Tender Balance, sculptures, tapestries and paintings by Tara Daly. My sculptures reflect the terror of falling apart, and my textiles and paintings are attempts at mending and repair. My sculptures are grounded in corporeal experience and the physicality of breakdown. I make paintings of geometric shapes that have a spiritual feeling, like diagrams of balance and connection. Symmetry plays into that, reflecting that there is an opposite and equal effect from each cause. Making these works is a receptive, intuitive process, and a striving for harmony. Through this interplay of destruction and restoration, my art seeks to dance with fragility and resilience.

Life Between Us by Alejandra Chavez, Max Thelen Resident – My paintings have been about creating worlds and stories. I wanted to loosen up on detail and allow myself to explore whatever came out. I did not entirely change my style, but what is clear is the birth of a new subject. My art has become about the journey and what I'm seeking. It was always about discovery, but now the images are clear. What I am seeking is still undefined, but I know one part of it is about connection.

Freedom by Janey Fritsche – There is something about the ocean that transcends our normal reality and touches on a dreamworld. It is a place to do a reset for a fresh view of life; a place we can just be at peace, a place to awaken joy. Being at the seashore combined with my meditation practice helps to cultivate my heart / mind for being present in the moment. Freedom is found in these moments of "being here now" and leading with my heart.

Peter Keresztury – I am a furniture designer and abstract painter who seeks beauty, harmony, balance and proportion in all my endeavors. I have always been involved in the creative arts and I like working with vibrant colors that bring joy and excitement. My current art projects include designing table furniture with my abstract designs painted on the tops. “Tables As Art – Functional Art” collection includes coffee tables, 3-pc sets, console/entry tables, and breakfast/dining tables. All table tops are painted with abstract designs in various colors, with handcrafted architectural stepped legs.

Art of the African Diaspora featuring artists: Akaysha BC, Slone Gross, Kelvin Curry, Julie Atkinson, Tiffany Conway, Xioneida Ruiz, Stephen Bruce

Curated by Irene Bee Kain

Art of the African Diaspora is the longest running event of its kind in the Bay Area. For 26 years it has supported hundreds of artists of African descent through representation, professional development and building a creative community.

In 2023, over 130 artists showcased their work at the Richmond Art Center, as well as in open studios and satellite exhibitions at over thirty different venues across the Bay Area.

Warm your soul with a cornucopia of creativity while discovering unique holiday gifts throughout two levels of galleries featuring over 60 artworks.

Our Ceramics studio, with master teacher Barbara Andino Stevenson, is a vibrant tapestry of collaboration and friendship, where the art of clay comes alive through collective creativity. Within these walls, hands mold raw earth into expressions of beauty and meaning. The kiln's transformative embrace mirrors our shared journey, firing bonds that strengthen with every piece. Through shared ideas and supportive hands, we shape more than clay – we shape connections that endure, celebrating the profound resonance of human expression fired into every ceramic piece.

Water is a precondition for human existence. It is a finite, irreplaceable resource, playing an intrinsic role in every culture. River Mumma invites the audience to return to a respect for nature and the power of water and highlights that which is being lost and devalued in our modern world. Sharon Virtue is a British artist of Jamaican and Irish decent. Her residency has been impacted literally by the current issues of climate change in particular those concerning water.

“Like many artists, I'm fascinated by the forms and textures of natural objects. Some time back, I launched into a lifelong project to capture and unite them into works of art I call "Juxtamorphs". This has taken me on a journey of exploration and discovery through many media, starting with ceramics, through castings in metal and other materials, direct assemblies of found and made objects, holograms, rubbings, 3D prints, and CNC carvings.”– Andrew Werby

Effluxes/Outpourings: Color & Light Works for Sublimity, Wonder, Awe and Delight Visual Antidotes in an Age of Uncertainty and Human Vulnerability

My creative journey has spanned many years and miles. Formerly a native of Montreal, I enjoyed a career in advertising and graphic design before moving along the coast to Portland, Maine, the shores of North Carolina and ultimately westward to the Bay Area. The bodies of water and rolling hills that filled me with inspiration became the subject matter of my oil paintings. Today, as a studio artist in Marin, I paint intuitively, gravitating towards an interpretation of nature that is pared down, fluid and serene.

Steep yourself in a cornucopia of creativity by perusing three galleries inside Art Works Downtown.

In my works, the sculptures will sometimes take on their own shapes. This can happen through something as simple as the pressure of my hands or something completely out of my control, like the firing or glazing process. There have been many happy and some not-so-happy accidents throughout this process. But, as my hands dance with the clay, I find a way to communicate and express how I see and experience the world. This process is sometimes joyful, painful, or disturbing, just like life and the world around us. I'm always captivated by the interaction between myself with the clay. It's as if I'm not entirely in control of what is created. I now find beauty in the mystery of what the final product will become, as if something came through me of its own desire.

Over the last two years, I have designed funky, narrative, gestural spaces through my lens as a painter. The spaces likely do not create a functioning architecture as they are only built inside my small laptop but they participate in a radical sensitivity to experience. My recent studies in the realm of architecture gave rise to a love of the tactility of painting pigments as well as established a re-valuation of the handcrafted tectonics that can evoke basic human emotion.

I tend to paint people in moments of introspection or concentration when they show their real character and mood which are normally behind the mask they put on in public. My painting is also about story telling. I try to tell stories that show the hidden truth that I sense exists deep within their own experience of the world, and reflects their living condition, their mental state, their interests, and other aspects of their disposition of being. My goal is to search out the humanity within these situations.

Marianne Owens Photography recent artwork is inspired by Surrealism because of its power to invite each of us to create our own story from the images we see. Each image is its’own story depending on the viewer. As a landscape and found-object photographer, I play with the possibility of creating new meaning through combined images.

I was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. At the age of seven I would look up at the stars and I dreamed of a better life that was different from the one that I had. So I moved to Mexico City to live with my grandparents. Even though I was not encouraged to pursue art, my passion bloomed in Mexico City. Exposure to Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo inspired my painting style.

Steep yourself in a cornucopia of creativity by perusing two galleries in the sub-terranian level of AWD. Visitors and holiday shoppers will surely discover unexpected inspiration amongst the variety of mediums, compositions, and expressions.