Through 8/17 This season, the Richmond Art Center is showcasing several exhibitions’ worth of artworks. The View From Here and Taking Liberties highlight pieces from incarcerated or formerly incarcerated creators, while the Richmond Open Studios Preview exhibition showcases the talent of the city’s own artists ahead of the event. richmondartcenter.org.
Eduardo Ramirez, a Philadelphia-based mural artist, was incarcerated for 27 years in a Pennsylvania prison for a crime he did not commit. Since he was exonerated in November, Ramirez has found solace in making and teaching art in his community.
“When a person creates, there’s a sense of pride in the act of creating, regardless of what the final product looks like,” he said.
His art is on display through Aug. 17 at the Richmond Art Center in an exhibition called “The View From Here.” The exhibition features 24 incarcerated artists from the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution Phoenix. It came together through letters exchanged between men at the two prisons about creating art and communicating their thoughts into something tangible. It is being presented by the San Quentin Prison Arts Project in collaboration with Mural Arts Philadelphia and also was on display in Philadelphia in March.
“They were creators,” Ramirez said of the people he worked with during his time in prison. “They were much larger than the worst mistake they ever made in their lives.”
What: “The View From Here” art exhibition
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday until Aug. 17
Where: Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave.
Cost: Free
Some of their letters are also on display at the exhibition, representing those who are unable to visit their own showcase. One letter reads, “I am in a beautiful art program here at San Quentin, I am in all the art classes hahaha. Remember that you have entered the realm of ‘timelessness’ with the art you’ve done.”
Carol Newborg, program manager at the San Quentin Arts Project, emphasized the artists’ absence in the exhibition space, saying the system imposes “cruelly long sentences” despite its contention of rehabilitation.
The collaborators wanted to make the artists’ presence felt, which includes their letters as well as songs that hold personal meaning for them.
“As you walk around and look at the art, you can hear the music that was selected by the artists,” said Amy Spencer, community engagement director at the Richmond Art Center. “You are seeing their work but you’re also hearing something that they helped shape as well.”
Ramirez is one of the few artists who is out of prison and the only one who will be able to attend the exhibition. He chose the track ‘Cha Cha Cha’ by MC Lyte released in the late ‘80s to go with his painting titled “Radiohead.”
The artists came up with the exhibit’s title, wanting to convey what prisoners think of the outside world and what the public thinks of prisons.
“A lot of people in society have their preconceived notions of what prison life is like. And that’s because they’ve never been to prison,” Ramirez said. “The reality is that a person’s life is multifaceted and multilayered, and ‘The View From Here’ gets at that.”
The exhibition creates a space for dialogue between the public and the incarcerated. Richmond Art Center is also organizing a panel discussion on July 13 with Ramirez and artist Mwasi Fuvi, whose work is not part of the exhibition, alongside facilitators of the two prison art projects, Newborg and Phoebe Bachman. It will be followed by a mural painting workshop with Ramirez, where the community is welcome to help complete a mural designed by artists from the Pennsylvania prison.
The event and exhibit are free to attend.
(Photos: “Fishing from a Hole in a Wall” by Keith Andrews; “Bridge to Freedom” by Jeffrey A. Isom, photographer Peter Merts. Courtesy of Richmond Art Center)
“Bewildered Cleo” is by Richmond, CA., artist Sara Sunstein. Credit: Sara Sunstein
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Art viewed with a black-light flashlight and a creative take on crocheting are among works on display starting next week when the Richmond Art Center opens its preview of pieces by artists participating in the Visual Artists of Richmond Open Studios event this summer.
The Open Studios Preview Exhibition, July 3-Aug. 17, showcases work by 42 of the 48 participating Open Studios artists. Visitors can use the preview to decide which studios they’d like to tour during the official event, Aug. 17-18. An opening reception will be held at the Richmond Art Center from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday.
North and East resident Sadiqeh Agah’s gouache and watercolor paintings/mixed media, including pieces depicting food from local restaurants and coffee houses, will be featured at RAC during the preview and at NIAD Gallery during Open Studios.
North and East resident Sadiqeh Agah’s gouache and watercolor paintings/mixed media pieces are inspired by food from Richmond restaurants and coffee houses. “Raymond’s Pizza” will be featured at Richmond Art Center during the Open Studios preview and at NIAD Gallery during Open Studios. Courtesy of Sandiqeh Agah
“We moved here in November 2020, and I’m delighted I’m still getting to know Richmond,” Agah said. “I feel so supported (as an artist) living here. It’s been very motivating.”
Sara Sunstein has worked in clay, collage, papier-mâché, and mixed media for decades. Some of her pieces, including “Bewildered Cleo,” will be on view Saturday Aug. 17 at RAC. The Richmond Annex resident also creates crocheted “tape boxes” from cassette tape. She credits RAC classes as a source of inspiration.
“I haven’t shown in forever,” she said.
Visual Artists of Richmond Open StudiosPreview/Exhibition
WHAT: See works by artists who will open their studios to the public later this summer.
WHEN: Opening reception is 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave. Preview runs July 3-Aug. 17. Open studio tours are Aug. 17-18.
INFO: A map of Open Studio locations will be posted on the Richmond Art Center website and will be available at the opening reception.
Oil painter/sculptor/mixed-media artist Ozi Magaña moved to East Richmond Heights two-and-a-half years ago and will show one piece at RAC and open his home studio during the tour weekend. “From the Ashes” is one of his “black-light reactive” paintings, and the artist plans to supply a black-light flashlight, allowing viewers to experience it. He’s discovered an underground Richmond arts scene since moving to the city.
“There’s a warmth here…it’s like a mini-Bay Area in its diversity,” he said.
Credit: Courtesy Ozi Magaña
JANIS HASHE
Janis Hashe, a journalist for 30 years, writes about the arts.
What I cover: I cover performing and fine arts and other community news for Richmondside.
My background: I have been a professional journalist for 30 years and a freelancer since 2020. My work has appeared in Sunset Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic Journal Constitution, The Tennessean, Monocle, and the East Bay Express and East Bay Magazine.
The concept of “home” is baked into human DNA. “There’s no place like home,” says Dorothy as she clicks her heels to return to Kansas. But, wrote seminal American writer Thomas Wolfe, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”
Home can be a safe, comforting place—but for some, it’s a place of anger and insecurity, and for others, “the homeless,” it doesn’t exist at all.
All these ideas of home and more are explored in the exhibition at the Richmond Art Center through June 15. “Home Show” features the work of six RAC teaching artists—Eli Africa, Ned Axthelm, Colleen Garland, Julia LaChica, Travis Meinolf and Kristin Satzman—who work in many media, from printmaking to ceramics, to jewelry to video.
RAC Community Engagement Director Amy Spencer both envisioned the idea for “Home Show” and curated it. She did so with two goals, she said: To curate a theme that people have in common, and to highlight the work of the teaching artists at RAC. “Everyone was happy to participate. It’s always exciting to find a way to work differently with them,” she said.
Spencer noted that the pandemic elicited mixed feelings about home for many. While home was a safe space and a retreat from a frightening unknown, it also felt confining and isolating. “You can see that in [one of] Ned Axthem’s paintings, created during the pandemic,” she said. “It’s hyper-focused on this space … comfortable but confined.”
Julia LaChica’s pieces in “Home Show” address home as both a place to be venerated and as an ideal that isn’t realized for many. Her/their Home Altar (Ode to Monica) celebrates her/their Japanese/Filipino ancestry, with items collected over 20 years from those places, and also including an old clock assembly with a note honoring a housing activist friend who died.
LaChica, an Oakland resident, has been a teaching artist at RAC for a year, instructing classes in both screen and block printing. She/they has watched and spoken with gallery visitors while they look at Home Altar. “Someone said, ‘Standing in front of this is very calming,’” she/they said.
But LaChica’s three works in the exhibition deal with her/their own experiences as a child of divorce, moving from one home to another. Court Ordered depicts a family portrait layered over a court-ordered custody document. LaChica and her/their siblings were, for some time, bounced between her/their mother’s and father’s apartments, with neither feeling like a true home.
In another work, Home, some of the effects of this are seen. LaChica’s mother did not speak English well, and felt she had to leave her three young children home alone as she went out to work. LaChica’s five-year-old brother accidentally set the apartment on fire. At that point, “Child Protective Services stepped in, and we moved into public housing in [San Francisco’s] Chinatown,” she/they said.
Yet the third piece, Permanent Resident, is an homage to her/their mother, using her old Japanese passport, and reimagining her/their 4-foot-11-inch-tall mother as a samurai with a sword. Under “occupation” on the passport, LaChica wrote: “Badass hell-raiser.” Under “visual identification marks,” she/they inserted: “Back straight,” “Youthfully beautiful” and “Singing Japanese love songs.”
LaChica is inspired by the theme of home, and plans to continue creating a “broader exhibit [focusing on] the displacement of people. This project will affirm that all people deserve a place to rest. I want people to think about that,” she/they said.
Displacement is also addressed in Eli Africa’s animated video, The Story of Frai, a tribute to immigrant workers deciding to leave their home in the Philippines to make a better life for their children.
Richmond resident Colleen Garland has taught ceramics at RAC since 2019. With more than 10 pieces in “Home Show,” she considers her contributions to be, in part, a tribute to her own ceramics teacher at Contra Costa College, Mary Law. “I continue to fire with her,” she said.
The show’s theme literally hit home for Garland. “I make pots to be used,” she said. But some of her work in the show is sculptural, including a “chipmunk house,” complete with log and mushrooms, created at the request of a friend, and dioramas of interior scenes. In Soda Kiln (Pot House), “I replicated the inside of Mary Law’s kiln. It’s a home for pots,” she said.
One project she attempted to make specifically for “Home Show” proved unsuccessful. “We had a month’s turnaround to prepare for the show, and I tried to make a self-portrait,” she said. But she didn’t let the clay dry long enough—and it exploded in the kiln. She’s philosophical about it, noting that working with clay, glaze and heat is always full of variables, which is one of the reasons the work that survives and is beautiful should be valued.
Garland would like visitors to “Home Show” to feel “that each artist has brought in a piece of [their own] home.” She also urges viewers to imagine how pieces interact with each other, like her pots being used in Travis Meinolf’s Small Shelter.
“Look really closely [at the art],” she said. “How was it made? Travis’ woven house took hours of work.”
Amy Spencer discussed yet another aspect of the show: That it’s a home for the multiple teaching artists featured in it, as well as for the many students from all over the East Bay who take classes with them. RAC offers classes for adults, kids, youth and families, including some bilingual offerings.
Art Boost! scholarships are available for some who cannot afford class fees. This summer, adult classes run the gamut from “Urban Nature Journaling” to “Japanese Brush Painting and Calligraphy.” A summer art camp for kids, and free summer art classes for youth, are also offered.
“The Richmond Art Center has been here for more than 80 years, but there are still people who haven’t discovered us yet,” Spencer said.
“We are doing special things here,” Garland added.
Upcoming: “Richmond Open Studios Preview,” an exhibition showcasing art by artists participating in Richmond Open Studios; July 3–Aug. 17.
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. Gallery hours: Wed-Sat, 10am to 4pm. 510.620.6772. richmondartcenter.org
Top image: Created During The Pandemic, Ned Axthelm’s ‘Whelmed’ (2020, Oil On Panel), Conveys The ‘Comfortable Yet Confined’ Feeling Of Home During That Time. (Photo Courtesy Of Richmond Art Center)
Your Guide to This Summer’s Not-To-Miss Visual Art
By Sarah Hotchkiss | May 13, 2024
[Excerpt]
Every year, it’s a struggle to whittle this list down to a select few. There’s simply so much happening in art spaces across the Bay Area. For 2024, I’ve plotted out an ideal summer, full of inventive gallery shows, exciting museum exhibitions and local artists getting the attention they deserve, all in venues spread across the region.
…
Keith Andrews, ‘Fishing from a Hole in a Wall,’ 2023; Acrylic on parachute cloth. (Philadelphia Mural Arts at SCI Phoenix)
Over the past year, incarcerated artists at San Quentin and Philadelphia’s State Correctional Institution (SCI) Phoenix have exchanged letters — but not through ordinary means. Using their arts programs (the William James Foundation and Philadelphia Mural Arts) as intermediaries, letters were scanned, emailed and printed out to facilitate a creative exchange. The results in this group show includes both imagined and literal views (of daily prison life, of a landscape seen through bars), alongside some of those letters. Art can transport us to other places and into others’ experiences, the show argues, but that is true for both the makers and viewers of that work.
Richmond Art Center seeks applicants for artist residency, board
By Kathy Chouteau
The Richmond Art Center (RAC) is offering opportunities for a residency for one special artist and board positions for those wishing to support local art.
The Richmond Artist Residency enables an “emerging or mid-career artist to pursue their creative work, while also engaging with the community in Richmond,” according to the RAC. The center is additionally seeking community-minded folks who live or work in Richmond to serve three-year terms on its Board of Directors in support of its work.
Richmond Artist Residency
Applications for the artist residency are due by Friday, May 24. The residency runs from October 2024 to May 2025 and comes with an $8,000 stipend, 250 square foot dedicated studio for 8 months and opportunities to teach, exhibit, take classes and develop strategies for community-based arts programming. The selected artist will also receive competitive hourly rates for their teaching time.
Those who have a strong connection to Richmond and who are bilingual in English/Spanish or English/Mandarin are especially encouraged by the RAC to apply for the residency, as well as artists who are open to learning the best practices for community engagement. The center is being supported by the National Endowment for the Arts to make this opportunity possible. Learn more and apply here.
Board of Directors
A variety of volunteers are sought, including people who live/work in Richmond, are artists, love the RAC, have accounting/bookkeeping expertise, legal experience, are experienced fundraisers and other leaders who may want to become president/VP someday.
Board meetings are typically held on Zoom or in-person and its members help the RAC as ambassadors at evening and weekend events, by contributing their knowledge and expertise and supporting the center financially as is possible. Learn more here and reach out to jose@richmondartcenter.org to indicate your interest along with a brief bio, if possible.
“Spring exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center shine a light on the beautiful, ongoing cycle of teaching, learning and growing through art,” according to the center.
An annual crowd-pleaser for nearly six decades, the teacher-curated WCCUSD Student Art Show features the creative works of more than 300 middle and high school students originating from 13 West Contra Costa Unified School District schools in Richmond, El Cerrito, El Sobrante, Hercules, Montalvin Manor, Pinole and San Pablo.
A reception will kick off the WCCUSD Student Art Show on Tuesday, April 16, from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. An award presentation will occur at 5:45 p.m. and the event will include music by the De Anza High School band.
The other two exhibitions opening in April, Home Show and Art Blooms Here, illuminate both teacher and student artwork created within the RAC studios and demonstrate the creativity thriving there, said the RAC.
Shown in the art center’s South Gallery, the Home Show will showcase the works of Eli Africa, Ned Axthelm, Colleen Garland, Julia LaChica, Travis Meinolf and Kristin Satzman.
Artwork by Colleen Garland for the Home Show.
Over in the Community and West Galleries, Art Blooms Here will spotlight the works of Alice Armstrong, Maggie Burns, Larry Craighill, Julissa Duran, Ana Gadish-Linares, Mara Greenaway, Zamira Ha, Beatrice Hartman, Marion Henon, Eugenie Hsu, Susie Kelly, Jen Kelly-DeWitt, Juniper Kirkwood, Jolie Krakauer, Paula Kristovich, Michelle Lin, Susana Macarron, Ahmaya Maroney, Elijah Martinez Ruiz, Jessica McDowell, Jeanette Nichols, Tatyana Ryevzina, Maya Soichet-Yampolsky, Hanneke Steenmetz and ‘Beginner Handbuilding’ students.
All are welcomed to the reception for Home Show and Art Blooms Here Thurs., April 18, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Find the Richmond Art Center at 2540 Barrett Ave. in Richmond. Visit the gallery during its open hours Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free to the exhibitions and events.
Art by Jen Kelly-DeWitt, Hold Complexity, 2023, for Art Blooms Here.
When the Richmond Art Center lost its biggest donor last year, Executive Director José Rivera said he was worried about the future.
“Over many years, that donor contributed $100,00 annually, making him the most significant benefactor in the center’s history when considering the cumulative sum of his contribution over time,” he said. “We lost him since last year he closed out his foundation.”
For a while, it wasn’t clear how the RAC would make up that shortfall.
But things are looking brighter.
So far, the center has raised more than one-third of the $300,000 it needs to cover registration fees and tuition for 2024. In addition, it met its $30,000 scholarship goal.
The scholarships, Rivera said, allow the center to offer art classes, which attract newcomers and grow the membership. They also make classes accessible to people who could not afford to pay $40 to $50 per session.
“We are in the black now, not red,” said Rivera, who attributes the turnaround to several factors that have increased revenue and donations.
The RAC has been holding more exhibitions and partnering more with sister museums to raise visibility and draw crowds from outside of Richmond. In 2022, for example, it partnered with the SFMOMA on the exhibition “Emmy Lou Packard — Artist of Conscience.”
“We also have a good amount of returning students who want to continue taking art classes after their first quarter,” said Elaine Moreno, the center’s visitor services coordinator. “A lot of students feel comfortable and love the space, so they return, and some even take multiple classes at a time.”
In addition to classes, the center holds events in community gathering spaces like the farmers market, flea markets, and schools. The community programs are free to the public. Some are funded through partnerships or grants, said Irene Conde, the center’s education director.
The center also recently hired Kimberly Ross as public programs coordinator Her goal is to help the center reach more people.
“My priority is to expand our reach and connect directly with the people of Richmond, making the Richmond Art Center and our offerings accessible to everyone,” she said. “As a Richmond native and artist, I can achieve this goal by tapping into my network to create opportunities for program collaboration with local organizations and businesses.”
In an arena where they’re often in the shadows, Black artists are creating spaces to recognize and celebrate their talent.
For the 28th year, the Richmond Art Center will present the “Art of the African Diaspora” exhibition, later this month. AOTD gives local artists of African descent a way to share their work with the community and each other.
The showcase, which will run from Jan. 24 to March 16, will feature 160 Bay Area artists working in a variety of mediums.
“You have artists who are at different stages of their career and success. This allows younger and mid-career artists to show their art,” said Stephen Bruce, a Richmond artist who chairs the steering committee.
The idea of this Black art mecca was first nurtured by the late Jan Hart-Schuyers, a revered Bay Area artist, art educator, and community organizer, according to the AOTAD website. Lauded for her many sculptures, Schuyers established a partnership with Los Angeles-born painter Rae Louise Hayward, and the two would go on to produce the first AOTAD showcase in 1997 under the name “Art of Living Black,” which featured 35 artists. Though they didn’t live to see the event’s growth, their vision was fulfilled.
But when the showcase ends each year, many of the participating artists return to a harsh reality. Since the first museums opened in America, Black people have had their likeness on display but seldom have had the chance to be recognized for their own works: a pattern noted by scholar Bridget R. Cooks in her book “Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind.”
In 2022, Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns, who created the Burns Halperin Report to analyze representation in the art market, surveyed 31 American museums and found that African American artists were underrepresented. Work by Black female artists comprised 0.5% of acquisitions of all the museums surveyed. And of the top 20 artists, only one — Julie Mehretu from Ethiopia — was of African descent.
AOTAD seeks to give more Black artists a platform to showcase their creative skills.
“This is like our Harlem Renaissance,” artist Kelvin Curry said, referring to the Black cultural revival in the 1920s.
This season’s showcase offers variety. Illustrator Virginia Jourdan, who’s been participating since the first showcase, is displaying acrylics. She’s produced works ranging from portraits to urban landscapes, and says her work is focused on “uplifting African American images.” Jourdan said she’s grateful for a space that allows her to celebrate her craft.
“Art is very relaxing for me and something that’s innate,” Jourdan said.
Curry’s work also is featured. A multimedia artist, Curry describes his work as “figurative, abstract, and symbolic.” He incorporates African-inspired shapes and color schemes into his work.
With the showcase, Curry said, “I hope to gain new collectors and more exposure.”
Bruce, who’s participated in AOTD since the beginning like Jourdan and Curry, said that the showcase benefits Bay Area residents as much as it does the artists, giving people a chance to experience art they otherwise might not have seen. After months of planning, he is excited for opening day.
“It’s a great opportunity for people to see an array of artists in their community,” Bruce said.
More information about the exhibit is on the AOTAD website.
RAC celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day through artmaking
October 9, 2023
By Mike Kinney
Dozens of community members and their families celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day through artmaking at the Richmond Art Center on Saturday.
It was part of the art center’s annual “Fall Family Day,” a fun, free event that invited the local community to get a taste of the RAC’s offerings while celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The event enlisted families to work on a community mural facilitated by muralist Luis Garcia. In other activities, the Native American Health Center of San Francisco held a powwow reading corner. Printing, knitting and leaf activity sessions were offered, and families could also contribute to a photographic portrait series by Anne Wolf and Lisa Levine.
DJ Freddie J of Hotmixx Entertainment provided guests with the best RB and jazz fusion, and tamales were served at a popular food pop-up.
The spirit of Indigenous Peoples’ Day was definitely here today; I am glad people had a chance to come and celebrate it with us,” said visitor Dee Brown, a Native Lakota.
Added Ruby Johnson, another guest, “My family really enjoyed helping to paint the community mural, it gives me a real sense of how important art is to our community.”
Kathy Driskill said it was her first visit to the RAC.
“And I had such a wonderful time being with the community celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day with arts and culture! I can’t wait to come back here next year,” Driskill said.
