Fredericko “Fred” Alvarado
Pronouns: he/him
Fredericko “Fred” Alvarado has been a teaching artist at Richmond Art Center for over ten years. Fred is an interdisciplinary artist who collaborates with communities through the school system, community centers, and spontaneous community happenings. He seeks to promote community activism through the rediscovery and creation of alternative stories that are based on the experiences of the communities he works with. Past projects include creating trading cards based on the identities of the students in his classes, coloring books based on yoga poses learned in a workshop held at an HIV prevention center, and murals painted and designed in cities by the community members that live there. Fred Alvarado was born in Chicago, IL, grew up in Long Beach, CA., received his Undergraduate Degree at the San Francisco Art Institute and his graduate degree from the College of the Arts, with an emphasis in Social Practices.
Lauren Ari
Pronouns: she/her
Lauren Ari is a Richmond-based artist and educator. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from U.C. Davis. Her primary focus is on drawing and sculpture. You can find Lauren’s work in the permanent collection of the Legion of Honor Achenbach Foundation. “Lauren Ari’s art roars out of the deepest part of her psyche and arrives with great tenderness into the world. It is fiercely honest, playful and provocative. She speaks directly what is still unfettered in all of us, our wild, free, animal selves.“ – Poet Alison Luterman. @thelaurenari, laurenari.com
Nelli Astvatsatrian
Pronouns: she/her
Nelli Astvatsatrian is an Armenian-American artist and educator based in Berkeley, CA. Her multi-media work grapples with questions of diaspora, memory, and home through figurative illustration, printmaking, and textile work. She currently teaches Drawing and Painting, Photography, and Sculpture to high schoolers at Tilden Preparatory School. @nellidraws
Ned Axthelm
Pronouns: he/him
Ned Axthelm has an MFA from Academy of Art University. He works primarily in oil paint, depicting scenes of contemporary urban life, and exhibits his work throughout the Bay Area. nedaxthelm.com, @nedaxthelm
Chanda Beck
Pronouns: she/her
Chanda Beck is a graduate in Ceramic Sculpture from the California College of the Arts in Oakland where she currently resides. Until the recent retirement of her boss, she has honed her ceramics knowledge and skills working part time at Leslie Ceramics Supply for the past 14 years and has taught many workshops there. The rest of her time has been spent on her functional ceramics business, Ezme Designs where she sells at fairs, in galleries, online and museum gift stores. She is currently a member of the Berkeley Potters Guild. Chanda has a special passion for surface decoration, porcelain, hand-building, slip-casting and wheel throwing with a focus on abstract representations of forms found in nature. ezmedesigns.com, @ezmedesigns
Julia Beery
Julia Beery is a science illustrator with a passion for drawing all the animal, plant, and fungi who live in the Bay Area. Her most peaceful moments are spent capturing the curve of a petal in ink. When Julia is not creating science illustrations she likes to sew clothing and embroider what she already owns to make it feel new again. @juliabeery_art
Cristine Blanco
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Cristine Blanco is an interdisciplinary artist who works in painting, sculpture, video and installation. Her works take environmental injustices, the precarity of resources, and familial story as her starting point. Through repetition, reenactment and reconstruction, Blanco processes and makes sense of a constantly evolving world by documenting personal and global changes. www.cristineblanco.com, @cblanco
Crystal Bongers
Jim Bruce
Pronouns: he/him
Jim Bruce has been a media artist since the age of 8mm film. He has been witness to media arts growing from cam-corders to smart phones, from desktop publishing to web streaming while marketing for creative computing software publisher Peachpit Press. He began teaching Stop Motion Animation with the Richmond Art Center Art In The Community in 2014 with studio program offerings beginning in 2016. Jim believes that while everyone has an artist living inside, many of us need support to self-identify as artists. He also believes that the arts help fill our lives with meaning and strength as we recognize the personal dignity in others, ultimately contributing to a more equal and accessible world. jimhere.weebly.com/index.html,
Marisa Burman
Pronouns: she/her
Marisa Burman is a ceramic artist from San Francisco. She has been making things out of clay for the past 15 years and continues to find it a source of incredible joy and wonder. She currently lives in Richmond with her tiny parrot, Louie. In addition to being a teaching artist around the Bay, Marisa manages the ceramics studio at the Richmond Art Center. She loves making and using handmade objects, working with porcelain, and teaching people about all things ceramic, especially colored clay. @marisaburman
Maggie Burns
Pronouns: she/they
Maggie is a queer disabled artist based in the East Bay. After receiving a BFA in Animation at California College of the Arts, they have been dedicating their time to teaching art and continue to practice their own art skills. They are passionate about providing accessible art, and being part of an artistic community. maryevburns.wixsite.com
Mary Campbell
Mary Campbell is a 2023 MFA candidate at California College of the Arts and received her BFA from the University of Oregon in 2014. Her work spans media including papermaking, mold making, installation, and photography. She has exhibited regionally at Incline Gallery and Borderline Art Collective in San Francisco, and Stelo and Littman Gallery in Portland. Her work has been featured by Bay Area’s collective On/Offsite, and Deanna Evans’ Curated Studio Visit program in New York. Campbell has been an artist in residence at Wassaic Project (New York), Stelo Papermaking (Portland), Open Windows (San Francisco), and Vermont Studio Center. In the community, she has taught papermaking classes at Open Windows and Wassaic Project and works as an assistant prop stylist. www.maryccampbell.com, @maryccampbell
Don Carlson
Don Carlson has been welding for over 40 years, starting at Joliet (IL) Township High School’s Adult Education Division and continuing in the Navy. In 1998, Don started using his welding skills to create metal sculpture and functional art. Since 1999, Don’s work has been exhibited and commissioned in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1999 through 2007 Don developed and headed the welded sculpture program at The Crucible in Oakland. In 2018 Don retired from his Director of Facilities position at a private school in Marin. During his 25 year tenure there, he created a welded sculpture program for sixth through eighth grade students.
Kieren Dutcher
Pronouns: she/her
Shani R. Ealey
Pronouns: she/her/they/them
My name is Shani R. Ealey and I am a writer, visual artist, and spiritchaser living on sacred Ohlone Land/Oakland, CA born and raised in Stockton, CA. I spend a lot of time dreaming up new worlds through painting, the written word, and zine making as a way to heal and transform intergenerational patterns of harm and disconnection. My work seeks to unearth what has been buried and pushed aside as a result of assimilation and honor, celebrate, and affirm the ancestral practices that help folks of the African Diaspora to remain grounded and connected to our sacred paths. shanirealey.com, @ani_igboyansan_biomi
Cass Frayer
Pronouns: she/her
Cass Frayer is a queer Bay Area based author/illustrator and teacher who has loved drawing since she could hold a crayon. She studied art in Boston for years and earned her MFA in Illustration from University of Hartford in 2010. Frayer is an active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and Storyteller Academy. She is currently seeking representation for her picture book Space Bear. www.cassfrayer.com, @cassfrayer
Colleen Garland
Pronouns: she/her
Colleen Garland grew up in Richmond and works as a potter and ceramics teacher in the Bay Area. She enjoys making functional pottery and absolutely loves teaching! @colleenandclay
Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez
Pronouns: she/her
Rebeca García-González is a painter and muralist interested in social justice issues. She earned her BFA at the University of Puerto Rico and has been painting representationally ever since. Some of her recent work includes portraits of people underrepresented in the cannon and lately, dystopian visions of our government. www.rebecasart.com, @rebecathepainter
Santiago Gervasi
Santiago Gervasi-Tokunaga was born in Lima, Perú. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 80s, where he has been residing ever since. He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Santiago has shown his work extensively both nationally and internationally. The galleries that have represented his work include Olga Dollar (S.F., CA) SFMOMA Artists Gallery (S.F. CA), Cervini-Haas Gallery (Scottsdale, AZ), Bay Area Visual Arts Network (Oakland, CA). and FOG Gallery (S.F. CA). His work has been reviewed in Art Week magazine, and has been featured in the TV show “Latin Eyes.”
Chris Harper Triplett
Pronouns: she/her
Chris has been a teaching artist at Richmond Art Center for the past eight years. Her primary medium is watercolor, but she has worked in acrylic, oil, and fiber arts. Chris received her Bachelor’s in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and Master’s in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism from Azusa Pacific University (California). She exhibits her art primarily on online sites but also at Autobody Art Gallery (Alameda, CA), Worth Ryder Gallery (UC Berkeley), and Tubac Center for the Arts (Tubac, Arizona). In 2022 Chris participated as an artist-in-residence at Chateau Orquevaux, France. @christiraeht, www.chrisharpertriplett.com
Madi Hunt
Madi Hunt is an artist and teacher from Richmond, California. As a teacher, she holds space for creative exploration; encouraging students of all ages and experience levels to experiment and grow through drawing, painting, writing, and SoulCollage®. She believes that art can be healing and liberating, and that access to self-expression and creativity is essential to our collective well being. Her classes are available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. www.madihunt.com, @mad_hunt
Ilah Jarvis
Ilah Jarvis has exhibited her watercolors nationally and has taught watercolor and fiber arts all over Northern California since the late 1990’s. She received a residency at the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain in 2003. She is a patient and caring teacher who wants her students to develop their own creative voice. www.ilahjarvis.com, @ilah_jarvis
Laurie Kelsoe
Pronouns: she/her
Laurie Kelsoe is a fiber artist and educator living in San Francisco. Upon graduating from California College of the Arts in 2015 with a BFA in textiles, Laurie has taught art in museums and schools and is thrilled to now be teaching at the Richmond Art Center. Her work attempts at dissecting the subconscious through felting, embroidery, beading, weaving, and fiber sculpture. She is the co-founder of The Practical Arts Collective in El Sobrante, CA where she teaches textile arts to adults and children. @laurie_kelsoe
Maya Kosover
Pronouns: they/them
Maya Kosover is a white jewish queer artist and educator committed to their creativity and the creativity of others. Art to them is about joy, expression, play, connection, & healing. They are a deep believer that nurturing our youth is sacred work and that they were put on this earth to be of service to our youth. After teaching multi-media journalism and media studies at Richmond High for six years, they are now in practice of becoming a visual and performance art educator to continue working with teens. They love to collage and make zines and immerse themselves in all things related to song, dance, improv, and Theatre of the Oppressed.
Anna Kingsley
Pronouns: she/her
Anna Kingsley is a teaching artist from Oakland California. She has taught book making and print making to adults and students for over seven years in the East Bay and beyond. She also teachers origami to very young children in after school programs in local schools. Since 2011 she has owned and operated Brick Factory Designs, a letterpress studio and bindery, and has happily produced customs designs for even happier clients. She is Queer and Assyrian. www.brickfactorydesigns.com
Julia LaChica
Pronouns: she/them
Julia LaChica is a Queer Japanese/Filipino multidisciplinary visual artist and designer based in Oakland, CA. She holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the California College of the Arts, where she developed her skills in designing furniture, lighting, and decorative accessories. In 2020, Julia embraced a transformative opportunity that redirected her focus toward the realm of Fine Arts. Her diverse practice encompasses painting, printmaking, collage, and assemblage art, exploring themes of identity, culture, and the intersectionality of Queer experiences. Through her work, Julia aims to provoke thought, evoke emotion, and inspire dialogue within her community and beyond. Julia is also deeply passionate about education and empowerment, regularly teaching printmaking workshops to empower individuals to explore their own visual language and express themselves creatively. Through her teaching and artistic practice, Julia strives to foster a supportive and inclusive community where everyone’s voices are heard and valued. www.jlachica.art, @jlachica.art
Leah Yael Levy
Pronouns: she/her
Leah Yael Levy is a visual artist, storyteller and teacher based in Berkeley, CA. Born and raised in Israel, she first moved to New York City in 2002 to attend the Art Students League of New York, and later gained a BFA of Illustration from Parsons the New School for Design (2011). She moved to California to pursue an MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts (2017). Levy is a teaching Artist for Richmond Art Center, Kala, and JCC of the East Bay. www.leahyaellevy.com, @yaelefly
Jennifer Linderman
Pronouns: she/her
Jennifer is a self-taught artist with a passion for teaching art to all ages! She is a mixed media artist working mainly in colored pencil, markers, and ink. Her favorite subjects to draw/paint are animals, people, and botanic subjects. Her work is known for using bright, saturated, and bold colors along with fun and contemporary patterns. www.jenniferlindermanart.com, @jenniferlindermanart
dani lopez
dani lopez is a textile artist working within weaving, embroidery, and textiles sculpture to explore queer desire, non-linear narratives, and femme identity. She received her MFA in Textiles from CCA in 2019 and her BFA from the University of Oregon in 2016. She was awarded two teaching assistantships at CCA and received a diversity and merit scholarship. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Surface Design Journal, and Other People’s Pixels. lopez has shown at Bedford Gallery, Minnesota Street Project, Tropical Contemporary, Amos Eno Gallery, Collar Works, and the Frank Ratchye Project Space. In 2022 she received The Money For Women Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and a Puffin Grant for her project “3 Dykes Walk Into a Bar…”. She most recently taught Intro to Weaving at San Francisco State University in Fall 2022. www.danilopez.us, @dani___lopez___
Maxon McCarter
Maxon McCarter has been making stuff and things for a hot minute or two. From learning Bronze casting in Tahiti out of high school to starting a sword making business in Montana this guy has slung around some metal with gusto! Now in the Bay Area he is ready to get to making new and snazzy forms of art.
Ralph McCaskey
Ralph McCaskey has been flameworking glass for 21 years, and gleefully teaching it for 11 years.
Jill McLennan
Pronouns: she/her
Jill McLennan is a professional oil painter and teaching artist in the Bay Area. She has been painting and teaching for over 19 years. She works for the DeYoung Museum, Museum of Children’s Art, Richmond Art Center, and various schools in Oakland. McLennan founded her own organization, JMAC: Jill McLennan Arts and Community, as a platform for teaching classes and workshops and creating murals and community projects. She is a member of the artists run gallery, Mercury 20 Gallery in the heart of Oakland’s Art Murmur district. McLennan creates drawings, mixed media built pieces, wax encaustics and oil paintings that explore the ideas of industry, history, urban nature and our outlook towards a future of human and natural cooperation. www.jillmclennan.me
Alex Martinez
Pronouns: she/her
Alex Martinez is a second-generation Queer, Mexican-American, Chicana, raised in Watsonville, California. She began her Arts Education at San Francisco State University, where she fell in love with printmaking and painting processes. She is based in Oakland, California, and feels very privileged to spend her days developing and teaching her multi-medium art curriculum in Bay Area schools. Using vivid acrylic hues, texture and pattern, Alex explores themes of Queer POC identities, intergenerational trauma/wisdom, Wild Women archetypes, spirituality, ritual, healing, transition and growth. alexandriamartinez.squarespace.com, @hechoporalex
Viviana Martinez Carlos
Pronouns: she/her
Viviana Martinez Carlos is a transdisciplinary artist born and raised in Mexico and currently based in San Francisco. Her work is located at the intersection of multi-media installation, artist books and research. @viviana_carlos
Travis Meinholf
Pronouns: he/they
Travis Meinolf been a weaver since stumbling upon the loom room at San Francisco State University while pursuing a degree in Industrial Design. He now produces fabric at home in Lagunitas with his wife, Iris, and their young son, Louis. A practitioner of action weaving, Travis teaches weaving whenever he is called, using available looms or weaving tools he designs and builds. Meinholf has an MFA from California College of the Arts. actionweaver.com, @actionweaver
Larissa Mellor
Larissa Mellor works within drawing in the expanded sense; creating drawings, installations, videos, and objects. She received her BFA from Maine College of Art and MFA from Ohio State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including Ortega y Gasset Projects, Marshall University, Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Maine Center for Contemporary Art. Among other awards, she was a 2010 Fulbright Fellow to Germany in Painting and Printmaking. She has taught art, design and interdisciplinary courses at Ohio State University and Columbus College of Art and Design. cargocollective.com/larissamellor
Hector Munoz-Guzman
Hector Munoz-Guzman is a Mexican-American mix media painter and illustrator from South Berkeley, California. Drawing inspiration from everyday street life, Mexican culture, issues of race, and Catholicism. Hector produces scenes filled with animated figures, whose exaggerated features emit drama and intensity. His handling of saturated colors reflect the vibrant atmosphere of South Berkeley, California. @hectorfmunoz
Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh
Pronouns: she/her
Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh has been a part of Richmond Art Center’s community since she began here as a teaching artist in 2016. She in based out of Oakland, CA, where she continues to work as a teaching artist, educational facilitator, illustrator, and exhibiting visual artist with a full time studio practice. www.dawlinejaneart.com, @disfordilettante
Rachel-Anne Palacios
Rachel-Anne Palacios is an Oakland native, multi-cultural arts educator, and self taught folk artist. She has been creating and sharing art that reflects her respect for culture, spirituality, traditional values, elders and the cycle of life and death with the community for more than 20 years. Palacios has been teaching art workshops and classes at Bay Area schools and libraries for over a decade-her lessons and projects are inspired by indigenous cultures and traditional art from around the world. @devikaspalacio
Luis Pinto
Pronouns: he/him
Luis Pinto is an interdisciplinary artist who received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from New World School of the Arts in Miami, FL in 2006 and his Master of Fine Arts degree from California College of the Arts in 2015. His work ranges from the digital arts to the fine arts working in mediums such as sound, film, digital media, performance, painting, sculpture, and works on paper. Pinto, who works as a freelance graphic designer for the past 14 years, has also been creating murals (2012-2021) in South Florida and the Bay Area. In 2011 Pinto started an art publication called Strangeways which is currently on its 27th issue. Since 2018 Luis has been working with 7th West as their lead designer and art director. He has been featured in many online publications such as The305, Chasseur Magazine, Art Business, and many more. www.luis-pinto.com, @luispinto17
Tatiana Ortiz
Pronouns: she/her
Tatiana Ortiz is a local artist from Richmond. She studied arts education at Academy of Arts, and has written and illustrated her own children’s book. In 2016 she received a grant from the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission to advocate for Children’s Art and Literacy. She has since started her own non-profit organization devoted to the advocacy of Children’s Art and Literacy in Contra Costa County. When she is not teaching, you can find Ortiz creating her own art, using polymer clay or acrylic paint. She continues to find innovative ways to challenge her art skills and support the community she serves.
Alice Rice
Pronouns: she/her
Alice Rice is an artist, designer, and educator. Over the course of her life and education she has become well versed in many different mediums all of which she loves to share with others. She received her bachelor degree in Art and Design from University of Michigan and a Masters in Art in Education from Harvard University.
Keena Azania Romano
Pronouns: she/her
Keena Azania Romano exercises her creative mind through the exploration of diverse artistic mediums as a way to engage and understand individual and collective purpose. Romano received her BFA from Pomona College then returned to her native Bay Area to pursue a career in the Arts. Her Murals can be spotted from Sacramento, California, to Richmond, Virginia to Oaxaca, Mexico. Inspired by cultural practices, Romano combines spirituality with urban experience to produce work that draws upon the quest for a greater understanding of intersectional beauty in this world. She fuses traditional native arts with contemporary inner-city techniques to reflect a new language that encourages the healing and empowerment process between community members and their environments. Her style is described as “vibrant and insightful”. She aspires to travel and create a colorful trail of art by exploring the modern Diaspora based on her multi-ethnic experience.
Kristin Satzman
Saadi Shapiro
Eva-Maria Spampinato
Eva-Maria Spampinato is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and historian investigating art and design through the modes of craft, alchemy and the natural world. She utilizes her expertise of early modern artisan epistemology, and historical ‘remakings’ of art materials to make early modern thrifty art in the 21st Century. thehistoricalartist.com, @historicalartist
Stacy Speyer
Betsy Streeter
Betsy Streeter is a cartoonist and illustrator and East Bay native. Her work has appeared all over the world in print and other forms, including a traveling Smithsonian exhibit, a Hollywood movie (barely), and tattooed on a person. She’s currently illustrating a history of the bicycle and creating a series about local animals putting on their own plays as a benefit for California Shakespeare Theater, where she is a board member. She has taught classes for all ages and at many venues including the Schulz Museum and the Cartoon Art Museum, and illustrated books for 826 Valencia and Chapter 510. She studied Art at Stanford, and has worked in film, video games, web design, and software. www.betsystreeter.com, @betsystreeter
Jason Stern
Alan Tarbell
Alan Tarbell is a mixed media painter who is aesthetically inspired by nature’s infinite combination of form, light, texture, atmosphere and rhythm. Exposure through travel and exploration into diverse physical and cultural environments formulate his conceptual approach. His work has been widely reviewed in Mexico where he lived from 2002-2008. He currently lives and works from his studio in Oakland, CA. Tarbell teaches painting and drawing at Richmond Art Center, ASUC Berkeley and Sharon Art Studio in San Francisco. His work is held by numerous private collectors in Mexico and the US. www.alantarbell.com
Eden Yisak
Pronouns: she/her
Eden is an Ethiopian-born Richmond-based artist. She received her B.A. in Studio Arts from San Francisco State University in 2022. She is a ceramist and a painter. Her artworks are influenced by the women around her and in the world, Africa, and nature. As an artist, her goal is to visually depict stories in her artwork, and as an educator, she wants to create a space for students to express their creativity. edenyakob.mypixieset.com
Fumiyo Yoshikawa
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Fumiyo Yoshikawa specializes in the Japanese brush painting methods sumi-e and nihonga. Currently, Fumiyo is on the board of The Sumi-e Society of America, Inc. Since moving to San Francisco in 2004, her work has also incorporated elements of American art. She has exhibited widely at art museums and galleries in Japan since 1984 and in the United States since 2006. Yoshikawa also has an interest in different cultures; she lived in Guatemala for a year where she researched Guatemalan Mayan culture and was fascinated by the parallels she saw between the ancient cultures of Central America and East Asia. As an instructor of Japanese Arts and Culture with a focus on Calligraphy and Sumi-e, she has worked with audiences of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity. www.fumiyo-y.com
