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 sessions highlighting 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 James Tucker 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

Solastalgia, the second exhibition in The Greenhouse, features paintings by David Burke.

Derived from nostalgia, Solastalgia is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home, but the environment has been altered and feels unfamiliar. The term is specifically referencing change caused by chronic change agents like climate change or mining. Used primarily to describe the negative psychological effect of chronic environmental destruction on an individual’s homeland, or the place they call home.

About the Greenhouse Exhibition Series: The Greenhouse is an exhibition series that 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, Richmond Art Center presents the work of Tanja Geis, David Burke, and Abi Mustapha, who together tell a story and activate an experience of resilience and growth, culminating in a celebration of local environmental activists. Geis transplants imperiled regional fauna, ocean litter, and sculpted intertidal muck into The Greenhouse; Burke tends to the Anthropocene’s industrial production, ecological destruction, and potential regeneration; and Mustapha gathers a bouquet of portraits honoring great Richmonders who have come to our environmental rescue. Seedlings of hope and flowerings of progress are big parts of the landscape in Richmond. 

The three exhibitions in The Greenhouse will be accompanied by a series of public programs and events throughout the year. With gatherings ranging from community bike rides to a speaker series, The Greenhouse Public Programs will be a space to plant, nurture, and grow ideas around environmental justice. 

The Greenhouse is organized in partnership with Round Weather and curated by its director Chris Kerr. Round Weather is a nonprofit art gallery in Oakland, CA committed to alleviating the climate crisis. It directs funds raised through the sale of exceptional contemporary art to three nonprofit organizations selected for their work to mitigate climate change, redress environmental injustice, and advance a just and speedy transition back to sustainable relationships between the Earth and its people.

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), Linocut print on paper, 13″ x 15″, Unique 1989

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 will be 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, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 1995