Last weekend’s Richmond Open Studios featured the third annual event’s largest cadre of exhibiting artists, with 90 participants opening up their workspaces to the public and hosting booths at local art galleries.
Visitors could travel around the city to enjoy one-on-one conversations with Richmond-based artists and purchase some of their work.
The event, organized by the volunteer group Visual Artists of Richmond, is much more than an art show. It’s a window into the deeply diverse well of creativity and life experiences in Richmond — a Barcelona-trained ceramic artist whose family cheerfully helps sell her whimsical, an El Sobrante-based abstract landscape painter who used to illustrate graphic novels, a watercolorist who sells soft T-shirts printed with her designs, including a tiny wristwatch on the sleeve.
VAR artist and even organizer Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez said she’s still tallying the stats but about 800 people attended at the four participating venues whileThe venues counted their visitors, and just at our four partners we got close to 800 visitors while hundreds more made the rounds of individual art studios.
Looking forward, the event hopes to transition to a more sustainable funding model, given that its costs more than $45,000 , Garcia-Gonzalez told Richmondside.
“Personally, it gives me great satisfaction to say this has been our most inclusive event so far,” she said via email. “We want to stay community-oriented and not lose track of the needs of this artist community.”
There were too many artists involved to list, but we hope you enjoy a few photos from the event:
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“Art is about remembering for me. It comes to my mind that we should remember our ancestors. It’s about the things you have that you can be thankful for.“
— Richmond artist Raven Harper
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“The circle is inside of me, a square too. I see it in the world too.“
— NIAD artist Felicia Griffin
