Come make new art and new friends at the Richmond Art Center this summer!
$20 off any session of Spring or Summer camp at the Richmond Art Center when you sign up early! Register before March 31 with coupon code: RACAMP. Coupon can be used more than once and combined with other offers.
Signing up multiple kids? Use coupon code: SIBLING for 10% off registration
Our teaching artists will create wonderful opportunities for students to experiment, create, and make amazing art in our beautiful studios. Classes are organized by age and you can sign up for multiple weeks to experience everything we’re offering this summer. Full descriptions and instructors will be listed on our website. Students age 7+ who are taking a morning and afternoon class can break for lunch in our enclosed courtyard supervised by summer camp staff.
About our Art Camps
The Richmond Art Center’s Art Camps offer kids and teens a nurturing environment and creative atmosphere to experience hands-on activities including painting, drawing, clay, weaving and collage in small morning and afternoon classes during summer and spring breaks from school.
Parents have voted! The Richmond Art Center has won the Silver Award for Best Arts Camp in Contra Costa County and Gold Awards for Best Art Classes and Best Enrichment & After School Programs.
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.
Dawn Gonzales is a Richmond based artist specializing in surface design, illustration and mixed media. She received her BFA from the University of Arizona. After many years working in Marketing and Design for apparel companies including Gap Inc and lucy Activewear, she’s returned to her passion for art and good ol’ fashioned analog sketching. She is a collector of “stuff” and delights in re-purposing gently loved items into treasured new art objects. These days she loves the work of late collage artist Rex Ray, hand drawn typography, duct tape and pom-poms. A lover of all animals, she also enjoys creating custom embroidered pet portraits for friends and family. http://www.dawngonzalesillustration.com
Q. What do you find most inspiring about teaching art?
I believe that art saves lives. Not only visual art, but music, theatre, and performance. When I was a child in elementary school, our art teacher, Mrs. Spearo, would wheel her “art cart” full of glue sticks and tempera paint into the classroom on Wednesdays and all the kids would start clapping. We went crazy! That’s how much we loved it! So, it’s very concerning to me that the first programs cut from school curriculae is usually art. It makes me very sad. After a dry spell of many years, I am recapturing that joy I once had in making art as a child, and I want to share it with others. I want to help others, especially adults, find their joy in “creating” and when I see people get excited about it, being compelled to make art… well, that inspires me!
Q. How did you become involved with the Richmond Art Center?
I have lived in Richmond Annex for over 10 years and always knew about the center. But since I spent the last two decades deeply entrenched in corporate America, I felt that I never “had time” to explore, visit or learn more about RAC’S offerings. When I started freelancing two years ago, my friend suggested that I try teaching at the center. I had led creative workshops in my previous life, but teaching in a formal capacity really wasn’t on my radar at the time. The more I thought about it and the more I created my own art, the more the idea appealed to me. So in 2015, I pitched some class ideas to Erin and here I am! My introduction to teaching at RAC was my Pom-Pom booth at Skeletonfest 2015. What a blast! (Click on the images below to enlarge.)
Q. What was your path to becoming an artist?
I have always been artistic. As a child, my sister and I would busy ourselves for hours just drawing, and making things with any materials that we could find. I remember I even made a pair of high heeled shoes out of cardboard once. Eventually, I studied art in college and received my BFA from the University of Arizona. After school, I moved to San Francisco to “become an artist” and promptly took a job in retail, of course. But that led to many other creative opportunities for me, career wise. I discovered the world of Visual Merchandising and environmental design which is a genre that encompasses all sorts of mediums, especially if you are working on a shoestring budget! It was a very hands on job, and I found myself splattering paint, hammering nails and chopping up astroturf to make my ideas come alive. It was innovative work for a retail environment, and, even though I was not drawing or sketching, it kept my creative juices flowing and I learned a lot technology wise. So, I guess you could say that I took the long way around!
Q. Who are your inspirations?
Of course, I am inspired by the late David Bowie who was a true artist in every aspect and showed us all that being different is okay. That being unique is, in fact, quite special. I admire people who are true to themselves, kind, and hard workers. I’m really inspired by the talent, work ethic and attitude of illustrator, Lisa Congdon. She’s worked very heard to pursue her heart’s desire and she’s a very nice person. She also didn’t hit her prime until her 30’s. I’m also really inspired by other “late bloomers” like David Sedaris and Julia Child who didn’t begin their careers until mid-life. And who can forget Grandma Moses, an embroiderer whose arthritis inspired her to take up painting at age 78 because it was “easier for her hands.” Grandma Moses is my spirit animal! Ha ha.
Q. What do you like to do when you’re not at the Art Center?
I’m either working on pattern designs for clients, art journaling, building up my own accessory design business, or doing something fitness oriented. I also spend a lot of time at home with our 12 year old Bulldog, Cookie. She is the light of my life. http://www.dawngonzalesillustration.com/sketch-book/.
Q. What’s on your bucket list?
I have never been to Europe! I would definitely love to go one day. I would also like to run a marathon. I did a half marathon a few years ago, and it felt great. I love challenging myself. If I won the lottery, I would build my own English Bulldog sanctuary and care for all the wayward pups.
Q. If you could meet one artist, living or not, who would it be and why?
I would love to meet painter, Martha Rich. She’s wacky. I think she would be a fun friend. I love her talent and her incredible sense of humor. http://cargocollective.com/martharich/ABOUT
DAVID PARK: PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES and THE HUMAN SPIRIT: CONTEMPORARY FIGURATION AS AN EXPRESSION OF HUMANISM
In conjunction with our 80th anniversary, the Richmond Art Center will present two important companion exhibitions that trace the human figure as vehicle in Bay Area art.
RICHMOND, CA — JANUARY 29, 2016 — From March 19 – May 22, 2016, dual exhibitions David Park: Personal Perspectives and The Human Spirit: Contemporary Figuration as an Expression of Humanism will focus on the historical and aesthetic development of Bay Area figurative art over the past 60 years. In conjunction with the exhibitions, the Art Center will offer enlightening public programs including performance, video, music, and a series of talks.
Jan Wurm, Exhibitions Director at the Richmond Art Center explains, “These complimentary and concurrent exhibitions establish a bridge from David Park as the catalyst for the development of Bay Area Figurative Art to the activities of contemporary artists who move between painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography to explore issues of figuration, identity, and humanistic perspectives.”
David Park: Personal Perspectives contains 37 works on paper in various media executed from the 1930s through 1960, the last year of Park’s life. Drawn from the artist’s estate and private collections, this exhibition includes works shown for the first time. Presented in the intimate South Gallery at the Richmond Art Center, visitors will have an unique opportunity to study his space, compositions, and very personal narratives.
David Park produced a late body of work extraordinary for its focus and direction. In a sharp shift from abstraction to figuration. Park’s move stands out as a re-orientation of radical proportion. Yet it is as a teacher and mentor that Park presides as the cornerstone of an entire art movement and perspective, which came to be known as Bay Area Figurative Art in the 1950s.
During those years, the Richmond Art Center mounted a series of pivotal exhibitions and workshops highlighting the figurative Bay Area artists through a series of exhibitions and programs. These programs provided a platform for several emerging artists to launch their careers. The Richmond Art Center was an important venue for David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and other emerging artists active in their time.
Park set the stage and inspired his cohorts and the generations since to follow the singular and diverse impulses evident in figurative art explored in the drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and performance represented in the Art Center’s companion exhibition, The Human Spirit.
The exhibition The Human Spirit: Contemporary Figuration as an Expression of Humanism bridges the Art Center’s historical role in presenting formative exhibitions of the Bay Area Figurative artists in the 1950s, The Human Spirit will extend our consideration of legacy to the work of over 20 contemporary Bay Area artists who have expanded the figurative art tradition through paintings, sculpture, photography, video, and performance. This survey will include the work of Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Terry St. John, Christopher Brown, Charles Garabedian, Viola Frey, and Enrique Chagoya. Following a highly personal path with exuberant use of materials and iconography, these artists have forged visual language built on vocabularies including folk, medieval, aboriginal, and outsider art.
Pursuing other modes of autobiography, social commentary, and cultural reflection, the sculpture, film, video, and performance of Lava Thomas, Kota Ezawa, Farley Gwazda, and Allan deSouza draw the painted dialogue into other media. From the intimacy of the photography of Judy Dater, Katy Grannan, and Richard Misrach, to the beading and capturing of images in the memorial hangings of Taraneh Hemami, the myriad manifestations of the human visage and the human spirit for survival extend this exhibition beyond the personal or the domestic. In a time of social, economic, and environmental instability, the art employing the human figure to illuminate the struggles and spirit of contemporary life is of greater power and significance than it has been in nearly a century.
Throughout the duration of the exhibitions, the Richmond Art Center will present a series of public programs. This program includes a discussion with Helen Park Bigelow, daughter of the artist, a plein air workshop exploring gouache and watercolor while referencing David Park, and a session for contemporary artists to draw from the model while referencing David Park’s approach to the figure. A roundtable discussion with artists exhibited in The Human Spirit will establish contemporary concerns and visual approaches in the fluid movement across diverse media.
The Spring exhibitions are sponsored by Artists’ Legacy Foundation,Blick Art Materials, Susan and Steven Chamberlin, James Curtis III, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Charitable Foundation, Jacobs & CO., Oliver and Company, and Zellerbach Family Foundation.
The Richmond Art Center is the largest visual arts center in the East Bay, delivering exciting arts experiences to young and old alike who reflect the diverse richness of our community. The Art Center features hands-on learning, well-equipped studios, traveling Art in the Community programs and contemporary exhibitions in its galleries.
Every year, the Richmond Art Center serves thousands of students through classes and programs taught by professional artists, both onsite at the Art Center and at sites throughout Richmond. The Art Center’s four galleries mount rotating exhibitions that display the works of emerging and established Bay Area artists. Artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Jay DeFeo, Wanxin Zhang, Hung Liu, Ed Rossbach and Peter Voulkos have been showcased here.
The Richmond Art Center originated in 1936, when local artist Hazel Salmi, who worked for the WPA, traversed the streets of Richmond with a suitcase packed with art supplies, eager to teach art to anyone interested. Today, everything at the Art Center continues to breathe life into Salmi’s original vision: That within every person lives an artist.
Please visit the Richmond Art Center’s website https://richmondartcenter.org for a full detail of activities and events relating to these exhibitions.
Contact:
Jessica Parker, Communications/Marketing Director jparker@richmondartcenter.org 510-620-6780
“Howard,” wrote Jeff Kelley, “is trying to hold something together in her works, some moments of recognition, perhaps, when keepsakes become art; when vernacular speech becomes titular and punny; when the given histories of found objects cede to the emergent content of the artist’s process; when family storytelling combusts into modernist black magic; when incongruous juxtapositions of objects and media become easy exchanges of history and memory; when an artwork asserts its aesthetic privilege while remaining open to worldly influence. Howard has been waiting alertly for decades for the objects in the studio to tell her what to do. She recognizes their metaphoric potential in relation to each other, the way words and images add up to a story. Then she ‘tells’ them.”
During the Holiday Season, the Richmond Art Center will be closed from December 24th through January 3rd. See you on Monday, January 4th! We will be closed on Sundays through January 9th.
On Saturday, December 5, the Richmond Art Center hosted our 53rd annual Holiday Arts Festival. The Art Center bustled with artisans, teachers, and members of the East Bay communities. Studio Arts hosted fun, creative activities for the kids, Ceramics held its famous sale, and our pop-up cafe served delicious paninis, desserts, and lattés. Both the silent and live auctions successfully raised vital funding for our core programs thanks to your generosity. We raised over $30,000 to support the many programs we offer to people of all ages. Our Fund-A-Need drive raised over $5,800 for the Kato Jaworski Scholarship Fund, which will provide kids and teens with need-based scholarships to take our classes and workshops in 2016!
The annual Holiday Arts Festival had a triumphant return, and everyone at the Richmond Art Center, myself included would like to extend our deep appreciation to our dedicated committee of Board Members, generous donors and Art Center supporters, our teaching artists and students, and more than 90 devoted volunteers. A special thank you goes to Board member Ellengale Toki Oakley for chairing the committee, to our Deputy Director Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez for organizing the project, developing numerous job descriptions and scheduling the volunteers, and to our Exhibitions Director Jan Wurm for acquiring a magnificent collection of donated art for auction.
We could not have done this without you–thank you for making this event memorable.
Best,
Ric Ambrose
Executive Director
***
Photos by John Wehrle. All of our Holiday Arts Festival images can be viewed here.
The Holiday Arts Festival at the Richmond Arts Center is a great place to find unique gifts for the holidays for friends and loved ones! We’re proud to showcase so many local artists, including several of our own instructors. Below is a collection of some of the items that will be for sale here on December 5 from 11am – 3pm. Please join us to support the Richmond Art Center, our local artists, and our wonderful community.
Our incredible Holiday Arts Festival on December 5 features a Live Auction. All of our auction items are featured below, with descriptions to entice art collectors and people seeing unique lifestyle experiences. We hope to see you at our event! A limited number of tickets are still available… please call us at 510-622-6772 to purchase your tickets.
Auction #1
Artist: Hung Lui, Mission Girl – Red Shoes, Mixed Media, 2013
Value: $6,000, Donor: Hung Lui
Born in China and immigrated to California in 1985, Hung Lui is regarded by many as the greatest Chinese painter in the U.S. This mixed media work features her typical style of dripping paint and layered brushstrokes. Combining a mixture of Chinese culture, contemporary and ancient visual language, Lui addresses history, gender, identity and Chinese politics and culture. With a focus on women and their place in society, Hung Lui elevates her central singular figures and emphasizes their dignity imbuing her richly decorated subjects with hope.
Auction #2
Five day retreat for 12 people at Dillon Beach House
Value: $3,500 Donor: Tracy Freedman
Dillon Beach has a fairy tale atmosphere with the far-far-away charm of time suspended. This is a chance to partake of a fabulous 5 night vacation in a gorgeous Dillon Beach House with stunning ocean views from every room. The house features 5 bedrooms, sleeps up to 12 people. Stroll the 7 minute walk down to the beach, soak in the hot tub, lounge on the sundecks, whip up magic in the gourmet kitchen, then settle down to a cozy fire. 2 satellite TV’s and wifi for those who stay connected.
Auction #3
Dinner for Four with Mildred Howard in her Studio
Value: $800
Donor: Mildred Howard
Internationally known Berkeley artist, Mildred Howard invites you and your guests into her studio for an intimate dinner for four surrounded by her art and peppered by her stimulating conversation. In the hands of a great cook and deep thinker, dinner with Mildred Howard promises to be an event you will never forget! Bring along your closest friends and the four of you will get to know this deeply important artist and her powerful art as you share a meal she has prepared for you in her home. The considered influences of music, literature, community, and art will all pull up a chair at this table for an engaging evening!
Auction #4
Artist: Terry St. John Model on Floor, Mixed Media, 1999-2001
Value: $8,000, Donor: Terry St. John
This study of Model Seated on the Floor will hold you captive, locked in the inky dark space which pulsates with life and emotion. His exuberant black and white studies of light and dark, shape and space, fuse his sense of Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. Working with brush and washes of ink, St. John builds the surfaces of his works to present the figure in and of the cconjured space. Former curator at the Oakland Museum, Terry St John brings decades of work and influences from the Bay Area Figurative painters to his plein air studies and his female nudes. The Richmond Art Center is excited to be mounting a survey exhibition of his powerful work next summer.
Auction #5
Two tickets to a Golden State Warriors game
Total Value: $ 500
Donor: Tim Ilario
Bring a friend and enjoy a once in a lifetime up-close view of MVP Stephen Curry and the NBA World Champion’s Golden State Warrior face off against its archrival Miami Heat at the raucous Oracle Arena on Monday, January 11, 2016.
Auction #6
Artist: Ric Ambrose Op-Art, graphite, 2010
Value:$3,800, Donor: Ric Ambrose
A large graphite drawing of an urban landscape contrasting a broody old balustrade stone building dwarfed by a minimalist modern high-rise Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. Ric is the Executive Director of RAC and has exhibited his work throughout the U.S. and is included in many public and private collections including the Getty Family, City of Littleton, Coos Bay Art Center and the Colorado Fine Arts Center.
Auction #7
A day of sailing on the Bay and lunch for four people
Value: $1,000, Donors: Ellengale Toki and Owen Oakley
Enjoy a day of sailing on the Bay for four people on Sambolo, a 40 foot Sabre, starting at the Richmond Yacht Club in Point Richmond. The picturesque venture includes a lunch with wine and cheese.
Auction #8
Drinks and Tidbits for a party of eight with legendary art historian Peter Selz.
Value: Priceless!! Donors: Carole and Peter Selz
Drinks and tidbits for a party of eight with Peter Selz in the home of Carole and Peter surrounded by their contemporary collection of art. Be prepared for salty anecdotes and anchovies. Founder of the Berkeley Art Museum and former Curator of Contemporary Art of Museum of Modern Art, Selz has curated seminal exhibitions of new art over the past five decades.
Auction #9
Artist: Hung Lui Shan-Mountain, Color etching & aquatint, 2012 edition of 40
Value: $2,500, Donor: Paulson Bott Press
Working with some of the most expressive artists of our time, Paulson Bott Press has established a record of producing some of the most beautiful and nuanced contemporary color etchings. This very large print by Hung Liu is a tour de force of etching technique displaying extraordinary visual clarity and exquisite design and surface. Internationally renowned, Hung Lui has received numerous awards, including two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Joan Mitchell Fellowship, and the Pollack-Krasner Award. Her work is represented in major museum collections in the U.S. and Asia. The Richmond Art Center mounted one of her first solo exhibitions in 1991.
Auction #10
Artist: Richard Shaw
Studio Drawing, ink on paper, 2010
Value: $1200, Donor: Richard Shaw
A unique figure in the work of contemporary ceramics, Richard Shaw is nationally known for his experimental trompe-l’oeil sculptures. Humor and irreverence play a large role in his still life ceramic work and spontaneous drawings as he inserts stuff of daily life into his whimsical narrative. His work in housed in major museum collections throughout the U.S.
Auction #11
Three hours with handyman and Contra County Supervisor John Gioia
Value: Priceless, Donor: John Gioia
Here is your chance to have a few home repairs done and have an engaging conversation with John Gioia, long-time District Supervisor of Contra County and chair of CC Board of Supervisors. No small repair can’t be done by this multitalented Richmond resident.
Auction #12
FUND-A-NEED Youth Scholarship
Your donation to Funded- A–Need will provide a once in a lifetime opportunity for dozens of youth to participate in Richmond Art Center’s noted youth classes.
The Kato Jaworski Youth Scholarship Fund offers partial funds for at risk Richmond youth to participate in one of our studios’ art making classes providing the wonder of discovery and building self-esteem.
Just some of the fantastic art you’ll see on display at our Silent Auction at the Holiday Arts Festival! Our South Gallery is filled with beautiful art right now, in anticipation of our daytime event, which is free and family friendly! All of this wonderful art will be available for bidding at our silent auction. Please join us on December 5! More info on our Event page.
Artist: John Wehrle Muriel 13 (for Etienne-Jules Marey)
Digital photograph, 2012
Doors Open Saturday, December 5 at 11 a.m. Shop for unique, handmade ceramics, arts and crafts gifts and fine art while supporting the oldest, largest visual arts center in the East Bay.
RICHMOND, CA — Mon., Nov. 9, 2015—On Saturday, December 5, 2015, the largest community event and fundraiser for the Richmond Art Center returns for its 53rd year, offering visitors a chance to buy unique holiday gifts from local arts and crafts vendors, enjoy holiday food and beverages, and participate in auctions, raffles, and creative art-making activities for the whole family. The Festival’s gift sale runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and its live auction of fine art and unique life experiences will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond.
The Holiday Arts Festival kicks off with a free, daytime family-friendly event. Attendees can enjoy shopping for handmade arts and crafts from a diverse selection of local vendors, as well as the Art Center’s famous ceramics sale that features hundreds of plates, mugs and objects made by artists in the Center’s ceramics studio. Guests and their families are encouraged to participate in holiday art-making activities, and a pop-up café will be serving delicious food and warm beverages to hungry festival goers. Live music will be provided by the Primavera Latin Jazz Band.
“The Holiday Arts Festival gives the instructors in our Studio program—as well as students in our ceramics studio—the opportunity to present their wares,” says Erin Wheeler, Studio Education Director. “And through their work, you can see demonstrated first hand what the Art Center’s Studio Education program makes possible.”
Following the free daytime event, the Art Center will host an exciting live auction from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. that showcases exceptional works of fine art by internationally recognized California artists, including Hung Liu, Richard Shaw, Judy Dater, Claire Falkenstein, and Enrique Chagoya. Other life experience live auction items include two tickets to see the Golden State Warriors versus the Miami Heat at the Oracle Arena, and a day of sailing the Bay for two couples or a family of four, to mention a few. Live music performance by the Primavera Latin Jazz Band, wine and hors d’oeuvres are part of the evening’s live auction. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers and can be purchased online: http://bit.ly/1Hr68dn
“We are excited to celebrate the holidays and our outstanding community of local artists,” says Ric Ambrose, Executive Director. “We hope that visitors to our arts festival will be impressed by the dedicated individuals who make the Richmond Art Center special.”
All proceeds from the event benefit the Richmond Art Center.
Featured Artists at the Holiday Arts Festival Live/Silent Auctions include:
Richard Ambrose
Clayton Bailey
Enrique Chagoya
Judy Dater
Gene Erickson
Claire Falkenstein
Katie Hawkinson
Raymond Holbert
John Hundt
Diana Krevsky
Carol Ladewig
Hung Liu
Malcolm Lubliner
Kara Maria
Louise McGinley
Clayton Pinkerton
Juan Carlos Quintana
Terry St. John
Nancy Selvin
Richard Shaw
Joe Slusky
Livia Stein
Pam Stefl-Toki
Inez Storer
John Toki
John Wehrle
Heather Wilcoxin
Jan Wurm
About the Richmond Art Center
The Richmond Art Center is the largest visual arts center in the East Bay, delivering exciting arts experiences to young and old alike who reflect the diverse richness of the surrounding community. The Center delivers hands-on learning, well-equipped studios, traveling Art in the Community programs and contemporary exhibitions in its galleries. Learn more at www.richmondartcenter.org.
Press Contact
Jessica Parker
Communications Director, Richmond Art Center
(510) 620-6772
jparker@richmondartcenter.org
DONATED by PAULSON BOTT PRESS
Hung Liu, Shan – Mountain 2012
Color aquatint etching with gold leaf
Somerset white paper Image size 36″ x 26″ Paper size 47″ x 36″
Edition of 40
In this interview, meet Dawn Gonzales, who’s teaching our upcoming Story Book Cigar Box Diorama Class in March (and 
