About the exhibition

This online NIAD exhibition is in conjunction with DreamForms, curated by Roberto Martinez, currently at the Richmond Art Center. It represents the ceramic visions of Julio del Rio and (myself) Lauren Ari. 

I had the pleasure of being a painting instructor at NIAD where Julio Del Rio is a studio artist. I was inspired by the well of creativity, the open-heartedness and the community which is a sweet world unto itself.  It has been a joy to go back and choose these works to share with you!  

“You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one” –

John Lennon

About the organizers

Lauren Ari is an artist and educator based in Richmond, California. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from U.C. Davis after undergraduate study at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her primary focus is on drawing and sculpture. Lauren’s work is in the permanent collections of the Legion of Honor Achenbach Foundation and the De Young Museum. “Lauren Ari’s art roars out of the deepest part of her psyche and arrives with great tenderness into the world. It is fiercely honest, playful and provocative. She speaks directly what is still unfettered in all of us, our wild, free, animal selves.” — Poet Alison Luterman

Julio Del Rio is a NIAD Studio Artist based in Richmond, CA. He has assembled a small militia of powerful and strange, sometimes humanoid, ceramics figures (frequently seen on paper or canvas as well). Some are based on modern and post-modern sculptures by the likes of Jeff Koons or George Condo. Many of the figures sport a skin etched with text or symbols, creating a connection back in time with the terracotta warriors of ancient China. But, unlike the uniform drabness of the funerary sculptures, Del Rio’s pieces are glazed in bursts of colors.

Artists in the Exhibition

Nathan Lam

Alan Perez

Julio Del Rio

Jonathan Velazquez

Karen May

Saul Alegria

Dorian Reid

Raven Harper