STOLEN: ‘Fencelines’ Collective Monument to Resilience
To the people of Richmond and the Greater Bay Area,
To the individuals, collectives and organizations that are on the ground fighting for environmental justice,
To those that believe in the power of art, people and community to help us imagine and build a better world,
With sadness and anger in our hearts we inform you that the city-sanctioned public art project Fencelines – A Collective Monument to Resilience was stolen from its location on the Richmond Parkway along the Bay Trail between Vernon Avenue and N Castro Street in North Richmond; the fenceline at this location separates Richmond neighborhoods from the Chevron petroleum refinery.
The Fencelines installation brought together messages from the community: messages of hope, of unity and of care for our living world, and calling for accountability from Chevron for generations of polluting the community’s air, water, land and people. Collectively and in community with paint and words we built a Monument to Richmond’s Resilience in the ongoing struggle for environmental justice. In what we must understand as an attempt to silence our voices and erase our stories, the Fencelines public art has been completely disappeared.
We are seeking the public’s help in locating hundreds of ‘slat’ painted wood art pieces. It is believed the art pieces were stolen or deliberately removed between the evening of May 15 and May 16.
We ask you to stand in solidarity with the Richmond community in demanding that our art pieces be found and returned.
In 2021, co-creators of the Fencelines project started to work with many local organizations to engage community to reflect on Richmond’s historic environmental injustices through art. At workshops in the community and at Richmond Art Center, individuals and families participated in creating hundreds of colorful wooden slats, culminating in a major exhibition at Richmond Art Center during the Spring of 2023 on view until June 3. This allowed participants to get a visual of their personal customized slats in Richmond Art Center. With so many supporters, this project became a force to be reckoned with!
In addition to popular support and widespread grassroots participation, the Fencelines project also received unanimous approval from Richmond’s Public Arts and Culture Commission, the City of Richmond’s Love Your Block program and Public Works Department, as well as Contra Costa County’s North Richmond Municipal Advisory Committee to install the project pieces on city-owned portions of this fenceline.
On Earth Day 2023, Fencelines partnered with Richmond LAND to install hundreds of the slats in an effort to amplify the voices of Richmond. Together and in formation, the slats provide a creative platform to express the lived experience of folks here in the ongoing struggle for environmental justice and housing stabilization.
The Fencelines public art installation was installed on April 22, 2023 along the Bay Trail between Vernon Avenue and N Castro Street in North Richmond and was to be displayed until mid-June.
If you have seen any of the art pieces from the project or have any information regarding its whereabouts, please email Roberto Martinez at roberto@richmondartcenter.org
Please share this letter far and wide. Together we can find our stolen artwork and stand strong against the erasure of the struggle for environmental justice.
Thank you for your support!
With love and gratitude,
The Fencelines Project Team
Graham L.P., Princess Robinson, Gita Khandagle, and members of the Richmond Community. In Partnership with the City of Richmond’s Love Your Block, Richmond Art Center, Richmond Our Power Coalition, Richmond LAND.
Join artist Colleen Garland in an exploration of ceramic artwork and techniques. Students will engage in discussion of pieces made by a variety of ceramic artists who identify as women. They will also receive a hands-on introduction to the practice of wheel throwing.
Schedule: Wednesdays, 2pm-4pm, June 28 – August 9, 2023
Location: Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Price: Free!
Eligibility: For youth ages 13-17 in Richmond
This class is a gender inclusive space. Students of all gender identities are welcome to enroll.
Richmond Art Center is looking for youth and young adult volunteers to assist with our Summer Art Camp. Volunteers will assist Teaching Artists in the classroom (morning and afternoon shifts available), as well as support with lunchtime and student pick up.
About Summer Art Camp: Summer Art Camp at Richmond Art Center gives kids (ages 5-12) an exciting immersion in visual arts practice. Daily projects include drawing, painting, printmaking, textile arts, and sculpture. This year camps will be held over 6 weeks between June 12 to July 28. (No camp July 3 to July 7). Weekly camps run Tuesday through Friday from 10am to 2pm.
Volunteer Requirements:
Enjoy interacting with kids ages 5 to 12 years old
Can move around in the studio
No art experience necessary, but need to be able to follow instructions from the Teaching Artist
High schoolers and recent graduates welcome (we are specifically looking volunteers between the ages of 16 and 25)
Volunteers 18+ must complete a LiveScan background check before start date of volunteering
How to Apply: If you would like to become a Summer Art Camp volunteer then CLICK HERE to submit a volunteer application.
Ruth Morgan’s stark and provocative works at Richmond Art Center highlight climate change’s role in CA wildfires
If artist Ruth Morgan’s 10 large-scale photographs currently on display at Richmond Art Center don’t send one’s ticker beating double time or one’s blood boiling, they must go immediately to the ER. They might be in cardiac arrest or have a circulatory system out of whack.
“Requiem: The Remains of the Day, August 4, 2021,” is part of RAC’s Spring Season themed environmental justice exhibits. Along with the community-based participatory art project “Fencelines” that addresses environmental issues specific to Richmond, Morgan’s “Requiem”introducesthe impact of climate change and the uptick of massive, monumental wildfires in greater California.
The full color photographs—nine 40 x 60 inch images and one entry image 56 x 84 inches—document the aftermath of what happened during the summer of 2021 in Greenville. In a mere 45 minutes, the town was completely destroyed by the Dixie Wildfire. The photographs, taken months later and presented in Morgan’s signature large scale format, are not only sizable, but they are in their details compelling, devastating and profoundly moving without being in any way strident.
In the stark perspectives and landscapes rendered in full color rather than her signature black-and-white style, Morgan avoids melodrama but manages to create an intensely dramatic vibe that is dignified, respectful, egalitarian, even elegant. Unexpectedly, there is a haunting, eery and quiet beauty to the portrayals. The charred buildings, streets, homesteads and public spaces are entirely devoid of people but resonate with the full tragedy of human lives that have been cast into disarray and a community devastated by wildfire.
As a model of visual storytelling and proof of the impact of climate change on real people with real lives, the images themselves hold ironic magnetism. Striking a viewer as a kind of propellant, something visceral, with power equivalent to a wildfire, the accumulative effect instead might spur a person into action that goes far beyond passive observational or unexpressed empathy.
Importantly, the facts are these: In less than an hour, the Dixie Fire reduced 100 family homes, a gas station, church, hotel, museum, bar, schools, restaurants and other commercial business to rubble. Over 1,000 residents were displaced; many of them low income, marginalized people whose small homes were likely valued at $30,000 or less.
DISPLACED Entirely Devoid Of People, Morgan’s Images Resonate With The Full Tragedy Of Human Lives That Have Been Cast Into Disarray. (Photo Courtesy Of Richmond Art Center)
These were not the CEOs of Silicon Valley with multimillion dollar homes and fire insurance to cover any damages and rebuilding costs. Most Greenville residents lost everything they owned, including generations of family photographs and heirlooms. Fortunately, everyone was able to evacuate and no lives were sacrificed.
Morgan is widely known in the Bay Area as the founder/director in 1997 of Community Works West, an organization that works directly with people impacted by incarceration and uses art to address issues related to social justice to bring healing and restoration to marginalized communities. She recently retired from her leadership role at Community Works West, but her interest in the stories of underserved people who exist on the margins of mainstream society is lifelong and continues to be expressed through her body of work as a photographer.
Her acclaimed, award-winning photo series, publications and exhibits include “San Francisco County Jail #3,” “San Quentin: Maximum Security, 1981-83,” “Ohlone Elders and Youth Speak,” ”Piqua Shawnee: Cultural Survival in Their Homeland” and others.
Morgan’s photographs are in private collections and exhibited in museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Houston and San Diego museums, the Matrix Gallery and the University Art Museum Berkeley. Most recently, her “S.F. Jail” archive was purchased by the San Francisco Public Library, and her “Ohlone Elders and Youth” archive was purchased by the Bancroft Library.
Exhibit notes for “Requiem” explain the Dixie Fire was later determined to have been caused by Pacific Gas and Electric Company equipment failure. Even so, human actions and inactions exacerbated and fed the fire’s intensity. Overgrown forests resulting from short-sighted, man-made fire suppression policies and housing development located near forests created an incendiary situation.
With climate change causing years of drought and more virulent storms during California’s increasingly extended wildfire season, there was high propensity for the volatile terrain to ignite. It was only a matter of time—and remains so—before a town like Greenville would suffer a blow.
Morgan said in an interview she had originally gone to the area intending to gather interviews from people who had been displaced. Upon her arrival, she found Greenville was like a ghost town. “Originally, the idea was to photograph the people impacted by climate change and the fire. To photograph the people most invisible. But there was no one there, other than a few people living in RVs outside of the area. The first two trips, I saw no one. The third time, I saw occasional people bulldozing, trying to clear the land. Eventually, it was totally razed and the rubble taken away. Now, it’s being reborn with people trying to rebuild,” she noted.
Although there are no physical people in the photographs, signs of human life are everywhere. In charred, residential areas, burned-out vehicles in driveways and crumbled chimneys in yards stand like ominous sentinels or gravestones where once an entire house stood. Personal items are visible—a typewriter, a bicycle, pots and pans, broken dishes, gardening pots and tools, children’s toys, a child’s desk. In one image, “#107” on a sign is the only thing that marks a family plot. In another, a street lamp having lost its verticality to the intense heat folds upon itself and curves downward, as if bowing like a supple, graceful ballet dancer.
Compellingly, black-and-white murals painted by Mendocino-based artist Shane Grammer on several burned and fragmented walls after the fire bring humanity back into the picture. One, painted on an exterior wall of a former movie theater, is of a glamorous film star-like woman, against which leans a detached, upside-down neon sign that reads, “Pioneer.” In another photograph, the image of Jesus adorns a chimney.
“Grammer came before I was there and on his own came and I assume wanted to make something of beauty in the space,” said Morgan. “Those murals were mesmerizing, and seen in the midst of the devastation, it was breathtaking. It was incongruous. It added to the mystery of everything that happened in Greenville.”
Aside from her reaction to the murals, Morgan said her initial and overall response to what she saw in Greenville was devastating, overwhelming. “Because of that, I became interested in photographing landscapes instead of people, which had not been my experience before,” she explained. “Initially, it was the enormity of the tragedy that struck me. To get there, you cross over mountains and drive into this valley. There, you come upon eight-square miles of total rubble. These were the homes of people who, many of them, had probably lived there for generations. I found solace only in connecting to the people through the remnants left.
“It was three to four months after the fire, so people had already come back and retrieved anything that meant something to them, anything that was still intact. But what remained still told a story. Remember, these lives weren’t shattered by an Act of God. It was human impact on climate change. Yes, a fire might have happened naturally, but that was not what happened here,” she continued.
Morgan said what happened in Greenville was such a monumental event that the exhibit needed large-scale imagery to capture the impact of the fire on the town. “If I could have, I would have had them all seven-feet wide, or larger. The large scale gives you a way to enter the work, and it’s powerful to be as close to the scene as you can. You have to see the details and those, you can only see in a larger format,” explained Morgan.
Working with RAC exhibitions director Roberto Martinez to curate the show, the two made the decision not to include in the exhibit the black-and-white photographs versions of the images Morgan has also printed and plans to exhibit in smaller venues. Morgan said those photographs are much smaller and have a different aura. “It felt like the 10 four-color photographs were enough to tell the story. I tend to think less is more,” she said.
Martinez has a masters in museum studies from JFK University and has worked with community-centered institutions like the Museum of Social Justice, the East Side Arts Alliance and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. He first met Morgan through Robbin Légère Henderson, a Berkeley-based artist, curator and writer who will be in conversation with Morgan at the gallery on May 27.
“I knew that during the spring I wanted to focus on the impact of the climate crisis. I felt Ruth’s work resonated with that. She has a wonderful eye and in the past has captured so much of humanity with her photographs from San Quentin or with the Ohlone community here in the Bay Area. This series was a striking contrast because there were no people in these photographs,” he noted.
Martinez said the human impact that fuels the climate crisis is huge and wants the images to wrap the viewer in a haunting embrace, but in a space that also feels safe. The exhibit design is intentionally quiet: The photographs have little additional interpretive content or labeling. “People can be there contemplating the images and not being told what to think,” he said. “They confront the images that are themselves quiet, despite the destruction you can see. There’s a somber tone to any place after a devastating force passes through it.”
One image that struck him deeply upon first seeing it shows a broad landscape of mountains and trees in the background. “You see that, and then in the foreground, you see a massive tangle of destruction. Then you see one of Shane’s murals, painted after the fire. In the mural, you see hope in humanity and how it might re-flourish,” he said.
The photograph with the collapsed streetlight, according to Martinez, also immediately grabbed him. He called it a powerful symbol suggestive of the connections that human actions have on the environments in which people live. Streetlights illuminate and increase community safety; wildfires also illuminate, but human carelessness can unleash flames strong enough to bend metal, destroy man-made inventions and diminish safety.
Martinez has definite ideas of the dialogue and action he hopes the exhibits will initiate. “Art opens doors and windows into difficult conversations. The mirror on harsh realities shown through art allows for transformations in our minds towards actions,” he said. “In Ruth’s exhibit, we see the devastating impact of climate change and a world devoid of humans in which we’ve destroyed ourselves. She’s helping us see the future in a foreboding sense, but it forces us to reckon with the possibilities.”
But seen in their totality, Martinez suggested the exhibits this season invite a participatory response that might result in hopeful solutions to alleviate the crisis. “I want to paint a picture that can be dark because it is, but a picture that motivates people to take actions to not walk toward that dark future, but to a different one. We want to plant, nurture and grow ideas around environmental justice,” he explained.
Morgan agreed and said the response she has received to the exhibit thus far has confirmed her overall purpose, which is to better understand what happened in Greenville and to cause people to become involved in protecting and preserving the natural environment.
“People are moved and sobered by ‘Requiem.’ For me, I am compelled to do this work, whether it’s to expose the criminal justice system or climate change. Greenville sounded an alarm for me and hopefully will for other people. We need to meet this moment. Individually and collectively, we can make a difference. We need to understand how much damage humans are having on the planet. We need to know we can still change course,” she said.
Asked for her thoughts about the power of imagery to convey complex matters relating to social or environmental justice, Morgan said, “For some people, the visual is more impactful than any words I can use. You can look at the photographs and see climate damage right there, unmistakably. As a photographer, I think there’s nothing like an image. One image can say a lot. The power of art is palpable.”
Save the date! On Saturday, August 5, 1pm-4pm, we’re having a community party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Andrée Singer Thompson’s Guillermo, the Golden Trout (the large fish sculpture that adorns our building).
Go Fish! will be Richmond Art Center’s first in-person fundraiser since the pandemic. We’ll be honoring Andrée Singer Thompson and wishing Guillermo a happy birthday with art-making, games, live music, auction and cake. This event is free and open to all, but we’re also selling ‘Golden (Trout) Tickets’ to those who can show their support.
Please consider purchasing a ticket for yourself and a community member to enjoy the event. We are counting on those who can contribute to help us raise money to support class scholarships, free community programs, studio equipment, and teaching artist fees.
A new public art installation, called Fencelines, redefines the only barrier separating Richmond’s residential neighborhoods from the Chevron oil refinery: a wire fence.
“It is a participatory project meant to engage folks and get a message to Chevron, but also gather visions that offer a future that is different and will hopefully transform this situation,” says Graham Laird Prentice, one of the co-creators of the installation.
Fencelines incorporates community-painted slats along the fence, which is also decorated with ribbons intended to indicate which way the wind is blowing. Pollution from the Chevron Richmond Refinery, also the largest greenhouse gas emitter in California, doesn’t confine itself to the refinery’s side of the fence.
In addition to transforming the actual fence, Fencelines also occupies space at the Richmond Art Center, where visitors can find a sculptural fence with more painted slats. During free community events held at the center, people can come and decorate their own slats with messages regarding their feelings around Chevron, the Richmond community, and climate justice to place on the fence.
This past April, photographer Lonny Meyer attended Spring Family Day to document how a community coming together for a day of art, positivity, and love can also be an act of resilience against environmental injustice.
The event produced an incredibly positive turnout according to Laird Prentice, but he has been mostly moved by what the voices of the community have had to say. “The messages have been incredible. They’re about climate justice, but they’re more specifically about community care, self care, and love. The way they’ve all been woven together–there’s a deep humanity in it. We could have never predicted how powerful it would be to give over the microphone.”
On Monday, repairs on Guillermo the Golden Trout, which hangs above the Richmond Art Center on Barrett Avenue, was completed.
A small team replaced two metal scales on the 50-foot-long fish. The repair is in honor of the fish’s 25th anniversary at Richmond Art Center.
This reporter was admitted to the rooftop to get a bird’s eye of the fish sculpture.
Richmond Art Center Executive Director Jose Rivera expressed excitement over the repairs.
“We had been working for months for to get the parts,” Rivera said. “Our team and the City government did a wonderful job to help make this amazing day finally happen.”
RAC Community Engagement Director Amy Spencer noted that once the scaffolding had been put in place, two scales were repaired. One had fallen off and had been lost.
Luckily the artist had a single replacement at her studio. The other one had become bent out of shape, possibly from the wind, and needed to be flattened.
“The replacement scale was the important part…the fish had gone many years with a hole in the middle of it where the missing scale had been,” Spencer said.
Guillermo the Golden Trout embodies artist Andrée Singer Thompson’s ongoing concern with healing and survival. The artist chose California’s state fish – the golden trout – as a symbol of hope, since at the time it had just been declassified as endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
“I made it because I was involved in the environment, Thompson said. “I am extremely happy it has lasted so long hanging at the Richmond Art Center.”
It was installed at Richmond Art Center in 1997 as part of Thompson’s ‘Making Waves’ interactive EcoArt installation. Messages of hope from the community are inscribed on the back of the fish’s scales. The eye is made of a metal lampshade. It was made from 800 pounds of recycled metal and is 50 feet long. Guillermo was repainted back in 2008.
On Saturday, Aug. 5, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., a free community party will be held at the Richmond Art Center (2540 Barrett Ave.) called “Go Fish! Celebrating 25 Years of Guillermo, the Golden Trout.”
The RAC states: “Join us for a community party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Andrée Singer Thompson’s iconic fish sculpture that adorns Richmond Art Center’s building. We’ll be wishing Guillermo, the Golden Trout happy birthday with art-making, games, live music, auction and cake.”
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
FREE
A conversation about the work of Andrés Cisneros-Galindo as an artist, educator and activist. Cisneros-Galindo’s artwork is on view at Richmond Art Center in the exhibition Nahui Ollin.
Panelists: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo, Yadira Cazares, Simon Kendrick, Pam Martin
This event is free, open to all and no rsvp is necessary.
Top image: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo, Mictlan, 1998, Oil and mixed media on canvas
Press Release: Juneteenth Paint and Sip at Richmond Art Center
Saturday, June 3, 4pm-7pm | FREE Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond Event webpage: richmondartcenter.org/paintandsip
Richmond, CA: Paint, sip and celebrate Juneteenth! Artisan Elishes Cavness will guide you through the steps to paint your own masterpiece. No experience necessary.
All materials and light refreshments provided by Richmond Art Center.
This event is for adults 21 years of age or older. Advance registration is required and space is limited. Visit richmondartcenter.org/paintandsip to sign up.
About Richmond Art Center: For over 80 years, Richmond Art Center has served the residents of Richmond and surrounding communities through studio arts education programs, exhibitions, off-site classes, and special initiatives for community-wide impact. Richmond Art Center’s mission is to be a catalyst in Richmond for learning and living through art. richmondartcenter.org
Announcing these family workshops for kids and their grown-ups to make art together.
Ages 5+ welcome with an adult | Ages 12+ welcome solo
La instrucción en español estará disponible.
Registration required. Workshops are available until full. Registered students are responsible for communicating if they can no longer attend the workshop at least one week in advance of withdrawing.
Fabric Marbling
Saturday, June 10, 1pm-3pm
Craft swirling patterns using the ancient art of marbling to decorate a journal, pencil case, and ornament!
Estos talleres familiares son para que los niños y sus adultos hagan arte juntos.
Mayores de 5 años bienvenidos con un adulto | Mayores de 12 años bienvenidos solos
La instrucción en español estará disponible.
Se requiere registro. Las clases están disponibles hasta completar. Los estudiantes registrados son responsables de comunicar si ya no pueden asistir al taller al menos una semana antes de retirarse.
Marmoleado de Tela
Sábado, 10 de junio, 1pm-3pm
¡Crea patrones de remolinos utilizando el antiguo arte del marmoleado para decorar un diario, un estuche para lápices y un adorno!
