Join us at the Eddie Rhodes Gallery for the opening of “3,734 Dreams Not Remembered” featuring work by NIAD Artists who are Contra Costa College alumni. Read More …
In collaboration with three profound Bay Area institutions, Into the Brightness: Artists from Creativity Explored, Creative Growth & NIAD celebrates myriad works from contemporary artists with developmental disabilities. From painting to sculpture to multimedia, these world-renowned artists are producing work of incredible power, exuberance, humor, complexity, and joy. 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 …
NIAD artists Saul Alegria and Deatra Colbert will be making pet portraits for visitors to SFMOMA on Saturday, February 4th! From SFMOMA’s website: In celebration of our Joan Brown retrospective, SFMOMA is partnering with the San Francisco SPCA to bring you Pet Portraits Day, an exciting live art extravaganza. Joan Brown was known for her enduring love of animals, and you can find many depictions of cats and dogs (many of them her own pets) throughout the exhibition on Floor 7. With this inspiration in mind, meet us at the museum on February 4 and share a digital photo of your pet with Read More …
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 …
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 …
“This collection presents tapestries woven in wool by me, Janet Moore, after those delightful paintings by NIAD artist Saul Alegria. Saul works at NIAD in the large, shared studio space. I worked there as an artist mentor and instructor in the textiles department. Saul’s renderings of animals delighted me. One of my first thoughts on seeing his work was that they would translate very well in tapestry as they were quite graphic in nature, showed his interest in text and language, had unique color combinations, and expressed a range of emotions that were quite surprising. I decided to ask Saul if he would like to see his paintings woven, and he said yes.” Read More …
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 I look at these artworks, I see their existence and how they feel as living forces; some elements remain as independent organisms where forms play out their own life; unpredictably relating to and through the viewer’s experience. Read More …
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 Read More …
About the exhibition A murmuration is a flock of thousands moving together, a pattern through the sky, each bird attuned to its nearest neighbors. Made up of individual parts, the whole becomes greater and more powerful than when it stands alone. In the works presented here, individual parts are visible: pieced, gridded, grouped, and arranged with lines, letters, and fields of color. And from the thousands of works that fly together at NIAD, here is only a sample of pieces that somehow talk and listen to their nearest neighbors. A murmuration of applause to all. About the selector Alisa Golden writes, Read More …
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 …
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 …
About “The Zindel Collection” collection The items in this Holiday Gift Guide are perfect for your friend or family member who: 1. loves handsome dudes and fall colors. Mireya Betances, Two Dudes ceramic 13x7x2″ 2. admires intelligence, integrity, and dedication. Raven Harper, MLK T-shirt hand silk-screened, 100% cotton 3. dreams of living in a strawberry. Heather Hamann, Untitled mixed media on paper 12×18″ 4. loves swamp creatures. Saul Alegria, Untitled ceramic 13x10x2″ 5. loves alien swamp creatures. Saul Alegria, Untitled acrylic on paper 30×22“ 6. likes laughing, and ponies on the freeway. Nathan Lam, Bad Traffic Sign graphite on paper, Read More …
About “The Color of Happiness” collection “It was hard picking out [the collection] because there’s so many different styles and mediums. The happiness feeling is what they all have in common. People should buy art because it will make them feel happy!” About Rebecca Jantzen, the collector “I describe myself as visually impaired and learning disabled. I am a socially engaged artist who loves her art work. I love holidays and I like to make cards for special occasions. I like to draw things that brighten up my spirit and the day; images of peace, love and happiness. One of the reasons Read More …
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 …
About the Exhibition Memory can be buried deep in our mind. It emerges at a quiet moment, when looking through a window on a peaceful afternoon, or while mixing in a noisy crowd. Memory can come in colors, in detail, or totally abstract. Powerful, but impossible to describe in words.The selected works can be any part in our memories: those sweet, lonely, joyful, silly, bitter, innocent, or nonsensical moments. About the Organizer Born in Beijing, my understanding and sense on art come from the rich memories of the seemingly long past and my present life in lively everyday reality. My Read More …
Join us online from 6-7 PM PT, Thursday August 12! We’ll welcome organizer Jessica Cadkin and guest artist Leigh Barbier in conversation about organizing this month’s NIAD Windows Exhibition, Picnic. You could have the opportunity to meet and talk with participating NIAD studio artists Saul Alegria, Jeremy Burleson, Jonathan Velazquez, Serena Scott, Shana Harper, Michael Nuñez, Michael Walker, Tre’von Silva and Hacer Acma. Leigh Barbier is a renowned San Francisco-based artist with a singular style. What are Leigh’s career highlights so far? “Working on dioramas for the California Academy of Sciences, being part of an all-girl team to make a Read More …
About the exhibition Ice cream trucks, pool parties, and picnics evoke images of summertime. This year in particular, picnics became an opportunity to reunite with friends and family after so many months of isolation. The summer ritual of gathering outside on blankets with baskets to share a meal, play games, and bask in the sun took on special meaning. So as this summer draws to a close, the artworks selected for this window exhibition are an expression of some of those things. About the organizer Jessica Cadkin was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in Napa, California. She received Read More …
About the exhibition “Our relationship with reality and life is that same relationship that exists between the satellite image and the actual earth.” – Luigi Ghirri “Our engagement with the picture, our questioning of it, shapes and defines the ways we draw meanings from it. Pictures tell stories only to the extent that we ask them to; and as our questions change, those stories do as well.” – Martha A. Sandweiss About the selector Justin Clifford Rhody is an artist working in photography, filmmaking and sound. He currently lives in New Mexico with his partner and frequent collaborator Abigail Read More …