“High Chroma,” curated by Michelle Gregor, features new work by contemporary California artists Sharon Virtue, Poppy Dodge, Erin McCluskey Wheeler, and NIAD artist Peter Harris. Read More …
Join us in NIAD’s Galleries to celebrate the spirit of community activism and creative energy of Richmond High School and NIAD Art Center artists! Richmond Artists Activate! centers artists as agents for lasting social change and leaders in the Richmond community. Read More …
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 …
This exhibition is about transcendent forms. I looked through all of NIAD’s archives to find works that conveyed something beyond this world, something magical, something that emanates a powerful force. In some cases, geometries tap into universal formulae, in others, abstract gestural strokes become vessels for cosmic frequencies from another dimension, forms that are reduced and simplified into symbols tho speak the divine names of the essences invoke those they cannot contain. I was looking for works that felt timeless, and, perhaps, even, beyond culture.
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 …
When Peter Harris is asked which of his ceramic pieces is his favorite, he says with conviction, “I love all of them.” This show is a celebration of “all of them.” The title is drawn from Michael Starofsky’s beautiful series of whale sculptures and pencil holders. Several of these artists are new to working in ceramics, and they are already establishing new forms and vibrant styles. Meanwhile, experienced NIAD ceramicists showcase their newest sculptures and functional ware. Whales and Pencil Holders presents this broad spectrum of subjects and inspiration—enjoy them all. Read More …
The selected works include NIAD and non-NIAD artists, and encapsulate the ebbs and flows during these vulnerable and emotionally fragile times, when the threat of illnesses and the effects of climate change are entangled in our everyday existence. Read More …
About Touching Touching brings together a selection of works that expand, contract, distort, and modify. Through this they make some sense of the world. They are texturally complex, engaging, thoughtful, and irreverent. They open up like portals; through a variety of materials and approaches they offer us windows to an elsewhere. About Zachary Epcar Zachary Epcar (b. San Francisco) is an experimental filmmaker whose work has screened at festivals, museums, microcinemas, and DIY venues worldwide. He lives in Oakland, California where he is a member of Light Field, an artist-run film programming collective based in the Bay Area. View Zachary Read More …
These pieces are just a few from NIAD’s current cohort, that helps me embody the possibility of the tangible space I occupy each day as well as the infinite spaces just out of my reach or yet to be imagined. Read More …
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 …
March 3-26, 2022 About the exhibition Layers Upon Layers is a curated ceramics show in celebration of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) regional event, held in Sacramento from March 3-26, 2022. Local ceramicist Shenny Cruces serves as curator and coordinator. Please contact the gallery directly for purchase inquiries. Artists in the Exhibition Peter Harris Jennifer Brazelton Gary Carlos Shenny Cruces Tomoko Nakazato Tiffany Schmierer Shannon Sullivan Sharon Virtue
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 …
About the exhibition We all hear voices. Some come from inside, and others come from outside. The truest voice is the voice coming from inside which only you can hear. We hear this voice day and night. It can be loud, or soft, or strong, or annoyed, or happy, or sad. When we let our inner voice out it can create different forms of art, sometimes in words, sometimes with color, sometimes in three dimensions, sometimes with only lines. This expression can vary every day depending on the hardness of materials, the stiffness of mind, and the softness of heart. Inner Read More …
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 …
About the exhibition As artists, we all have super powers. We can say what we feel and build worlds out of nothing. We can demand change and speak out about injustices. We can protest for our rights, freedoms, and share with others our views. It is the outside world viewed through the artist’s lens. Our powers are both inside and outside of us. Who among us will stand up for what they believe in? Who among us will help out? Who among us has a vision? Who among us desires change and progress? And who among us will do Read More …
About the exhibition Ravel is an exhibition of two and three dimensional work that attracts with loose references leaving the mind to give up meaning in the pursuit of possibility. Recommended listening to accompany the viewing of the exhibition: Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. About the organizer Danny Volk received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL) and a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Studies from Kent State University (Kent, OH). His recent exhibitions, screenings and performances include Mrs. Lincoln, What Did You Think of the Play at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, WI), The News Gallery at SPACES (Cleveland, OH), The Read More …
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 …
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 …
About the exhibition The works in this exhibition use the line to suggest form and meaning. Whether as a solid object or a mere suggestion, the line elicits connections beyond formalism, and resonates with transformative power. The synchronicity between what is made and what is felt enriches the experience with the visual languages offered here. Together, these works tell a story with line, color and form about the pleasure, diversity and complexity born from simple materials that should be required reading. About the organizer jill moniz is an independent curator of visual narratives. She shares her vision of empowering visual Read More …
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 …