richmondartcenter

Winter Exhibitions 2012
January 10 - March 9, 2012

artists' reception for all shows.
February 4, 2-5 pm

MAIN GALLERY
The Art of Living Black 16th Annual Bay Area Black Artists Exhibition.
The Richmond Art Center is proud to present The Art of Living Black, 16th Annual Bay Area Black Artists Exhibition. This exhibition is the only annual non-juried exhibition and self-guided art tour in the Bay Area to exclusively feature regional artists of African descent. Featuring over 50 local artists.

SOUTH GALLERY
Rising Tide: A Post-Cautionary Tale, Continued
A Work in Progress by John Wehrle.
Fresh from his one-month artist residency at the deYoung museum in San Francisco, Richmond-based artist John Wehrle will continue painting the mural Rising Tide during gallery hours where all are welcome to observe and talk to John as he works.

COMMUNITY GALLERY
Ancestral Melodies Paintings & Mixed Media by James Gayles.
Ancestral Memories is a solo exhibition of the work of James Gayles. Works featured are watercolor and mixed media works from his jazz musician series and his ancestral series.

The Teapot, Reinterpreted.
The Teapot, Reinterpreted is an intimate group show of California artists that explore and expand the teapot through varied media and size. Works range from decorative, functional, traditional and abstract.

gallery/office hours
tuesday - saturday,
11am - 5pm
free parking | wheelchair accessible

Previous Exhibitions| Current Exhibitions

Rising Tide: A Post-Cautionary Tale, Continued. A Work in Progress by
John Wehrle

John Wehrle is an artist specializing in the making of site-specific public artworks, his projects include mural-sized paintings for interior and exterior walls along with more elaborate architectural installation works that integrate text, painting, ceramic tile and relief sculpture. Wehrle's works are seen in libraries, banks, civic buildings and freeway walls.

Born and raised all over Texas, Wehrle has a BA from Texas Tech and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. A former assistant Professor at California College of Arts, US Army combat artist, and builder, he has been making public art for over three decades. Wehrle's work is critically acclaimed, having received various design awards for excellence and is featured in numerous books on Murals and public art. His Vietnam paintings are part of the permanent collection of the US Army, and were prominently featured in a 2010 exhibition at National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Substantial research precedes the fabrication of each artwork. History, recognizable portraits and local landmarks are metaphorically recombined into a new visual statement. Some of Wehrle's major works are:

Revisionist History, a mural for the city of Richmond, CA on San Pablo Ave at I-80 Overpass.
Galileo, Jupiter, Apollo, a 207-foot mural on the Santa Ana Freeway painted for the 1984 Olympics in LA. Now destroyed.
Scribes, a permanent installation of text and image throughout the interior of the LA Mid-valley public library.
Knockout, This deconstructionist boxing/ballerina mural is a prominent feature of Kate Mantilini Restaurant. Building designed by renowned architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis.
Words Fly Away, Ocean View Library installation San Francisco - Floor ceiling, walls, words images - the works.
Mak Roote, a collaborative installation with poet Betsy Davids underneath University Avenue artistically defining the Berkeley Transit Plaza.

For Rising Tide, Wehrle revisits an old theme - the evolving landscape of the city - in this case the city being San Francisco. Wehrle states that "Before the Gold rush everything east of Montgomery Street was bay and the whole financial district was mudflat. With the advent of melting icecaps, one begins to speculate on a future resembling the past. Of course we'll still have our iphones, which makes for some interesting juxtapositions."

Werhle's first job when he moved to San Francisco in the late sixties was teaching art to students of various ages at the former de Young Museum building. Between classes he spent his spare time wandering through the American Wing. "The energy of those 19th and early 20th century landscapes, migrating across the country from Thomas Cole's eastern woodlands to Alfred Bierstadt's western mountains worked like a time machine. Standing in front of a Fredrick Church, you could imagine the paint being applied fresh before your eyes. As that century wore on the early views of bucolic nature transformed into the industrial landscape we have all grown up with. You can follow the brushstrokes from the pre-photographic paintings of Asher Durand and George Inness to the manufactured technological isolation of Thomas Ashuntz, Edward Hopper and beyond."

Nature, however, is a powerful force and wants to reclaim its own. Weeds push through the sidewalk cracks, ivy crumbles walls, water rises. Time changes everything. Wehrle is drawn to this landscape of transformation. As the artists of another time were recording the real and imagined ruins of the past, he is interested in the ruins of the future. "It is not a question of how we can prevent the occurrence of climates changes (man made, for sure), but rather how we can adapt to them and survive. Here is one imagined scenario. No claims are made for factual accuracy. Remember it was artists who put wings on angels."

To learn more about John Wehrle, visit is website at www.troutinhand.com

The Richmond Art Center is proud to present The Art of Living Black, 16th Annual Bay Area Black Artists Exhibition. This exhibition is the only annual non-juried exhibition and self-guided art tour in the Bay Area to exclusively feature regional artists of African descent. The Art of Living Black was co-founded in 1997 by the late artists Rae Louise Hayward and Jan Hart-Schuyers and continues to honor their vision to this day.

Featuring over 50 local artists, the works include fine arts and crafts, paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, masks, stained glass, quilts, textile art, ceramics, jewelry and dolls. A number of satellite shows at locations throughout the Bay Area accompany this exhibition. The exhibitions culminate with a self-guided art tour giving the public an opportunity to meet the artists, learn about their creative processes and purchase art directly from them.

Look for Winter classes and workshops presented by participating Art of Living Black artists Lorraine Bonner Duane M. Conliffe, Raymond Haywood and Tomyé Neal-Madison.

TAOLB Artists' panels:

Saturday, Feb 4 12-2 pm
Saturday, Feb 11 12-2 pm

Ancestral Memories is a solo exhibition of the work of James Gayles. Works featured are watercolor and mixed media works from his jazz musician series and his ancestral series.

The jazz series focus on contemporary and historical jazz practitioners. The subjects of his works are those who were born, settled or developed their skills in the Bay Area, most residing in Oakland. Gayles portrait subject are created with unique mixed media backgrounds that refer the individual portrayed. He has captured the unique affect of each of his subjects, ranging from Marcus Shelby to John Coltrane.

James Gayles is an Emmy Award winning commercial artist and professional fine artist. Gayles attended Pratt Institute in New York, where he studied under renowned painters Jacob Lawrence and Audrey Flack. He is an established graphic designer and illustrator, most recently for Bay Area News Group. Gayles has lived in Oakland, California for over 25 years.

Art critic and curator Adam Mikos had this to say about one of Gayles' recent exhibition BluesMasters: "Gayles has focused his talents on fusing sight with sound, cajoling color and line to communicate like guitar strings and piano keys. Gayles clearly has a special touch with watercolors. Each portrait and image in the exhibition shows mastery over different styles of the medium. Dreamy realism, hard-edged contours, and abstraction push and pull on perspective. Gayles' use of color is stunning. These are not the grainy, black and white images many think of as representing the blues. Bright reds, oranges, and blues catch the eye immediately and allow the lyrical quality of the watercolors to lift off the wall."

For more information about James Gayles, visit his website at: www.jamesgayles.com

The Teapot, Reinterpreted

The Teapot, Reinterpreted is an intimate group show of California artists that explore and expand the teapot through varied media and size. Works range from decorative, functional, traditional and abstract.