Christian Vassell

Reception for Art of the African Diaspora 2023 // Oakland Satellite Exhibition

Opening Reception Friday February 3 6 to 8:30pm Warehouse 416   This year NIAD is delighted to have works by ten NIAD artists in both the Richmond Art Center AOTAD exhibition and a satellite exhibition at the Warehouse 416 art space in Oakland. The reception coincides with Oakland’s First Fridays Art Walk. Art of the African Diaspora, in partnership with Richmond Art Center, supports artists of African descent in the Bay Area through representation, professional development, and building a creative community.   Participating NIAD Artists: Christian Vassell Deatra Colbert Dorian Reid Evelyn Davis Felicia Griffin Jason Powell-Smith Shawna Kinard Shawn Read More …

an assortment of fruit - grapes, bananas, cherries, limes - drawn with thick black outlines.

NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “What’s Cookin?!,” organized by Terri Moore and the Cooking Corner class

This show is all about comfort text: resilience in everyday words, writing and reading. Expression can also be wordless, the use of line and color as new vocabulary, pushing a thought out onto a surface, making marks and continuously trying to communicate with the world.

We tell stories to sustain ourselves and find each other. These messages embedded in art become an emotional telegram– a signal flare with a flame of memory trailing behind it. “Feeling Language” is about books, lists, slogans, language, gesture, touch and the trust given in sharing. Read More …

an assortment of fruit - grapes, bananas, cherries, limes - drawn with thick black outlines.

NIAD Main Gallery Exhibition // “What’s Cookin?!”

In the exhibition What’s Cookin?!, you will see food, art and creativity from various NIAD artists. So feel free to pull up a chair in your mind, take a seat at our dinner table, and see what’s cookin’! Cooking Corner is a place where artists can share artwork, make art, share food ideas and recipes, and interests they have in cooking, and also cook along with me from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Since we have returned to being on site, Cooking Corner has made its way back to the 23rd Street NIAD studio, where myself and a group of artists meet weekly, and come up with recipes to prepare, prep, cook and serve to the NIAD community. Read More …

A graphic promoting an exhibition. Below a row of black cutout star shapes, centered at the top of the image, in exuberant black text that has a hand-cut feel, are the words “Feeling Language” in all caps. Below that in a smaller size, the words “organized by Kate Laster”. In the left half of the graphic, a page from a book with swirling patterns is covered with ten rows of the handwritten phrase “You Are Here,” hand written in a beige cursive font in all caps. The name “Mitsuko Brooks” appears to the left. In the same font, a column on the right lists the artists participating in the exhibition. Each word is separated by a diamond or a star shape

NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “Feeling Language,” organized by Kate Laster

This show is all about comfort text: resilience in everyday words, writing and reading. Expression can also be wordless, the use of line and color as new vocabulary, pushing a thought out onto a surface, making marks and continuously trying to communicate with the world.

We tell stories to sustain ourselves and find each other. These messages embedded in art become an emotional telegram– a signal flare with a flame of memory trailing behind it. “Feeling Language” is about books, lists, slogans, language, gesture, touch and the trust given in sharing. 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 artists on KALX radio

On Friday, July 29th, DJ Surface Tension invites KALX listeners to tune in to an ear-opening conversation with the “sounding artists” of NIAD Art Center as they discuss their most recent release Sounding Artists R Sweet and So R You.  Featured in this conversation are artists Luis Estrada, Christian Vassel, and Raven Harper. This studio compilation captures the rawness of NIAD’s community artists at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Recorded in early 2020 over the phone and in zoom, the outcome is equal parts poignant, hilarious, beautiful and boundary-pushing. Sounding Artists R Sweet and So R You is a sonic answer to the age old question: what is music? Find the Read More …

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

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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 …

A satirical print of a white male, wearing a blue uniform, smiling, holding up a blue hood with his raised right hand. The words "Trump equals" above the figure and "cobra commander" at the bottom are handwritten in black.

NIAD Online Exhibition // “Innersense” ushered by Germán Herrera

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About the Exhibition What is expressed in this small selection of works emanates from tender voices; better equipped than most to express the one quality humankind probably needs the most in this moment: love.  They make me think of canaries in a coal mine and, their message, an invitation to  embrace our humanity. May all of us be inspired by their courage, honesty and capacity to feel. About the organizer Germán Herrera Human being. I am an artist interested in spirituality, communication and art as an extension of consciousness. Student of A Course in Miracles, I live in California with Read More …

A handful of dogs (some brown, some yellow) and what appear to be a few cats poke their heads in sideways and here and there into a garden scene of red and pink flowers with twining stems and bright green leaves on a light green background. Only the heads and necks of the dogs (and cats, perhaps) are visible.

NIAD Windows Exhibition // “Menagerie on 23rd Street” selected by Prajakti Jayavant

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About the exhibition The exhibition windows of NIAD on 23rd street are wildly overstuffed this holiday season. Amongst a backdrop of drawings that are doodled and dotted emerge a collection of creatures that are striped and spotted. This menagerie includes an assortment of tickles and roars from the furriest felines to amphibians galore. At daybreak, dapper penguins appear as mischievous musketeers, parading their way through showers of shapes. Marsupials, with pocketfuls of petunias, patiently postpone their leaping while snails slowly scribe a chalk hopscotch design. By midday, squirrels engage in patterns of play by using their tails as paintbrushes to carry Read More …

Online Exhibition: “Stories” selected by B. Wurtz

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About the Exhibition For this exhibition for NIAD I didn’t want to overthink the process. I decided to begin by going through all the available art and to notice things that kind of jumped out at me. I viewed everything one time and then went back a second time to select artworks. As I viewed the first group of selections I tried to see connections between the works. I noticed that there seemed to be a theme in many of the works that I would describe as being of a narrative nature. I am talking about implied narratives, nothing really Read More …

An ink drawing of floating hearts surrounded by smaller hearts, large floating flowers with hearts on the petals, flowers surrounded by flowers, all shapes filled with thin washes of color, blotched here and there. Some are colored with pencil. The colors are varied and bright. The artist's signature is in the bottom right corner.

Online Exhibition: “A Firmament in the Midst of the Waters” organized by Jay Youngdahl

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About the exhibition   Viewers can learn much from the work of NIAD artists. Their work offers the viewer a recognition that life is often a jumble of color and form.  Things arise, and often not in a linear or scientific manner. In reviewing the NIAD catalog, a religious/spiritual theme emerges.  Based on the conception of the beginning of the world found in the Old Testament book of Genesis, out of a chaos a world is born. Let there be light. About the organizer Jay Youngdahl is an artist, writer, and activist. For the past few decades he has made his Read More …

A linocut print with a slightly rough right edge. the ink is fire-engine red with very lightly speckled patches of white paper showing through here and there. in the upper center of the page, the word YIELD in handdrawn letters is tightly enclosed by an upside-down triangle, with is in turn enclosed by another upside down triangle, with a third triangle tight around the second. The borders of the two outer triangles blend together here and there.

Online Exhibition: Yielding, organized by Ann Marguerite Tartsinis

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About the exhibition   To yield is to submit to pressure, to give way to an external force. It is also to produce or create something, the yield, from one’s own labor. The artworks brought together in this exhibition reflect the multiple ways matter can yield: Clay is molded and punctured by the sharp tip of the stylus, fabric gathers at the pull of the embroidery thread, and brushstrokes accumulate to reveal an overflowing mass of delineated forms on the page. While some of the artworks here physically represent how yielding is embedded in the very processes of their making, others Read More …

a face emerges from a canvas of exuberant brushstrokes - a cornflower blue muzzle, a lavender nose, yellow brows, skin in brown and magenta shades, surrounded by an aura of more magenta paint mixed with lavender and cornflower blue. the canvas is vertically oriented. the face is smiling.

Online Exhibition: 177 years, organized by Julia Goodman and Michael Hall

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About the exhibition   177 Years is a group show including multiple works by Lisa Blevens, Eddie Braught, Sylvia Fragoso, Peter Harris, Tre’von Silva, Jonathan Valdivias, Christian Vassell and Susan Wise. Cumulatively the artists have spent 177 years making art in the NIAD studio working with paint, textiles, ceramics and sound. Julia and Michael co-curated this show from home while their toddler was sleeping.  About the organizers Julia Goodman is known for her low and high relief handmade paper sculptures. Goodman’s innovative approach to papermaking holds strong throughlines with the history of rag paper as she gathers, sorts, tears, soaks and pulps fibers, transforming discarded bedsheets and Read More …

Special Exhibition: SFMOMA x NIAD MiNi Mural Gallery

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About the gallery The NIAD MiNi Gallery is a collection of work that showcases the diversity of NIAD’s studio artists in material and form, featuring the artists who contributed to the SFMOMA MiNi Mural Project. About the event From the SFMOMA website: In 1940, more than sixty-five artists made their creative processes public when they participated in Art in Action, an exhibition of live art making conceived by architect Timothy L. Pfleuger as part of the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. Among these artists was Diego Rivera, who during this time painted the mural Pan American Unity, which Read More …

Untitled (D0653) mixed media on paper by NIAD studio artist Erica Martinez. image description: a bright magenta feather shape with black ink details on a light yellow background.

Online Exhibition: 20 Continuous Lines, selected by Veronica DeJesus

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About the exhibition 20 continuous linesCommunicationConnectionsRelationshipsModel MakingCirclesFriendsFamilyGrounding StonesVacationsFinding BalanceSeeing things throughColors open up our perspectivesFinding peace and harmonyEVEN through hard shiftsBREATHE WORKPRAYER WORKPERSPECTIVE WORKlaying in a fieldFeeling connected to your purposeHaving your inner light turned on from within About the selector Veronica DeJesus is a visual artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. She was raised in Miami, LA, Oakland and on the open road along Highway 10. Veronica has had numerous solo shows at galleries in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco, including her remarkable exhibition of Memorial drawings at The Berkeley Art Museum. Her work has been featured Read More …

Image: Untitled (D7526), Karen May.

Online Exhibition: Every Sing, selected by Jesse Malmed

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About the exhibition   Every SingSome SingAny SingThis Sing   Or what we might call singinging, both to and away from alongongs. This online exhibition brings together a series of works from some of the artists at NIAD that harmonize with singing things, through fan culture, instrument studies, exploded gig posters from a pole on the studio table, scores and how songs move. About the selector Jesse Malmed is an artist and curator working in video, performance, text, occasional objects and their gaps and laps over and under. 

James Heartsill Untitled (P0639)

Online Exhibition: Diverse Findings, selected by Paulette Nichols

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About the exhibition Here is a picture by James Heartsill of what looks to be a house, except it has teeth, and there is a sky and trees and the roof looks like it has a hair cut, and a tongue is coming out like a door mat. Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart wrote a song called My Head is My Only House Unless it Rains, and that’s what this mixed media on canvas piece makes me think of. We walk around in our heads that protect us like little houses. We inhabit our bodies. They are our homes, and we may own Read More …

NIAD artists in our courtyard working on sketches for SFMOMA's Mini Mural Festival. Top row: Luis Estrada, Esmeralda Silva, Miguel Chacon. Circle: Jonathan Valdivias. Bottom row: Julio Del Rio, Deatra Colbert, Christian Vassell's sketches.

Online Event: SFMOMA Mini Mural Festival Kickoff – June 24

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NIAD is one of three organizations commissioned by SFMOMA to contribute murals to its Mini Mural Festival this summer. During this special online kickoff event, Acción Latina, NIAD, and SOMA Pilipinas will discuss our organizations’ work and missions. Then, the artists will reveal their mural designs for the first time. Don’t miss this special preview! SFMOMA Mini Mural Festival Kickoff (online)Thursday, June 24th, 5:30 PM PTRSVP today! Image: NIAD artists in our courtyard working on sketches for SFMOMA’s Mini Mural Festival. Top row: Luis Estrada, Esmeralda Silva, Miguel Chacon. Circle: Jonathan Valdivias. Bottom row: Julio Del Rio, Deatra Colbert, Christian Vassell’s sketches.