Carlos Fernandez

an assortment of fruit - grapes, bananas, cherries, limes - drawn with thick black outlines.

NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “What’s Cookin?!,” organized by Terri Moore and the Cooking Corner class

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 …

an assortment of fruit - grapes, bananas, cherries, limes - drawn with thick black outlines.

NIAD Main Gallery Exhibition // “What’s Cookin?!”

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 …

A graphic promoting an exhibition. Below a row of black cutout star shapes, centered at the top of the image, in exuberant black text that has a hand-cut feel, are the words “Feeling Language” in all caps. Below that in a smaller size, the words “organized by Kate Laster”. In the left half of the graphic, a page from a book with swirling patterns is covered with ten rows of the handwritten phrase “You Are Here,” hand written in a beige cursive font in all caps. The name “Mitsuko Brooks” appears to the left. In the same font, a column on the right lists the artists participating in the exhibition. Each word is separated by a diamond or a star shape

NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “Feeling Language,” organized by Kate Laster

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 …

- A painting by Shantae Robinson: Untitled (P0084). Paint and collaged elements on a square canvas, arranged in a rough grid on a red background.

NIAD Online Exhibition // “Touching,” organized by Zachary Epcar

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 …

A handful of dogs (some brown, some yellow) and what appear to be a few cats poke their heads in sideways and here and there into a garden scene of red and pink flowers with twining stems and bright green leaves on a light green background. Only the heads and necks of the dogs (and cats, perhaps) are visible.

NIAD Windows Exhibition // “Menagerie on 23rd Street” selected by Prajakti Jayavant

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

About the exhibition The exhibition windows of NIAD on 23rd street are wildly overstuffed this holiday season. Amongst a backdrop of drawings that are doodled and dotted emerge a collection of creatures that are striped and spotted. This menagerie includes an assortment of tickles and roars from the furriest felines to amphibians galore. At daybreak, dapper penguins appear as mischievous musketeers, parading their way through showers of shapes. Marsupials, with pocketfuls of petunias, patiently postpone their leaping while snails slowly scribe a chalk hopscotch design. By midday, squirrels engage in patterns of play by using their tails as paintbrushes to carry Read More …

NIAD Windows Exhibition: “Con Los Animales Estamos Conectados,” selected by Christo Oropeza

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

About the exhibition:  I recently became a dog father of a small two-month-old puppy.  Over the months after his arrival, I have learned so much about myself through him: patience, being present in the moment, not holding people in time and space, and unconditional love.  I had no idea that this was the relationship that would be built between him and I, and it has rocked-my-socks off because of how much of a connection has and continues to develop.    Having worked with NIAD artists at SFMOMA’s Mini Mural Festival in the Summer of 2021, I was excited to do an Read More …

A black ink drawing, smudged in some areas, with three crowded rows of bees filling the bottom half and three rough rows of winged figures in the top half, jostling each other for space.

Online Exhibition: Ravel, organized by Danny Volk

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

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 …

Untitled (D0897) by Julie MacDonald graphite on woven paper 13 x 19” unique 2019. Row after row of small squares, each divided into four bright triangles, stacked up across the picture plane to form an optical dance (perhaps more of a march?) of color.

Online Exhibition: Holding the Line, organized by jill moniz

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

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 …

Untitled (D8221), Samantha Kershnar.

Online Exhibition: Serotonin Ping, selected by Zoë Taleporos

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

About the exhibition   Serotonin Ping is a collection of images that aspire to elicit feelings of well-being, stability, and happiness. Pets, food, inside jokes, oddities, simple statements – these are the things that cheer me up. Hopefully this show makes someone else crack a smile. About the selector Zoë Taleporos is a curator, arts administrator, and writer based in Oakland. She currently works as a Public Art Project Manager at the San Francisco Arts Commission where she is involved in commissioning a wide range of artworks for public spaces.

Untitled (D3615), Eddie Braught.

Online Exhibition: Group Chat, selected by Kate Rhoades & Katy Kondo

Posted onAuthorNIAD Art Center

About the exhibition Since we’re curating this show as a duo, we were drawn to work that deals with collaboration and togetherness. In the last year as we’ve been isolated from our larger communities, we have also been deeply entangled with the few people in our bubble. In this exhibition we present works that were produced through collaboration with those long gone, like Karen May’s Untitled which responds to Man Ray’s Larmes (Tears). We also included works considering groups, like the stoic duck couple in Danny Thach’s Untitled. With our social spheres out of whack, these artists have given us new ways to think about being Read More …