Taking Liberties: Artist Talk & Print Demo 8/10/24
Taking Liberties: Artist Talk & Print Demo
Hear about the journeys from San Quentin Arts Studio to Art Hazelwood’s studio in Richmond, and to Diablo Valley College for live steamroller printing.
Saturday, August 10, 11am-1pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
FREE
Join us for a conversation with JUST ARTISTS, a group of teaching artists and program alumni from the William James Association’s San Quentin Prison Arts Project. The artists will discuss their Taking Liberties print series, currently on view in the West Gallery.
Galleries open at 10am. Come early for an informal reception and to meet the artists. The program starts at 11am with an artist talk followed by a print demo.
JUST ARTISTS: Henry Frank, Nicola Bucci, Gary Harrell, Isiah Daniels, Felix Lucero, Katya McCulloch, Beth Thielen, Art Hazelwood
Richmond Art Center Parking and Entrance Map
Event Panelists:
Henry Frank is a descendant of the great indigenous nations of the Yurok and Pomo Tribes. He is a returning resident, former Arts In Corrections participant/clerk, and currently working for the William James Association as the Communications Director and Teaching Artist at California Medical Facility (CMF). He uses his art to amplify the voices of people of color (specifically Native Americans), people who are currently experiencing incarceration, and returning residents (aka formerly incarcerated) to expose the mistreatment, dehumanization, and desolation.
Felix Lucero is of Mexican descent, a William James Association board member, a Returning Resident, a sheet-metal worker, a husband and father. He is a visual artist, specifically a block printer. He produces museum quality prints and has prints in the Library of Congress. He is a prolific writer and a self-taught guitarist.
Mwasi Fuvi was born in Springfield Mass. – a runaway who faced the adversities of the streets alone, searching for beauty in a world of loneliness and heartbreaks. Throughout he shows these struggles and beauty. He reveals the loneliness and the heart aches that he has endured. With a stroke of his brush he made the tears he shed disappear, the sadness he felt he turned to laughter, and his pangs turned into rains of a warm summer day. He can change day to night and paint a heaven from hell. No matter where he came from in life, his destination is only as great as his imagination.
Beth Thielen has worked with incarcerated and at risk populations for over 30 years. Her work and the work of her students are represented in the Library of Congress, the Getty Research Institute, the Hammer Museum. Houghton Library at Harvard, Yale University, as well as other public and private collections. She is the recipient of awards from the Puffin Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and is a Blue Mountain Center and Rauschenberg fellow. She currently resides in Fresno California.
Katya McCulloch, Director of TeamWorks Art Mentoring Program, is a community artist whose work, and collaborative works with students, are exhibited internationally and in private and public collections including the Library of Congress, UC Berkeley, Emory University, Stanford University, among other special collection libraries. As TeamWorks founding artist, she has made art with justice system involved youth in Marin County for 20 years. She has created community murals and public art in a wide variety of unconventional settings: Music Outback Foundation (Australia), Marin County Fair “Public Art Days”, Italian Street Painting Festival. Katya has 20 years of experience teaching printmaking at San Quentin State Prison through the William James Association Prison Arts Project.
Gary Harrell is aesthetic pleasing to the eyes. He is 69 years young. He is always thinking about his next project.
JUST ARTISTS who unfortunately cannot attend the event:
Art Hazelwood recently received the Art is A Hammer award for political printmaking from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. This lifetime achievement award was previously given to artists including Jos Sances, Juan Fuentes and Emory Douglas. The obsession through which he’s worked as an artist is in searching out ways and means for art to have value in society; political, personal and cultural.
Nicola Bucci, an artist passionate about community outreach, expressing through surrealism, using life experiences, and spreading joy through art.
Top Image: Taking Liberties (2024)