Summer art camps in and out of the Art Center were abuzz with exploration. Our in-house camps featured classes in ceramics, comic book illustration and glass-blowing. Our Art in the Community Camp finished up their STEAM camp with a trip to the Exploratorium to see the Strandbeests and a presentation of recycled masks and costumes created under the guidance of teaching artist Sofie Siegmann.
Scenes from an Exhibition: Thank you to Dolby Chadwick Gallery for these images of Terry St. John and his exhibition, Close Views and Distant Vistas. Our Annual Members Show and Our Town complete our summer offerings at the Art Center. Please come down Tuesday through Saturday to see some wonderful art!
About the interviews: The Richmond Art Center is fortunate and proud to work with a diverse and growing number of artists and teachers who work with our students at the Art Center as well as in our local communities. We want to share some of these wonderful people with you, to inspire your own artistic path, take a class, or learn more. See all of our interviews here.
In this interview, meet Jan Langdon, who has been the heart of our Weaving Studio for 16 years! She is retiring at the end of July and we thank her for her many years of devotion and inspiration she’s given to the Art Center and all of her students. If you’d like to see more of Jan’s work, we’re excited to announce that she will be a 2017 Members Show Spotlight artist.
Bio: Jan began weaving after reading “Silas Marner” while in high school in the 1950s. Her parents bought a loom from some “people in the country,” and with help from an experienced weaver , she started what has become a life-long pursuit. After high school, Jan attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art for two years, and then spent a summer at Haystack Mountain School. Jan studied with Lili Blumeneau, Anni Albers and Jack Lenor Larsen. She spent time in studios in Boston, Ogunquit, ME, then in Palo Alto before going to “The Weavers” shop in Berkeley in the early 1960’s, when she also began teaching classes.
Q. What do you find most inspiring about teaching art?
A. What inspires me about teaching are the mutual challenges shared between students and teachers. It becomes a transformative experience.
Q. How did you become involved with the Richmond Art Center?
A. In 2000 I had just left San Francisco City College after a decade of teaching. The Richmond Art Center weaving department needed a teacher and I was aware of the splendid studio room and equipment. That was 16 years ago when I accepted the position and I’ve enjoyed teaching every year.
Q. Please tell us about the Richmond Art Center’s Weaving Studio and why it’s so special!
A. One important feature is the additional studio time available outside of class time. It not only means larger projects are attempted, it encourages a community between between those students able to take advantage of the additional hours. I feel privileged to have had students of great diversity and dedication continuing to learn to make good textiles with me at Richmond. It’s an experience that is very important to me.
Q. What was your path to becoming an artist? Please share some of your favorite work.
A. I was influenced by my older sister who was pursuing a college art degree during my high school years. Her drawings, paintings and books were a big window on the art world for me. Meanwhile, I was very much always “making something” on my own. Sewing was a strong early interest.
Q. Who are your inspirations?
A. Contemporary fiber artists. The North American Indian textiles. Tribal art, especially fiber and cloth. I did not study with Ed Rossbach but his work is at the top of my appreciation list. Lillian Elliot was a friend in my 60s Berkeley years. I was a big fan of her work. Currently, I like conferring with Peggy Osterkamp over weaving questions and I admire the approach Carole Beadle presents in her teaching.
Q. What do you like to do when you’re not at the Art Center?
A. I live near the Pt. Reyes National Seashore and Tomales Bay wetland so I walk and hike trails close to my home.
Q. What’s on your bucket list?
A. Trying to reduce clutter in my life! I am spending creative time sorting through past information…I need a BIG yard sale.
Q. If you could meet one artist, living or not, who would it be and why?
A. That’s too difficult to imagine! Work and personality are two different aspects to consider. Work speaks to me.
Thank you, Jan, for your interview, and for the years of artistic inspiration you’ve given to the students at the Richmond Art Center.
Thank you for participating in our first-ever Art Bank: Investing in Art Futures, aka a fabulous week of fundraising!
Because of your generosity, we successfully matched our two anonymous grants and exceeded our week’s goal. We raised over $4500 through our online donation platform, and through direct donations at the center by cash and check. Combined with our matching grants, that means we raised a total of $7250!
Your donations go directly into supporting our Studio Education, Exhibitions, and Art in the Community programs, which also include our free events, artists talks and performances, and scholarship programs. Thanks to you, the Richmond Art Center continues to fulfill its mission of providing transformative, inspiring experiences to thousands of individuals and our community through creative exploration, experience and education.
During this week, we also connected with teaching artists, students, parents, Board members and other unsung champions of the Art Center. A number of donations were made in honor of our longtime weaving instructor Jan Langdon, who will be retiring after 15 years at the Art Center. Jan is an outstanding educator and an inspiration to her students, and we feel very fortunate to have worked with her for so many years.
This fundraiser shows that art matters to you as much as it does to us, and that together we can help shape the future of the Richmond Art Center. Let us continue to create art, to be inspired and to make our marks this year!
With huge thanks from the Development team and everyone here at the Richmond Art Center,
This year, we are proud to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Richmond Art Center. Your enduring support has helped propel the Art Center into unprecedented levels of growth across all three major program areas: Studio Education, Exhibitions, and Art in the Community. We cannot do this vital work without your help.
Over this past week, we’ve highlighted aspects of what makes the Richmond Art Center an enduring Bay Area treasure, with one unifying question: What mark will YOU make?Are you a painter, an illustrator, a ceramicist, a jeweler, a printmaker, a sculptor, a weaver, or someone else entirely? How do you make your mark at the Art Center and join the generations of art enthusiasts who have helped grow the Art Center into the dynamic institution it is today?
Whether you can give today with a donation to end our fiscal year in green, or contribute your time as a volunteer, or take a weekend workshop with us—your support matters. Together, we can make an enduring mark—a legacy for the next generation of artists and creative thinkers and contribute to a place where artmaking thrives.
Do you enjoy learning and creating? Have you taken a class or workshop in one of our art studios? Our Studio Art Education department, led by Director Dominique Enriquez and Coordinator Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, embraces artists of all ages and from diverse backgrounds, united in the fundamental principle that art matters.
With year-round classes offered in ceramics, jewelry making, printing, weaving, fiber arts, painting, drawing, and additional creative opportunities for youth and children, our Studio Arts Education department is primed for growth and expansion. Our teaching artists are an essential part of what makes the Art Center an inspiring space to develop art skills.
Donations of $25 or more can pick up a festive button featuring the artwork of teaching instructor Dawn Gonzales, a piece titled: Abstract Floral #1. If you love taking art classes, the Studio Art Education program is the best art investment you can make. Your support provides essential scholarships and maintains our excellent range of classes offered at the Art Center—every dollar helps and is vital to sustaining our art community.
We take pride in offering captivating slices of art history, art present, and art future: all in one visionary space at the Richmond Art Center, for free. Our Exhibitions Program presents between 14 and 16 exhibitions annually, covering an exciting, diverse range of artistic talents. From collections featuring the legendary Richard Diebenkorn, to beloved painter David Park, to the evocative Mildred Howard, to our local West Contra Costa Unified School District students… our driving focus is to make art accessible, interesting, and alive to our visitors. Curated by Exhibitions Director Jan Wurm, our galleries welcome over 14,500 visitors each year, with this number growing every day as more community members discover us as an important arts resource.
Most importantly, we want to keep these gallery spaces free and open to the public so that everyone has access to powerful art history in the making. We strive to offer free programming to both complement and enhance the exhibitions, like drawing workshops and music performances, and our acclaimed artists talks. The Richmond Art Center needs your support to maintain our nationally recognized exhibitions and to continue building a vital arts resource in our own community.
The Richmond Art Center began in 1936 with the vision of one woman, WPA artist Hazel Salmi, who was devoted to sharing her love of art with the community. Today, we continue her legacy by bringing high quality art-making experiences to young people and families across Richmond and neighboring cities through our Art in the Community program (AIC.)
AIC serves over 1,700 students each year in 12 public schools, six community centers, the Latina Center, the Richmond Public Library, Youth Enrichment Strategies Family Camps and more. We make our popular STEAM (science, technology, engineering, ART and math) camps free to low-income students, and over 2,800 school children have participated in tours of the Art Center free of charge. Additionally, we hold workshops for teaching artists to help integrate STEAM into their art instruction and offer two professional development workshops for more local teachers to integrate the visual arts into their core curriculum.
Part of our work at the Art Center is to ensure that art making, learning and creative exploration is accessible to all members of our community. Your donation to the Art Center allows us to continue growing and expanding this important work, and enables us to keep AIC making art in OUR community.
About the interviews: Richmond Art Center is fortunate and proud to work with a diverse and growing number of artists and teachers who engage with our students at the Art Center as well as in our local communities. We want to share some of these wonderful people with you, to inspire your own artistic path, take a class, or learn more. See all of our interviews here.
In this interview, meet Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, our Studio Education Coordinator.
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland and San Francisco, specializing in printmaking. Branfman-Verissimo has had solo exhibitions at E.M. Wolfman in Oakland and Bolivar Gallery in Los Angeles. She has also exhibited and performed work at Osaka Art University, Highways performance space, Miles Memorial Playhouse, Southern Exposure and the Berkeley Art Museum. Branfman-Verissimo was the 2015 Yozo Hamaguchi fellow at Kala Institute in Berkeley, is the co-founder of the seven-week long, cross-country artist residency, Rooted America, and is founder and lead curator at Nook Gallery in Oakland. You can see her work at http://www.lukazabranfman-verissimo.com
Q. What do you find most inspiring about working at the Richmond Art Center?
The interdisciplinary nature in which the center runs, and the continually transforming ways we work together. I find special joy and inspiration in working and collaborating with the Art in the Community Department, always learning from each other and developing new approaches and ways to look at the craft of teaching art.
I also love being surrounded by art making all day long! Being able to walk into the ceramics classroom and watch someone throw a vessel and then to the printmaking shop and see a student peel back a print from the etching press, then to walk into our exhibition space and see our community soaking up the art.
I look forward to more overlap and connection of programs and the growth of this great place!
Q. How did you become involved with the Art Center?
I first found out about the Richmond Art Center through the Rosie’s Girls program, a national camp based on the history and legacy of the Rosie the Riveter figure during the WWII era. The camp was created to empower Middle School/early High School aged girls through the study of women’s history, self expression, as well as art and trade skills, including carpentry, welding, firefighting, plumbing and auto mechanics. I was a Rosie’s Girl throughout my middle and high school years. Many years later, having stayed in touch with the national program, the Richmond branch of the camp asked me to be a visiting artist. It was there that I facilitated a women’s empowerment “wooden book” project and had the pleasure of travelling to the Richmond Art Center with the camp. I love to think about the many unexpected places in which our lives cross paths, and Richmond Art Center is certainly one of those places in my life.
Q. What was your path to becoming an artist? Please share some of your favorite work.
I have always made art, from painting in my childhood kitchen, to my parent’s ongoing support to continue making and from participating in every museum art camp in Los Angeles to my decision to attend art school. I include my incredible experiences at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s summer art camp in Los Angeles, side by side with my work at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, as well as studying printmaking at California College of the Arts and my first post-grad solo show in Los Angeles. My path has been, and continues to be, influenced by the many communities and histories that surround me, the experiences I collect under my belt, the people I meet and the places I visit. The archive that I have stored in my mind and in boxes and boxes in my studio, are creating this path for me.
Video: TRACES, the stories of 22 objects, wrapped and read aloud by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, April 2015
Q. Who are your inspirations?
So many inspirations and people/ideas that have influenced my work!
Q. What do you like to do when you’re not at the Art Center?
When I am not coordinating the Studio program, I am doing multiple things. I am working late into the night in my studio, making prints, sculptures, objects that archive, collecting stories that become sculptures or drawings, dunking everything in blue. I am reading books and checking out books from my local public library. I am curating and organizing shows in the gallery that I founded in my house, supporting contemporary artists and fresh ideas. I am exhibiting my work locally and nationally, creating performances that tell stories, map places, create community. I am going to marches and being influenced by the politics and activism around me – the Black Lives Matter work and the fight for fair teacher wages. I am spending time in the natural world, painting the sky and taking in the beauty of the bay Area.
Q. What’s on your bucket list?
Over the summer of 2015, I organized and designed a countrywide mobile artist residency, studying and meeting artists/ communities/ projects that make work within their community. Making meals, dancing, creating prints and collecting stories in community members backyards, houses and schools (for more info: rootedamerica.tumblr.com). I would like to do a similar project but on a larger global style. Spending time in several different countries, getting to know artist communities on a larger level.
Q. If you could meet one artist, living or not, who would it be and why?
Louise Bourgeois. I am a huge fan of her delicate drawings/embroideries, large scale sculptural work, creation of environments and beautiful journals. The versatility of her work and the effect her work has on the viewer, emotionally and physically. It would be a dream come true to soak up all her brilliance, while spending time in her messy New York studio!
Thank you, Lukaza.
Slideshow image captions:
1: traces 1, monotype,collagraph, screen print, great grandma sonia’s fabric scraps, desert branches, rope, paper tape, wood, treasures, cherry wood, nails, cassette tapes, wire, pigment from death valley, palm tree bark, titus canyon rock, milagros, 2015; 2: traces 1, monotype,collagraph, screen print, great grandma sonia’s fabric scraps, desert branches, rope, paper tape, wood, treasures, cherry wood, nails, cassette tapes, wire, pigment from death valley, palm tree bark, titus canyon rock, milagros, 2015; 3: a performance that preserves stories, 22 stories, objects, mixed media, 2015; 4: inkwell, indigo dyed santa monica newspaper, historial photos, monotype, watercolor, plastic bags, sand from inkwell beach in santa monica, ca, a blue horizon/dividing line; 5: Rooted America, image from a printmaking workshop at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; 6: untitled (2), monotype, 2015-2016; 7: story collecting: two-hour sessions, in which the artist will collect community stories about speaking out. with the guidance of the storyteller, the artist will turn the stories into sculptural objects that will then remain on display as part of the exhibition. the sculptures will be returned to the storyteller at the end of the show. tell me a story. 8 hours of listening, 35 stories, mixed media, 2015-2016; 8: places of home, 270 screen printed postcards, metal postcard rack, 2015 the public was invited to take a postcard home; 9: traces 2, monotype, collagraph, chine colle, wrapped packages, 2015
June opens the door to summer, and a joining together in art and community. Celebrate this month by spending time with us at the Art Center: take a class or visit our new gallery exhibitions that open with a reception on Saturday, June 11 at 5:00 pm. Summer exhibitions include our Annual Members Show, which features the work of over 100 local artists and members, Terry St. John: Close Views & Distant Vistas, and the juried show Our Town—all reinforcing an important view of locality and community. And for members, you have an opportunity to vote on our next Board members at the annual meeting held on Saturday, June 11 at 4:00 pm.
Summer is also the time we close out our books and say goodbye to fiscal year 2016. This year has seen a tremendous amount of growth in our award-winning Studio Education, Exhibition, and Art in the Community programs. We’re so proud to have served over 2,000 children in the West Contra Costa Unified School District and thousands of youth and adult students here at the Center. Help us close out our fiscal year in the green by supporting us with a donation this month. Stay tuned for more information about our “Art Bank: Invest in Art Futures!” week-long campaign, and as always, your support is greatly appreciated.
I look forward to seeing you at the Art Center on the 11th.
ANNOUNCEMENT
RICHMOND ART CENTER MEMBERS MEETING AND BOARD ELECTION
SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2016 at 4:00 p.m.
The Richmond Art Center’s annual members meeting will be held at the Art Center (Painting Studio) at 4:00 p.m. The purpose of the meeting is to elect 6 members to the Board of Directors of the Art Center.
Ballots will be available and must be submitted between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. at the front desk at the Art Center. All members are eligible to vote and at least twenty must vote for the election to be valid.
Executive Director Ric Ambrose will provide an update on the Art Center’s accomplishments of the past year and plans for the next year. The meeting will be followed by the reception for the summer exhibits at 5:00 p.m.
The Board has set the number of directors for fiscal year 2016-2017 at 17 members.
Bio: Jan began weaving after reading “Silas Marner” while in high school in the 1950s. Her parents bought a loom from some “people in the country,” and with help from an experienced weaver , she started what has become a life-long pursuit. After high school, Jan attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art for two years, and then spent a summer at Haystack Mountain School. Jan studied with Lili Blumeneau, Anni Albers and Jack Lenor Larsen. She spent time in studios in Boston, Ogunquit, ME, then in Palo Alto before going to “The Weavers” shop in Berkeley in the early 1960’s, when she also began teaching classes. 
Dear Art Center supporters,
