This past Sunday, hundreds of people gathered at the Richmond Art Center to celebrate the life of Kato Jaworski, our long-time friend, a creative artist and the admired Studio Art Director of the Art Center, who passed away on December 28, 2014 after a serious illness. It was a beautiful day that fully embraced the unique person that we’ve been lucky and honored to have known since she became part of the Richmond Art Center in 2005, and it celebrated the incredible community that Kato created here. You can view the memorial program here.
A slideshow of images of Kato and her artwork. Thank you to everyone who contributed images.
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We were thrilled when the Contra Costa Times wanted to feature artist Julee Richardson, whose work appears in the 19th Annual The Art of Living Black exhibition.
Julee is reflective of so many artists and creative people that exhibit in our galleries or take our classes — her diverse and varied background, her appetite for creativity and lifelong learning and her desire to show and talk about her work. We love the unique community of people who walk through our doors!
Don’t miss your chance to see Julee’s work; The Art of Living Black closes on Friday, February 27, 2015.
Sculpture artist and sociology educator Julee Richardson is a scholar for life.
Studying the penetrating grooves that divide societies, closely observant of wedge-like pleats that fold harmony and disharmony into living histories or analyzing how society shapes people and people shape society, Richardson has carved an unusual place for herself in the world.
“As a gerontologist studying the social science of aging, you can’t help but learn,” the 70-year-old retired educator says in an interview.
Recently enrolled in a ceramics course at Los Medanos College where her art is on display in a students’ show, she is also preparing for an artist’s talk she’ll give from noon to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14 at the Richmond Art Center as part of the annual “The Art of Living Black” exhibit. Richardson is grateful a talent she largely abandoned for 20 years did not vanish.
Our Art in the Community program is leading an effort to bring the nationally recognized STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) education to Richmond in collaboration with several local organizations. These programs bring arts back into local schools while embracing the philosophy mentioned in the article: “Arts integration seems to be the best form of differentiation out there because it taps into so many different interests and abilities and forms of learning.”
Another important component of our Art in the Community program is offering annual professional development workshop series to help teachers integrate art into their classroom through hands-on activities. As the article stated, we also acknowledge that arts integration can be a hard model for teachers to embrace if they don’t feel like they themselves are competent artists.
What’s Your Superhero Power? That’s one of the questions our teaching artist, Neil Rivas, is asking a group of 15 students in our “Clavo’s School for Young Superheroes” class at the Atchison Village community center. The students are using art, literacy and digital media to envision themselves as a superhero charged with the goal of helping their community.
The students, ages 7 to 10 years old, are writing out and drawing their superhero origin stories in sketchbooks and will then create the special garments that their superhero will wear. Once these costumes are finished, the kids will visually document their superhero during a photo shoot. All of this work will culminate with the students making a final presentation to an audience of parents, teachers and community members.
Like all of our Art in the Community programs, this class is helping to bring arts education to children who don’t have access to it in their school day. Equally important, this class is also a rehearsal and a way to get kids thinking about the type of work they could do in the future.
The Art of Living Black exhibition has transformed our main gallery with the works of 75 Bay Area artists. Two of these artists, Yolanda Holley and Atiba Sylvia Thomas, sat down and talked with writer Lou Fancher on how this exhibition and their art are important for the community of artists that come together each year. The exhibition is up through February 27.
There are angry answers to questions about why the general public can easily remember the accomplishments of African American athletes and pop music stars, but forget people like Romare Bearden, (1911-1988), a brilliant writer and artist whose collages established him as a preeminent artist of the 20th century.
Locally, cries of complaint can be the reaction when visiting celebrities of color receive greater consideration than Bay Area artistic talent from the black community.
That void of attention was a driving force behind the creation and growing popularity of “The Art of Living Black,” a free community-boosting art exhibit.
Capturing the visual art of 50 regional artists of African descent, the 19th annual exhibit has its origins in metaphorically bare walls, after the late sculptor Jan Hart-Schuyers and late painter Rae Louise Hayward noticed that black artists were not being represented at exhibits.
The Art of Living Black is an eagerly anticipated show each year. And this year is no exception, as the exhibition celebrates 19 years of showcasing the work of Bay Area African American artists! We were thrilled when the fine folks at Radio Free Richmond posted this story about the exhibition. Come see it through February 27.
In the main gallery of the Richmond Art Center hangs a large painting with the words “BLACK LIVES MATTER” scrawled across the canvas in blood red paint. Around a corner is series of busts of Malcolm X. Scattered between the two are photographs, abstract paintings, and jewelry — all done by local African American Artists.
These works are displayed as part of the 19th annual “Art of Living Black” exhibit, which opened at the Richmond Art Center this Saturday. Showcasing over 60 local African American artists, the RAC show is the only one of its kind in the Bay Area.
“If you look back 20 years ago, there weren’t too many opportunities for African American artists to show their work together,” explains RAC Executive Director Ric Ambrose. “We felt that living in Richmond and having a large population of African Americans, the show just made sense.”
It is with great sadness that we inform you that we have lost a longtime friend, creative artist and admired colleague. Kato Jaworski, our Studio Art Director, passed away on Sunday, December 28, 2014 after a serious illness. She will be dearly missed by her family, friends, and the artists, students and colleagues she touched at the Richmond Art Center and others in the Richmond community.
We count ourselves extremely lucky and honored to have known Kato since she became part of the Center in 2005. Her incredible energy, boundless enthusiasm and welcoming spirit permeated our hallways and flowed beyond our walls into the community. Kato was a natural leader, a passionate community builder, an inspiring artist and teacher, and a trusted friend and colleague.
Under her leadership this past decade, thousands of adults, teens and children from all across the Bay Area came to the Art Center to experience our engaging art programs. Knowledgeable and inspiring as an arts administrator, Kato designed most of our current studio classes and workshops, building a unique community of artist instructors along the way. Kato also conceived Skeletonfest and Upcycle, our free art-making events for families, and helped develop our art tours for K-12 students. The vibrancy of so many of our programs is due to Kato’s extraordinary commitment and generosity and unwavering dedication to ensuring art remains accessible, affordable and fun.
Susan Pulliam
Education Department, Studio Monitor
What is your favorite thing about the Richmond Art Center?
“The amazing weaving studio. I don’t think there is another resource like it in the Bay Area!”
Susan Pulliam, who volunteers as a studio monitor in the ceramics studio, is a weaver at heart. She fell into volunteering “for selfish reasons,” as she puts it — as a way to access studio hours in the Richmond Art Center’s exceptional weaving studio. But since she also shares a passion for ceramics, she soon found herself loading kilns and learning to mix glazes with Shenny Cruces (the Art Center’s former Ceramics Manager) and works in clay herself.
