For the first time celebrated JUNETEENTH with a free paint and sip event (June 2023)
With your help we can achieve even more over the next twelve months.
Can you donate to Richmond Art Center before the end of today?
Contributions by midnight tonight, June 30, will help keep Richmond Art Center in the black for our fiscal year. Anything you can donate will be greatly appreciated!
Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. (Richmond Art Center’s Tax ID is 94-6104204.)
Top images (left to right from top left): a student in the summer intensive class ‘Framing Identity’; Ashlée Garrison, Cynthia Brannvall and Derrick Bell at an artist talk for Art of the African Diaspora; Fencelines workshop participants show their painted slats; a young person gets creative with buttons at Spring Family Day; teaching artist Colleen Garland demonstrates using a kick wheel; exhibitions director Roberto Martinez with Andrée Singer Thompson; Mechica dancers; gallery visitors interact with Amanda Ayala’s artwork; and Duane using a floor loom in the textiles studio.
Wee Poets Features WCCUSD Youth and Richmond Art Center
For over thirty years Wee Poets on Channel 28 has supported literacy development through interviews with thousands of Bay Area children. This month three WCCUSD students and Roberto Martinez, RAC’s exhibitions director, were invited onto the show to talk about the WCCUSD Student Art Show.
Top Image: Wee Poet’s host Sally Baker speaks with RAC’s Roberto Martinez
Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. (Richmond Art Center’s Tax ID is 94-6104204.)
Top images (left to right from top left: a family making glass art at the Holiday Arts Festival; Printmaker Art Hazelwood demonstrates Emmy Lou Packard’s press in action; Solo exhibition artists J.B. Broussard and Donna Gatson; Calaveritas workshop instructor artist Daniel Camacho; a young student on a Youth Art Tour; teaching artist Colleen Garland; a student in the metals studio; ‘Stitching Stolen Lives’ book talk with Sara Trail; and volunteer Bree at the spring exhibitions reception.
After a four years, works from locally-based NIAD Art Center are being exhibited on rotation at the office located at Richmond Civic Center, according to Mayor Eduardo Martinez.
The mayor’s office also partnered with the Richmond Art Center to display art from the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) Student Art Show.
“Both shows are in the mayor’s office and you are invited to come and look at the artwork,” Martinez said at this past Tuesday’s Council meeting.
Volunteers at Richmond Art Center assist our teachers and staff, help out at events, support community outreach, and more. If you have a passion for art, a desire to help your community, or are just looking to get more involved, fill out a volunteer application today!
SUMMER EVENTS WE NEED VOLUNTEERS FOR:*
July 15: Summer Exhibitions Reception
July 15: Taste of Richmond Festival
July 22: Enough Considered Workshop and Portrait Sessions
July 29: NIAD Artist Talk & Andrés Cisneros-Galindo Printmaking Demo
August 5: Go Fish! Fundraiser
August 12: Paint & Sip (21 and over)
* We especially need volunteers who can assist with light physical duties such as setting up and breaking down events.
Volunteer benefits include a discount on studio classes. We can also support students wanting to complete community service hours for class credit.
Wishing folk a rich and fulfilling day from everyone at Richmond Art Center
Last week we celebrated Juneteenth early with a special paint and sip event at Richmond Art Center. Thirty community members gathered in the main gallery as artisan Elishes Cavness guided them through the steps to paint their own ‘black panther’ masterpiece.
Important Parking Notification for Students and Visitors to Richmond Art Center during RPAL’s Juneteenth Carnival
Set-Up through Deinstall: Tuesday, June 13 – Monday, June 19
Carnival Dates: Friday, June 16 – Sunday, June 18
Starting Tuesday, June 13 through Monday, June 19 the City parking lot opposite Richmond Art Center (on the 400 block of 25th Street between Barrett and Nevin Avenues) will be reserved for the Juneteenth Carnival being sponsored by the Richmond Police Activities League.
PARKING OPTIONS:
The Civic Center parking lot at Richmond Art Center’s 25th Street entrance is open, visitors can enter from Nevin Avenue only, as 25th Street is closed to traffic
There are City parking lots adjacent to 1st Northern California Credit Union or across from Richmond Library (these may get crowded)
Residential street parking on the other side of Barrett Avenue from RAC might be the best option (RPAL has informed us that during the Carnival 2-hour street parking limits will not be enforced)
Lastly, we encourage visitors to RAC to take public transportation, car pool or use a ride share service
For information about the Juneteenth Carnival Celebration call Richmond PAL at 510-621-1221 or visit their website at www.rpal.org
WCCUSD Student Artwork Displayed in Mayor Martinez’s Office
Congrats to the students who received Artistic Achievement Awards in the WCCUSD Student Show!! These artists will have their artworks on display in Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez’s office at Civic Center Plaza until September 17.
Artistic Achievement Awards: Jasmin Alfaro Capybara, Pinole Valley High School; Mario Lopez, Richmond High School; Isabel Gil, Pinole Valley High School; Ivy Hu, De Anza High School; Shahzain Malik, Mira Vista School; Olivia Elices, Fred Korematsu Middle School; Madison Wyatt, Fred Korematsu Middle School; Anya Troll, El Cerrito High School; Andrea Zavala Cruces, El Cerrito High School; Ashley Mejia, Kennedy High School
Madison Wyatt, Fred Korematsu Middle School Anya Troll, El Cerrito High SchoolShahzain Malik, Mira Vista SchoolIsabel Gil, Pinole Valley High SchoolAshley Mejia, Kennedy High SchoolOlivia Elices, Fred Korematsu Middle SchoolJasmin Alfaro Capybara, Pinole Valley High SchoolAndrea Zavala Cruces, El Cerrito High School Ivy Hu, De Anza High SchoolMario Lopez, Richmond High School
Oil giant Chevron has acknowledged that it removed an art installation from a fence surrounding its refinery in Richmond, California, near San Francisco.
The piece, installed on Earth Day (April 22), consisted of brightly painted slats placed on the fence around the oil refinery. Neighborhood residents were invited to inscribe messages and stories on the slats as a way of documenting the local petroleum industry’s health and environmental impacts, and form “a collective monument to resistance.” The slats were painted with messages such as “clean energy now.”
“Our fences and other company facilities are functional equipment and we cannot allow tampering or unauthorized construction,” Chevron spokesman Ross Allen told Artnet News in an email.
Organizers of the art project argue that the portions of the fence they used are owned by the city and that they received permission from Richmond’s Public Arts and Culture Commission, the City of Richmond’s Love Your Block program and Public Works Department, and Contra Costa County’s North Richmond Municipal Advisory Committee to install the work. The removal, they said, was “an attempt to silence our voices and erase our stories.”
The work was the subject of an exhibition at Richmond Art Center that ran from April 5 to June 3.
Chevron claims that the fence is the company’s private property. “Perhaps someone is mistaken about ownership of our fence and our property line, but we are quite clear about ownership of the area,” spokesman Ross Allen told Artnet News. “[N]o city permit allows construction on private property without landowner permission.”
Earth Justice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, wrote on its website that Chevron’s refinery has been “wreaking havoc on the local community for decades and was the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the state.” The residents of the surrounding neighborhood, the organization points out, are primarily people of color.
“The population in closest proximity to the refinery has disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer,” the Guardian reported in 2019. The city’s children have rates of asthma twice the national average, the paper reported in a story on a 2018 lawsuit the city filed against Chevron, alleging public nuisance and negligence.
“We think it’s pretty weird that they disappeared the project without any kind of communication with us,” one of the installation’s organizers, Graham Laird Prentice, told the San Francisco Chronicle, noting that there had been extensive publicity surrounding the project. The removal “seems to have transpired during the night. It’s pretty shady stuff.”
