This is life long work (2020) is a newly commissioned artwork by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. Reproduced as a 13 x 12 foot banner displayed at the front Barrett Street entrance of Richmond Art Center, the work was created via a collaborative community process.
Branfman-Verissimo says of their work, “The process of gathering the narratives of people and communities that surround me is on equal ground with the artistic craft of telling them.”
For This is life long work, Branfman-Verissimo collaborated with RAC staff and teaching artists through a discussion of community care. Specifically, they asked them, “How does this community enact, support and prioritize care, mutual aid, collective care and collective action?”
About the Artist: Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller & curator who after being based in Oakland, CA for 10 years, now lives and works in Richmond, VA. They got their BFA from California College of the Arts [Oakland, CA] and is currently getting their MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University [Richmond, VA]. Branfman-Verissimo’s work has been included in exhibitions at Deli Gallery [Long Island City, NY], EFA Project Space [New York City, NY], Pt. 2 Gallery [Oakland, CA], Leslie Lohman Museum for Gay & Lesbian Art [New York City, NY], Signal Center for Contemporary Art [Malmo, Sweden] and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San Francisco, CA], amongst others and performances at SOMArts Cultural Center [San Francisco, CA], Highways Performance Space [Los Angeles, CA], ACRE Gallery [Chicago, IL] and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [Berkeley, CA]. Branfman-Verissimo has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Kala Art Center [Berkeley, CA], ACRE Residency [Steuben, WI], Vermont Studio Center [Johnson, VT] and CENTER [Grand Rapids, MI]. They are the Founder of Nook Gallery, a gallery that was located in their home kitchen from 2015-2020 & will take new forms in the future! www.lukazabranfman-verissimo.com
About the ‘Art Lives Here’ Series: When Richmond Art Center’s facility is temporarily closed due to Covid-19, we worked with artists on these projects online and outside (at a safe social distance!) to find new ways to connect and make meaning with community through art.
Many Hands, One World – Quilts from the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks
Exhibition: January 24 – March 16, 2024
Reception: Saturday, January 27, 2024, 2pm-4pm | More info…
Stories and Reflections on the Refinery Healing Walks: Saturday, March 2, 11am (reception), 12pm (artist talk) | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Led by Indigenous women in prayer, over one thousand people walked hundreds of miles over four years, connecting one fossil-fuel impacted community to another along the northeast San Francisco Bay. The term “Refinery Corridor” was born from these walks between April 2014 and July 2017, which began with WesPac (defeated by community organizing) in Pittsburg, Shell and Tesoro Refineries in Martinez, Valero Refinery in Benicia, Conoco Phillips 66 Refinery in Rodeo, and Chevron Refinery in Richmond.
At the end of each walk, participants were invited to share their hopes and dreams about the safe, sustainable future they imagined. The quilts in this exhibition are the result of the walkers envisioning a healthier world. This is the first ever showing of the quilts since the first square was made 10 years ago.
Special Event: On Saturday, March 2, a special event to share stories and reflections from the Refinery Healing Walks will be held. A reception will begin at 11am, followed by a panel discussion at 12pm. This event is free and all are welcome.
About the Organizers: Idle No More SF Bay is a multi-generational, Native-women-led grassroots, all volunteer organization dedicated to climate change activism. Founded in 2013, our mission is to creatively do everything we can to ensure the future for the coming generations by addressing environmental harms caused by extreme energy. We focus on what we are for: clean air, water and soil, safe jobs and a sustainable future for the generations beyond. Rooted in Native traditions, we bring an indigenous perspective and leadership to climate justice work. We pray, conduct teach-ins, coordinate local non-violent direct actions, encourage people to envision the future they want to help create, and collaborate with others working for a just transition away from fossil fuels to ensure a future for the generations to come.
Exhibition: January 24, 2024 – March 16, 2024
Reception: Saturday, January 27, 2024, 2pm-4pm | More info…
Point Molate Artist Talk and butohBuddies Performance: Saturday, February 24, 1pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Located on the San Pablo Peninsula, Point Molate is a diverse ecosystem known as an osprey recovery site and for its rare eelgrass beds, coastal prairie, and coastal bluff native plants. It is located next to California’s third largest oil refinery in Richmond. Communities that border the facility experience higher health impacts and advocates seek equitable access along with preservation. Artists Rebeca García-González, Irene Wibawa, Tony Tamayo, and the butohBuddies performance group (Ruth Ichinaga, Kiyono Kishi, Lipton Mah, Nina Moore, and Irene Wibawa) present new artworks inspired by Point Molate.
Special Event: On February 24 at 1pm, the butohBuddies will share a performance inspired by Point Molate. Following the performance, curator Jenny E. Balisle will facilitate a conversation with the Point Molate artists.
The exhibition is organized by ARTSCCC (Arts Contra Costa County). ARTSCCC is a grassroots service and advocacy arts organization in Contra Costa County.
Top image: Irene Wibawa, The Residents (detail), 2023
Exhibition at Richmond Art Center: January 24 – March 16, 2024 Reception: Saturday, January 27, 2pm-4pm | More info… Artistic Achievement Awardee Talk: Saturday, January 27, 12pm-1:30pm | More info… Featured Speakers: Richard Mayhew & Foad Satterfield: Saturday, February 10, 12pm-1:30pm | More info… Closing Party: Saturday, March 16, 2pm-4pm | More info…
Open Studios: Feb 24-25, Mar 2-3, Mar 9-10, 2024 Satellite Exhibitions: Throughout January, February, March and April
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Now in its 27th year, Art of the African Diaspora continues to express and celebrate the creative achievements of artists of African descent. This year, over 150 artists showcase their work at Richmond Art Center, as well as in open studios and satellite exhibitions at different venues around the Bay Area.
Artistic Achievement Award Winners from 2023 and featured artists in the exhibition are John Broussard, Valerie Brown-Troutt, and Stacy Mootoo. The exhibition also includes a special tribute to Hilda Robinson.
2024 Artistic Achievement Award Winners: Deborah Butler, Kim Champion, and Carrie Lee McClish
CLICK HERE to donate to Art of the African Diaspora. 100% of your donation goes towards Art of the African Diaspora event costs and is managed by the Steering Committee who produces the program.
Exhibition: August 20, 2022 – June 19, 2023 Opening Reception: Saturday, August 20, 12pm-2pm Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm Location: Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Who Decides? S.P.O.T.S. The Game is an interactive mural that asks audiences to play. The game is made up of different decisions and actions that must be taken. Players are welcome to choose from 10 different characters and follow prompts.
Who Decides? was created throughout the summer of 2022 in the SPOTS youth public arts program. Students in the program developed ideas revolving around contemporary issues such as war, education, bodily autonomy, and choice. They then decided to enter these conversations through the playful guise of the “game”. As you travel through the game board you will see a dragon which represents a multicultural connection and prompts us to participate in voting. As the image flows through space, there are landing spots dedicated to different actions – healing, dancing, risk, gambles, etc. The players travel through a medical symbol of the caduceus intertwined with a fist of divine femininity towards a giant sun setting on the water in front of the maquilishuat tree – the national tree of El Salvador, and a butterfly representing immigration. We see playing cards depicting half bullets and crayons, addressing the notion of ingrained violence in the U.S. affecting the most vulnerable in society. The game passes through the realm of a goddess who is a guardian, giving energy to players and defending their rights to autonomy and self-sovereignty. The underground layer below her is filled with diamonds and riches, a nod to the beauty the earth carries and the humans need to extract it.
Designed and Painted by:
Luis Camarena
Maat Ou
Miranda Guzman
Yahir Garcia
Sonia Galindo
Andrea Vasquez
Mariella Gutierrez
Andrew Chico
Azahria Addison
Leslie Poblano
Lead Artists/Directors:
Keena Romano
Fredericko Alvarado
About the Program: SPOTS is an acronym for Supporting Peoples Outlooks, Talents, and Speech. Through “Muralism, Actions, and Community Activations” the program introduces young artists to the means to create vibrant community art works. Each year a cohort of artists (ages 14-24) learn about different models of community art projects, help to define how the program will affect local youth, and create a collaborative mural project.
Exhibition: June 28 – November 16, 2023 (galleries closed Fri, Nov 10 and Sat, Nov 11 for Veterans Day Weekend)
Reception: Saturday, July 15, 12pm-2pm | More info…
Stitch n’ Bitch + Enough Photo Portrait sessions: Saturday, July 22, 11am-3pm | More info…
Artist Gallery Walkthrough: Saturday, August 12, 12pm | More info… Stitch n’ Bitch + Enough Photo Portrait sessions (at Fall Family Day): Saturday, October 7, 12pm-3pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Anne Wolf’s ENOUGH Considered is a project that explores the multiple ways we define and embody ENOUGH. Through a series of artistic collaborations, Wolf invites deep reflection into our perceptions of wholeness, abundance, boundaries and sufficiency.
As a point of departure, Wolf presents her series of hand stitched alphabet samplers through which a cryptic system of “speaking” emerges. In these samplers, the word ENOUGH at first appears as a visual whisper buried within the cross-stitched alphabet. Gradually, it grows into a louder and more expansive affirmation as the series evolves.
Wolf’s samplers are accompanied by a collection of striking yet intimate photographs, each conveying a personal embodied gesture of ENOUGH. Created in collaboration with photographer Lisa Levine, these portraits are the result of a process in which participants reflected on and wrote their thoughts about ENOUGH then chose how to locate and mark it directly on their body. These portraits reveal the body as a site that holds stories which have been unspoken, ignored, unaddressed, unconsidered. This somatic exploration becomes a means of healing an old wound or violation, a message of boundaries and protection or a means of sanctifying one’s own sense of abundance.
In a gallery mural titled ENOUGH EVERYONE TOGETHER/ !BASTA! TODOS JUNTOS, designer Ana Llorente brings together written pieces from the portrait sessionshighlighting the depth and breadth of personal experiences, perspectives, understandings and assertions of ENOUGH.
As a participatory project, gallery visitors will find multiple opportunities to contribute to ENOUGH Considered. Letterpress cards created by The Aesthetic Union will be available as tactile objects to inscribe thoughts, feelings or stories about ENOUGH. A large-scale banner will offer an opportunity to collectively stitch ENOUGH in many languages spoken in our community; the banner becomes a declaration with each stitch manifesting what Audre Lorde referred to as “…the transformation of silence into language and action.”*
In written words, individual and collective samplers and photographic portraits, ENOUGH can become embodied and encrypted, benign or rebellious, leaving open-ended questions about language, privilege and power.
*Audre Lorde, Dream of Europe: Selected Seminars and Interviews: 1984-1992, p40
Top image: Anne Wolf, ENOUGH if we Share, 2020, Hand stitched cotton on linen
Exhibition: June 28 – November 16, 2023 (galleries closed Fri, Nov 10 and Sat, Nov 11 for Veterans Day Weekend)
Reception: Saturday, July 15, 12pm-2pm | More info…
Gallery Walkthrough: Saturday, July 29, 12pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
David Burke: Solastalgia is the second solo show in Richmond Art Center’s Greenhouse Series and it basks in the glum glow of his nostalgic yet prophetic paintings and site-specific window treatments. Solastalgia is a form of homesickness one feels when a beloved environment is fundamentally altered into unfamiliarity. The exhibition includes exemplars of Burke’s iconic style, which welds the Anthropocene’s industrial production, ecological destruction, and potential regeneration. In steam-punkesque paintings such as Agent Orange and Ennuipocalypse, do we witness a forest supplanted by refinery pipelines or do the trees grow triumphantly from mechanical, technologic ruins? Burke paints the viewer into the crossroads of now, asking, “Which side are you on?” He answers, “Both.”
More recent paintings such as Mirage and Urban Oasis I imagine a vast sky/sea screen hoisted onto workers’ attention within capital’s machine, but Burke knows along with John Lennon’s song “Working Class Hero” how the heavy gears of labor can synch into the mind’s watery cogs and grant workers “no time instead of it all.” Time itself is here utilized as a painting technique. Look closely at the wavingly concentric geode- and aura-like ridges of evaporation that adorn the range of blues in the high-gloss screens. Burke puts the fun back into watching paint dry. He most fully explores desiccation and flood as means and meaning in Limbic Zone, which could appear to be an aerial photograph of extreme sea levels and oil spills coursing around burnt-sienna land masses. The artwork’s title brings to mind the mind and its areas most in control of behavior, emotion, and long-term memory. Are we witnessing a cross section of our future world or our psyche deep in climate grief? Again Burke replies, “Yes, both.”
David Burke’s latest painting series on display in Solastalgia reads as futuristic play structures. Site of utmost childhood joy, playgrounds take a tragicomic turn toward Burke’s all but patented manufactured, sylvan mind meld. The cheerful forms curdle into symbols for the harsh, toxic world we’re leaving children at the same time they suggest creative solutions future generations will find. The fantastical figures initially seem to stand before the starkness and palette of many midcentury science fiction book covers. On closer inspection and introspection, the background skies look like paused chemical reactions such as crystalization as well as like the way the greenhouse effect and climate crisis are generated by chemical compounds trapping light’s heat inside our atmosphere to a disastrous degree. The skies also evoke microscopic views of states of mind: solastalgia, climate grief, hope against hope. David Burke studies the prison cell in our cells and our celestial spheres. He sees an escape route and exclaims, “Paint! Keep it in the ground or in our art! But keep it out of the air!”
The Greenhouse is an exhibition series presented in Richmond Art Center’s West Gallery throughout 2023. It focuses on the climate crisis and environmental justice movements in Richmond, CA. The greenhouse effect is a central metaphor for understanding the conditions that account for life on earth as well as how global warming and thus catastrophic climate change work. In this three-part series, the art of Tanja Geis, David Burke, and Abi Mustapha together tell a story and activate an experience of resilience and growth, culminating in a celebration of local environmental activists. The Greenhouse is organized in partnership with Round Weather and curated by its director Chris Kerr.
Printmaking at NIAD: The Legacy of Andrés Cisneros-Galindo
Exhibition: June 28 – November 16, 2023 (galleries closed Fri, Nov 10 and Sat, Nov 11 for Veterans Day Weekend)
Reception: Saturday, July 15, 12pm-2pm | More info…
Artist Talk: Saturday, July 29, 2023, 1pm-2pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Andrés Cisneros-Galindo began facilitating printmaking at NIAD Art Center in 1985, shortly after the organization was founded. Since then he has worked with countless artists to explore and reimagine the process of printmaking through collaboration.
This exhibition surveys decades of studio work and serves as an archive of the curator’s legacy at NIAD. The traditions of printmaking are reinvented by each artist’s practice and Cisneros-Galindo’s facilitation. Each piece records this practice of letting go and following the rules at the same time.
“It is the way that printmaking should be, and painting in general. You know art-making—it’s a continuous process of learning and relearning, and inventing. Inventing is the whole thing, you know.”
This exhibition was presented at NIAD Art Center in December 2022 with the title NIAD Ink: 35 Years of Prints, in celebration of Andrés Cisneros-Galindo’s legacy as an educator, mentor and printmaker. At Richmond Art Center, this exhibition will be presented next to the first major survey exhibition of Cisneros-Galindo’s work.
Top image: Felicia Griffin, Untitled (D1338), Unique 1989, Linocut print on paper, 13″ x 15″
Exhibition: June 28 – November 16, 2023 (galleries closed Fri, Nov 10 and Sat, Nov 11 for Veterans Day Weekend)
Reception: Saturday, July 15, 12pm-2pm | More info…
Print Demo: Saturday, July 29, 2pm-3:30pm | More info…
Artist Panel Talk: Saturday, August 19, 12pm-1:30pm | More info…
Closing Reception: Saturday, November 4, 12pm-3pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
This exhibition is the first major survey of the 50 year artistic trajectory of Richmond-based artist Andrés Cisneros-Galindo.
Andrés Cisneros-Galindo is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work is marked by a strong sense of history, a commitment to community organizing, and experimentation. Germinating in the 1960s from the leftist politics of his native Tijuana Mexico Cisneros-Galindo’s work took root in the Bay Area’s Chicano movement of the 1970s and through the decades has pursued an exploration of the quintessential American experience.
This exhibition is the first major survey of Cisneros-Galindo’s wide range of work, which include collagraphs, mixed media collages, sculptures, political serigraph posters, and large abstract expressionist paintings. Together, this collection of works will offer an intimate perspective into Cisneros-Galindo’s experiences as a Mexican immigrant, activist, educator and artist grappling with the social and political currents of American life. From the political posters that helped mobilize the Bay Area’s Chicano community to the abstract expressionist paintings that embody fragments and cultural vestiges of the immigrant identity, the collection of work in this survey highlights how Cisneros-Galindo’s practice has always been integrated in contemporary struggles around race, education, the environment, justice and democracy both in the U.S. and in Mexico.
This exhibition is organized in partnership with NIAD Art Center.
About the Artist: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo was born in Baja California in 1945. At age 14 he joined the studio of Hector Castellon in Tijuana, Mexico where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. Andrés moved to the Bay Area in 1967 to pursue his passions – education and art. He graduated from California State University, Hayward, with a degree in Early Childhood Education and completed studies in printmaking and painting in Mexico in 1978. Cisneros-Galindo’s experiences in education range from lecturing at a Mexican university to directing the bilingual Centro Infantil de la Raza program.
Cisneros-Galindo draws much inspiration from Mexican and Indian iconography. Specializing in printmaking, Andrés founded Taller Sin Fronteras, a printmaking collective, in 1983 and joined the faculty of the National Institute of Art and Disabilities (NIAD) as a printmaking teacher, studio manager, and artistic director. His art has been exhibited internationally.
Top image: Andrés Cisneros-Galindo, Mictlan, 1998, Oil and mixed media on canvas
Exhibition: April 5 – June 3, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 15, 12pm-2pm
Gallery Walkthrough with Tanja Geis: Thursday, May 11, 5:30pm-6:30pm | More info… Closing Reception: Saturday June 3, 2pm-4pm | More info…
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
In Recompose, the first exhibition of The Greenhouse series, artist Tanja Geis displays mesmerizing cyanotypes of painted decomposing common murres, a local seabird that starved and experienced historic die-offs in 2015 as a direct result of global warming. A cyanotype is like a greenhouse in that they both gather light’s potential, the former being a blue print made from direct sunlight, the latter a building where sunlight’s warmth sticks around. At times shadows are cast onto the prints by suspended sculptures formed from ocean litter, mud from Richmond Bay ridden with toxins and heavy metals, and Hong Kong beach sand from Geis’s childhood.
The risograph print depicts the inside of a red abalone shell, a legendary species whose population plummeted with its Northern California kelp forest ecosystem, down 95% between 2008 and 2019. Geis has given the shell prints–with their ear-like shape and iridescent reflectiveness–to the Californians who gave their voices to the sound art piece. Each separately recorded what they imagine the ocean to sound like, and the artist layered them into a recomposition, a collective invocation and listening to the human, natural, and technologic worlds merge. The ocean sounds like windswept rain on a greenhouse. Both are places where matter breaks down, finds the great creative spark, and makes living beings. Tanja Geis reassembles the components of decay into new forms, new bodies, new life.
The Greenhouse is an exhibition series presented in Richmond Art Center’s West Gallery throughout 2023. It focuses on the climate crisis and environmental justice movements in Richmond, CA. The greenhouse effect is a central metaphor for understanding the conditions that account for life on earth as well as how global warming and thus catastrophic climate change work. In this three-part series, the art of Tanja Geis, David Burke, and Abi Mustapha together tell a story and activate an experience of resilience and growth, culminating in a celebration of local environmental activists. The Greenhouse is organized in partnership with Round Weather and curated by its director Chris Kerr.
About the Artist: Tanja Geis makes work that invites intimacy with human-disturbed ecosystems through queering, drawing close to and staying with the impacts of humans on the liveliness of non-humans. Geis holds an MFA in Art Practice from University of California Berkeley and a BA in Fine Art from Yale University. She has exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and galleries in Europe and Asia. Her residencies include Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate and Affiliate Fellowships, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Blue Mountain Center and Kala Art Institute. www.tanjageis.com
Top image: Tanja Geis, SeeBird III, 2016
ESPAÑOL
Tanja Geis: Recompose
Exposición: 5 de abril – 3 de junio de 2023 Recepción de apertura: Sábado, 15 de abril, 12pm-2pm Recorrido de la galería con Tanja Geis: jueves 11 de mayo, 5:30 pm-6:30pm | Más información… Recepción de Clausura: Sábado 3 de junio, 2pm-4pm | Más información…
En Recompose, la primera exposición de la serie The Greenhouse, la artista Tanja Geis muestra fascinantes cianotipos de araos comunes en descomposición,una especie de ave marina que sufrió muertes históricas a lo largo de las costas locales en el verano de 2015 como resultado directo del calentamiento global. Un cianotipo es como un invernadero en que ambos reúnen el potencial de la luz, el cianotipo es una impresión azul hecha de la luz solar directa, y el invernadero es un edificio donde el calor de la luz del sol se atrapa. En momentos hay sombras que se proyectan en los cianotipos, sombras formadas por esculturas hechas de basura oceánica, barro de la bahía de Richmond lleno de toxinas y metales pesados, y arena de la playa de Hong Kong de donde Geis creció.
La impresión en risografía muestra el interior de una concha de abulón rojo, una especie legendaria cuya población se desplomó junto con el ecosistema de bosque de algas marinas del norte de California, un 95 % entre 2008 y 2019. La impresión de la concha en forma de oreja y su reflejo iridiscente se presta a una pieza de audio hecha por personas que dieron su voz. Cada uno grabó por separado cómo se imaginan que sonaría el océano, y el artista los superpuso en una recomposición, una invocación colectiva y la fusión de los mundos humano, natural y tecnológico. El océano suena como lluvia azotada por el viento en un invernadero. Ambos son lugares donde la materia se descompone, encuentra la gran chispa creadora y hace seres vivos. Tanja Geis vuelve a ensamblar los componentes de la decadencia en nuevas formas, nuevos cuerpos, nueva vida.
The Greenhouse es una serie de exposiciones presentada en la West Gallery en Richmond Art Center a lo largo de 2023. Se centra en la crisis climática y los movimientos de justicia ambiental en Richmond, CA. El efecto invernadero es una metáfora central para comprender las condiciones que explican la vida en la tierra, así también cómo funciona el calentamiento global y, por lo tanto, el cambio climático catastrófico. En esta serie de tres partes, el arte de Tanja Geis, David Burke y Abi Mustapha juntos cuentan una historia y activan una experiencia de resiliencia y crecimiento, que culmina en una celebración de activistas ambientales locales. The Greenhouse está organizado en colaboración con Round Weather y curado por su director Chris Kerr.
