By Emaline Lubinger-Chavez (Pinole Valley High School)
The ability to create and share art has always been a huge part of community. From artists working together to create murals, to a shadowy figure in the night clinging to an overpass to get the graffiti just right. Fences made from street signs, a scribble on a bathroom mirror, a camera set to capture all these things that burn gold against the gray monotony. Some work is seen as vandalism, however, no place would be the same without the clashing colors splashed across bridges, walls, and boulevards.
Recently, the Richmond Art Center opened its doors to the beautiful chaos of art waiting just outside. Young artists from middle and high schools across western Contra Costa County took advantage of the space awaiting them and filled every inch of the Community and West Galleries. Paintings, photographs, sculptures and more almost overwhelm the eyes. Over 400 pieces cover the walls from floor to ceiling; each one a window into an artist’s life.
These sorts of spaces are incredibly important to young people today. As a certified young person, I can say that many of us struggle with anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and general confusion. It’s like reading the back of a pill bottle. But art is a salve on the leaking wound of the soul. It calms and cools the raging fire within us and gives us space to think and reflect on life. The annual WCCUSD Student Art Show pushes kids to create art, which in turn pushes them to better understand themselves and the world around them.
I myself actually have a piece in the installation. A relatively small black and white photo, with words carved ruggedly into its surface, it stands out from the colorful almost piñata like masks above it. Across the way, the masks lock eyes with eerie portraits both painted and photographed. The contrast serves to show just how different everyone’s story is. And just how important it is that everyone’s story has a chance to be told.
We are all different. That is a simple fact of life. Art is how we express our differences. This installation provides a healthy and positive environment for young people to express themselves and be accepted as artists. For this, I am thankful.
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Top image: Elianna Moran, Over the Rainbow, 2019 (Pinole Valley High School, Grade 9). On view in 54th Annual WCCUSD Student Art Show, March 26 – April 24, 2019.
A one-day symposium at the Richmond Art Center on the history of California textile art, and current trends, innovations and happenings. Guest speakers: Susan Avila, Carole Beadle, Alice Beasley, Jean Cacicedo, Lia Cook, Ellen Hauptli, Amy Keefer, Barbara Shapiro, Stacy Speyer, JoAnn Stabb, and Deborah Valoma
A one-day symposium at the Richmond Art Center on the history of California textile art, and current trends, innovations and happenings. Guest speakers: Susan Avila, Carole Beadle, Alice Beasley, Jean Cacicedo, Lia Cook, Ellen Hauptli, Amy Keefer, Barbara Shapiro, Stacy Speyer, JoAnn Stabb, and Deborah Valoma
A one-day symposium at the Richmond Art Center on the history of California textile art, and current trends, innovations and happenings. Guest speakers: Susan Avila, Carole Beadle, Alice Beasley, Jean Cacicedo, Lia Cook, Ellen Hauptli, Amy Keefer, Barbara Shapiro, Stacy Speyer, JoAnn Stabb, and Deborah Valoma
A one-day symposium at the Richmond Art Center on the history of California textile art, and current trends, innovations and happenings. Guest speakers: Susan Avila, Carole Beadle, Alice Beasley, Jean Cacicedo, Lia Cook, Ellen Hauptli, Amy Keefer, Barbara Shapiro, Stacy Speyer, JoAnn Stabb, and Deborah Valoma
A one-day symposium at the Richmond Art Center on the history of California textile art, and current trends, innovations and happenings. Guest speakers: Susan Avila, Carole Beadle, Alice Beasley, Jean Cacicedo, Lia Cook, Ellen Hauptli, Amy Keefer, Barbara Shapiro, Stacy Speyer, JoAnn Stabb, and Deborah Valoma
Picturing a Life: A discussion with former students and colleagues of artist Joan Brown. Our panelists were Bob Brokl, Phil Linhares, Hilda Robinson, and John Seed.
The exhibition Mapping the Uncharted (March 21 – May 20, 2017) interpreted the art and uses of mapmaking. The five artists in the exhibition—Guillermo Galindo, Mark Garrett, Indira Martina Morre, Lordy Rodriguez, and Diane Rosenblum—used physical maps as a point of departure for reconfiguring impressions of geography, politics, and visual language.
The exhibition Marking Space (March 21 – May 20, 2017) included seven sculpture and installation artists who moved off the historical pedestal to establish measured distance, to examine the nature of material, and to expose structure. In diverse materials, Mari Andrews, Robert Brady, Genevieve Hastings, Jann Nunn, Gay Outlaw, Lucy Puls, and Tracey Snelling deployed matter to mirror habitat and architecture, to explore aggregation, to reflect on social structures, and to give voice to a common impulse to locate myriad humanistic concerns in space.
As the Richmond Art Center celebrated its 80th Anniversary year, it prepared a major exhibition in tribute to its history and its mission. The exhibition, Making Our Mark, looked to artists who have had a history with the Art Center: artists who have exhibited, supported, and enriched the programs over the years. In selecting these artists, we reflected on the scope of interest—media as richly varied as painting, ceramics, fiber, sculpture, and photography—and themes as diverse as the cultural backgrounds at the foundation of the community.
We also asked each of the invited artists to put forward a younger artist: someone whom they have taught or mentored or whose work they have felt should be shown and promoted. This, too, is in line with our history and our mission—giving voice to new artists and opening the galleries to new visions. Some of the invited artists, including Jim Melchert, Hung Liu, Squeak Carnwath, and Lia Cook, had their very first exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center and have over the years served as the core of the Bay Area art community, teaching, mentoring, and lighting a path for younger artists. And for some of the younger artists, this exhibition presents one of the first major showings of their work. Turning our attention to materiality, the environment, systems of power and inequality, these artists have followed different modes of expression with a common passion for their art.
