NIAD Windows // “Heart & Soul of Richmond”

“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …

NIAD Main Gallery Exhibition // “a clearing”, organized by Mel Prest

“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …

“Rainbow Cat Picnic” organized by Cynthia Ona Innis

About the Exhibition The title of this exhibition comes from a piece included in the show, Dorian Reid’s Rainbow Cat Picnic.  In Rainbow Cat Picnic, numerous cats are joyously picnic-ing under a big colorful rainbow in what looks to be a very festive occasion.  There may be rain but that rainbow safely covers the cats and their food bowls. The sun is just coming out and those cats are really having a good time! The mixed media works in this show are my Rainbow Cat Picnic–20+ pieces representing an inspiring and colorful excursion to a place of creative nourishment and a celebration as a Read More …

April NIAD Opening Reception + Artist Talk // “a clearing”, organized by Mel Prest + “Danny Thach: Best Buddies” + “Heart & Soul of Richmond”

“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …

December NIAD Gallery Reception // “NIAD Ink: 35 Years of Prints” organized by Andres Cisneros-Galindo + “Luz y Luxe: A NIAD Holiday Shop”

Join the NIAD community to celebrate the exhibition “NIAD Ink: 35 Year of Prints,” an ambitious survey of print-based work by NIAD artists compiled by Andres Cisneros-Galindo, an artist, educator, activist, and facilitator who has worked with NIAD artists for almost 40 years. In NIAD Art Center’s galleries and studios, we’ll have an exhibition reception, cheerful winter food + drinks, an album release and music performance by NIAD artist Xiomara Rosales, a drum workshop by famed percussionist Peta Robles Izquierdo, and “Luz y Luxe,” a shop full of affordable contemporary art! Read More …

NIAD Annex Exhibition // “Crossover”

Crossover is an apt title for this show, which will showcase the vibrant and newly-connected fiber art scenes of NIAD and Cedars. Crossover is a companion to the textile-centered exhibition Follow the String, on view at Marin MOCA. In preparation for this show, artists from both programs visited each other’s studios, and participated in a tee-shirt and doll making workshop at Marin MOCA. T-shirts and dolls from this workshop will be on view in NIAD and Marin MOCA. Read More …

“Follow The String” at Marin MOCA

Curated by NIAD’s Emma Spertus and Julio Rodriguez with NIAD artists Felicia Griffin, Dorian Reid, and Kiesha White, the exhibition features artists from Cedars and NIAD, alongside artists from the broader Bay Area arts community. Follow the String showcases conventionally trained artists alongside artists with disabilities, blurring distinctions between “insider” and “outsider” art. Read More …

NIAD Online Exhibition // “I Belong To Myself” organized by Maria Seda-Reeder

Being an artist who helps bring new, radical ideas into the world is neither an easy nor simple task. So it takes a certain, special kind of magic—charisma, self-belief, instinct—to move through the world going against the grain, as innovative artists so often do. I’m honored to have the chance to put forth this small sampling of artists from NIAD, an organization that likewise is working at the forefront of contemporary art.  Read More …

NIAD Online Exhibition // “I Wanna See All My Friends At Once” organized by Cone Shaped Top

Looking through works from the roster of NIAD artists, ideas around bodies coming together under the unifying force of music for release, freedom, self-expression and camaraderie began to emerge. Balloons, dancing, fearless fashion, music, friendship, colorful people and spaces filled with lights, projections and disco balls; all themes that form the ethos of our space. These works highlight motifs and sentiments that conjure the feeling of bliss from celebrating life with chosen families through music. Read More …

NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “Superbloom,” organized by Erin McCluskey Wheeler

About the exhibition It’s not a superbloom year. It’s not one of those years where the rain fall gives us an explosion of colorful flowers in the desert. But it is spring. There are still median strips full of poppies and untended lots full of lupines and purple vetch. There are bright yellow dandelions growing despite everything. There are the plum trees blossoming then letting loose their purple leaves and then the cherry trees blooming and letting loose their green leaves. These moments of color, of unexpected brightness, bring me so much happiness and ground me to the earth. I Read More …

NIAD Online Exhibition // “Luxe, calme, et volupté,” selected by Lou Mo

About the exhibition Henri Matisse painted Luxe, calme, et volupté more than a hundred years ago. Today, the vibrantly coloured Fauvist painting keeps instilling a sense of warmth and repose. Luxury, peace and pleasure indeed. At the moment, many of us may not be feeling at ease. To state the obvious, there’s an unfinished pandemic and a war raging once again in Europe. These are difficult times and many futures seem possible. Times are trying. Change and anxiety cannot be avoided.  Very often, the extra toiling accumulates upon the female and/or racialized body. Labor and care, both physical and emotional, are often Read More …

NIAD Online Exhibition // “Day or Night it looks like Night” organized by Liliana Herrera

About the exhibition The pieces in this exhibition were selected in a moment of uncertainty. The pandemic has affected each of us differently, but what can perhaps be agreed upon is that its longevity has worn on our collective morale. This was certainly the undercurrent of this grouping.  Dorian Reid’s Day or Night it Looks Like Night, is a depiction of September 9, 2020, a day that those of us in the Bay Area remember all too well: the day we awoke to smoky red skies caused by surrounding wildfires. The ominous tones on the canvas continue to be relevant today.  Read More …

NIAD Windows Exhibition // “6×6 x 6×6” organized by NIAD’s Exhibitions Team

About the exhibition Around about January, while the new year is still fresh, little square canvases start slowly piling up around the 23rd Street Studio like gorgeous stalagmites. Just before the stacks reach a tipping point, NIAD’s Exhibitions Team swoops in to arrange them in a tidy grid in the NIAD Windows.  Each square – be it painting, photo, fiber, ceramic, sculpture, drawing – measures 6 inches by 6 inches. There is room for 48 of them in the Windows, but there’s nearly a hundred more, waiting to be hand-picked and shipped off to their forever homes to ultimately rest on the Read More …

Win Win 10 Sneak Preview, collected by Isabel Xilonen Ortiz (online exhibition)

Our final NIAD Gift Guide of the season doubles as a sneak peek into what’s in store for you at Win Win 10, NIAD’s Annual Benefit Fundraiser coming up on Saturday March 5, 2022! Isabel X. Ortiz from NIAD’s fundraising team describes the NIAD artworks that inspired her Win Win 10 Sneak Preview collection… About the collection I curated this collection with all the game-lovers and risk-takers in mind. It’s for the artists who are pushing their own creative boundaries. It’s for the innovators who are thinking of their next passion project. It’s for the people who like to spice up their homes with Read More …