PULLEY: A COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITION WITH NIAD ART CENTER

SEPTEMBER 20 - NOVEMBER 16, 2025

CURATED BY CHRISTOPHER ROBIN DUNCAN

EXHIBITING ARTISTS:

Arstanda Billy White, Deatra Colbert, Felicia Griffin, Karen May, Mat Van Dongen, Mireya Betances, Peter Harris, Richard Naranjo, Shantae Robinson, Shawn Sanders, Sylvia Fragoso, and Christopher Robin Duncan.

Related programs:

• Opening Reception: Saturday, September 20, 2025, 3 - 5 pm.

• Artist Conversation & Potluck in the park: Saturday, October 18, 2025, 1 - 4 pm

• Launch & Closing Reception: Saturday, November 15, 2025, 3 - 5 pm

Press Release

PULLEY: a collaborative exhibition with NIAD Art Center, presents a radical experiment and mutual exchange between ten NIAD artists and Christopher Robin Duncan. The show’s punchy title refers both to the physical mechanism that allowed for these works to be created and to the greater concept of a pulley system: a collection of wheels and ropes that operate in concert to lift an object.

The artists in PULLEY upend the convention of the traditional group show as a collection of individual artists presenting individual works, instead prioritizing the magic alchemy of working in tandem with one another, with light, with space. The exhibition features fabric canvases, wearable fabrics, and ceramic sculpture.

Guided in a workshop facilitated by multidisciplinary artist Christopher Robin Duncan, the NIAD artists prepared fabrics to go up via pulley to the building’s roof to be exposed for three to six months before being “harvested.” A signature of Duncan’s practice, these sun-bleached fabric canvases are site-specific and durational documentation of the adaptive, responsive, and warmly generous relationships between artists working across the disability spectrum.

about Christopher robin Duncan

Christopher Robin Duncan (b. 1974, Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Duncan utilizes the Sun and the Moon as well as Time and the Tides as conceptual and compositional prompts for both sonic and visual work. In his long term sun exposure works, sunlight and the passing of time are harnessed to create images which exist in a liminal space between painting and photography. Store bought fabrics are draped over objects or architectural structures and left outside in the elements for six months to one year. There is no emulsion or chemical process used, just time and exposure to the sun. The fabric is both placed and harvested on full moons, marking time by celestial cycle, and bookending the embedded light of the sun with the light of the moon. Upon harvest, the fabric is sun bleached and weathered with the dimensionality of the object or area it once covered, providing fades, contrasts, and unpredictable compositions. Working intuitively, the fabric is cut, sewn, painted, or stretched and left as is. Each work is meant to honor time and capture the energy of the locales in which the exposures occur. Duncan's sonic work consists of lush, tonal, open compositions created with harmonica, tuning forks, percussion, electronics, and field recordings of the ocean. Part ritual, part ceremony, Duncan's live performances often employ candle light, circumambulation, and evoke time passing in the form of interpretations of setting suns and full moons. In recent years, Duncan has begun frequently experimenting with clay. With a similarly intuitive and sensitive approach, he produces ceramic instruments, vessels to hold the ocean, and functional ceramics such as cups and bowls. Time and place. Sound and vision.

Duncan’s projects are a continual experimentation and exploration of time, in a micro and macro sense, and its effects via natural forces, the sun, the moon, the ocean, light, shadow and sound. He stumbled onto this path as he felt the constraints of a more formal arts education. Though not generally opposed to it, there was a moment when starting with a freshly gessoed canvas felt disingenuous to what he was feeling, thinking about and searching for. It began with his oldest daughter realizing how shadows worked at a very young age(roughly 18 years ago). Seeing her make the connection between- light source(the sun) - object (a tree and leaves) - shadow effect on the sidewalk, and the awe and delight she showed, shifted Duncan’s perspective. With new eyes and intention, Christopher started to notice and champion these seemingly simple, yet grandiose, natural events and eventually figured out a way to heighten his sensitivity to harness some of this energy and bring it into his work.

Outside of his studio practice, he runs LAND AND SEA, for a time- an experimental venue, and publisher of books and records since 2010, with his partner Maria Otero.

about niad artists

Mireya Betances (1989 - 2025) was an interdisciplinary artist who worked at NIAD Art Center from 2016 - 2025. Over the years, she created delicate, poignant, and funny ceramics, prints, paintings, and drawings, and later expanded her practice to include glamorous hand-stitched fashion designs. 

Betances infused her sharp and silly wit into many works, combining expressive figures and personal symbols with found text. These words were co-opted from books, music, love letters, neighborhood buildings and street signs, mobile billboard trucks trundling down 23rd street, and snippets of conversations in the studio. Arranged together with floating hearts, birds, and stars, the resulting scenes offer a window into the private jokes, memories, dreams, and daily observations of an incredibly sensitive artist.

Mireya Betances’ work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the Bay Area, including those at Chico Art Center, Kala Art Institute, the Oakland Museum of California, NIAD Main Gallery, and Minnesota Street Project.

Arstanda Billy White (b.1962) primarily focuses on portraiture. White depicts figures from his personal life and pop culture in painting, drawing, ceramics, and printmaking. He has cited Vincent van Gogh as a major influence on his gestural painting style and bold color palette. White explains this act of homage and translation: “I'm the guy who is going to draw a picture of Van Gogh. In the painting he's yellow because that's how Van Gogh wanted it, but I put him in black. I'm going to draw the whole thing, and then I'm gonna draw my dad, the Golden Glove Champion.”

As a deeply social artist and a natural storyteller, White's works function as intimate conversations among his subjects and with his community. Beloved figures from Black popular culture, hip-hop icons, art world celebrities, and local Richmond legends share equal standing in his pantheon. 

Arstanda Billy White joined NIAD Art Center in 1994. He is represented by SHRINE Gallery, and has mounted solo exhibitions at both their New York and former Los Angeles locations. Other recent solo shows include those at Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Mule Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and South Willard, Los Angeles, CA. He has participated in group shows at the Oakland Museum of California, Chico Art Center, Sonoma State University; Land Gallery, Brooklyn; Public Annex, Portland, OR; and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London UK. White’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Editorial Magazine, and Hyperallergic. His paintings are in the permanent collection of SFMOMA. 

Deatra Colbert (b. 1964) has a practice that spans painting, drawing, print, sculpture, and fiber media. Many scenes feature famed WWE wrestlers, characters from film and TV dramas, and detailed landscapes full of flowers and friends. Colbert’s designs share a common root: round forms equally bud petals or ears or fingers; stripes sprout from heads to form hair, and elsewhere radiate out as fireworks bursting in the air. This calligraphic line work also curls into her signature embellished handwriting, with which she describes the image in names, numbers, and dates. Colbert has a deep relationship with NIAD Art Center, having joined the roster in 1994. She shares, “I’ve been at NIAD for 30 years and I’m going down in NIAD history. I am a NIAD legend!” 

Colbert has participated in group exhibitions at Et al. Gallery, the Oakland Museum of California, Kala Art Institute, Bedford Gallery, Rock Paper Scissors Collective, and Richmond Art Center. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Ohana Center in Monterey, California.

Sylvia Fragoso (b. 1962) is the longest tenured artist at NIAD Art Center, where she has been practicing since 1984. For Fragoso, making art is deeply tied to family, faith, and community. Many of her ceramics, drawings, and embroideries are homages to spiritual spaces, modeled after her grandmother's home in Mexico or her family's church. Her late mother and father often appear as “guardian angels” floating in kaleidoscopic drawings or perched atop sculpted steeples.

A solo show of Fragoso’s architectural clay structures was presented by The Good Luck Gallery, LA in 2017. More recently, Fragoso’s work was featured in a three-person booth with Off Paradise at the Independent Art Fair, NY in 2025. Her work has been shown in two-person and group exhibitions, including those at Adams and Ollman in Portland, OR; Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, CA; Personal Space in Vallejo, CA; the Oakland Museum of California; MarinMOCA; Tierra Del Sol in Los Angeles, CA; and Off Paradise in New York. Several of Fragoso’s ceramic sculptures are housed in the permanent collection of the OMCA. 

Felicia Griffin (b. 1963) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans printmaking, ceramics, painting, and fiber art. A recurring theme in Griffin’s work is the circle–a shape that connects her sense of self with the outside world. She is well known for her pom-poms, which she enjoys gifting to her loved ones. Several of these soft sculptures have been included in each iteration of Don’t mind if I do, a trailblazing and accessible installation curated by artist Finnegan Shannon.

Griffin has worked at NIAD Art Center since 1985 and is among the longest tenured artists still practicing today. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Sacramento State University, Oakland Museum of California Art, and Christie’s Auction House, San Francisco. Griffin’s artworks are housed in the permanent collections of the Graphic Arts Collection at UC Berkeley and at the Mission Bay Campus at UCSF and the SFMOMA Library. She is a recipient of the 2024 Wynn Newhouse Award. 

Peter Harris (b. 1973) has been creating work at NIAD Art Center since 1995. During this time, he's developed a robust multi-disciplinary practice that includes lustrous ceramic vessels, prints, paintings, and artist books. 

Peter was one of the first participants in NIAD's artist-led curatorial program. For his solo presentation, he staged a month-long, site-specific installation in the communal studio. He produced durational pieces and accordingly intended for the exhibition to be in flux: each day he added new prints and drawings, or rearranged existing work. Eventually every surface, including the sides of pedestals, showcased his distinctive whorled forms. Reflecting on the collection, Peter has shared: "I made all this. Pink, blue, green: it's art." 

Peter's work has been included in exhibitions at The Oakland Museum of California, The Chico Art Center, KALA Art Institute, Richmond Art Center, San José City College, and Archival Gallery in Sacramento. His work is in the Graphic Arts Loan Collection at UC Berkeley.

Karen May (b. 1950) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans collage, ceramics, painting, poetry, and fiber art. She refers to her art as a “memory tool,” and is deeply attuned to the lyrical potential in conversations with her own inner voice, “Kitty,” who variously takes the form of a cat or of Karen’s younger self. 

In addition to themes of personal history, May also frequently works on found ephemera from art publications, co-opting the imagery with her own line-work and text. In 2023, seven of these mixed-media detournements were acquired by SFMOMA. 

May has worked at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, CA since 2011. Her work has been published and exhibited widely in the Bay Area, notably at the Oakland Museum of California, Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, Kala Art Institute Gallery in Berkeley, and Personal Space Gallery in Vallejo, CA. A two-part solo exhibition entitled Karen May: ArtForum Interventions (2024) was presented by the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, NY. 

Richard Naranjo (b. 1946) joined NIAD in 2023. Since then, he has produced numerous expressive and surreal landscape paintings and works on paper inspired by reservations in the southwest, family traditions, and memories. Naranjo notes: “I remember going to visit the reservation and one of the elders taught me sandpainting. Then being with my aunts— it was all about the food! We believe we keep the earth clean and it'll pay us back, keep us alive. We don't use stuff that will destroy the earth. If I want a green color, I'll get the green leaves and soak them in saltwater and break them down into a powdered form. It's all natural.”

Naranjo's work has been featured in exhibitions at Sonoma State University Art Gallery, Bedford Gallery, and in the NIAD Annex Gallery. 

Shantae Robinson (b. 1988) joined NIAD Art Center in 2015. Her practice encompasses painting, drawing, ceramics, soft sculpture, and hand-stitched couture garments. Her work is tactile and vibrant, often featuring symbols grouped together in swells and swarms: ceramic vessels overflow with hand-rolled spirals, slivers, and orbs; canvases fill with stacks of her signature “S” form. Each finished surface bears her confident line-work and striking color palette. She has demonstrated her embroidery techniques for the Textile Society of America and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.

Recent group exhibitions include those at the Chico Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Eddie Rhodes Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, and the OMCA. In 2024, Robinson was one of 20 artists profiled in the print publication, “We Make Art in Richmond,” co-published by NIAD Art Center and Richmond Arts & Culture Commission.

Shawn Sanders (b.1971) is a Bay Area artist whose practice spans painting, ceramics, jewelry, and bookmaking. His images are often arrived at through a layering process: coils of wire, strips of canvas, or thin slabs of clay are arranged in geometric compositions and coated in jewel toned paint and glaze. Sanders translates experiments in style and form across media, and is motivated by his fellow artists practicing in the studio. “I’m always trying things I’ve never done before… I still don’t know why all this artwork is still here [at NIAD] when it belongs in museums across the world. Every single artist here inspires me to do better than the day before, better than the week before.”

Sanders joined NIAD Art Center in 2021. His work has since been featured in exhibitions at Et al. Gallery, Casemore Gallery, Chico Art Center, Kala Art Institute, and the Oakland Museum of California. One of his unique hand-drawn books is in the permanent collection of the SFMOMA Library.

Mat Van Dongen (b. 2001) joined NIAD Art Center in 2023. His practice includes graphic geometric paintings. Other canvases are often inspired by bands such as The Beatles and The Eagles. Humor figures prominently into much of his work, such as a text-based painting hanging in NIAD’s studio that reads “Band on a walk.” Van Dongen creates hand-built ceramic vessels that reference items from bars or domestic spaces– including stoves, plates, skillets, beer mugs, and shot glasses. Mat Van Dongen’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center, 120710 Gallery, Narrative Gallery, and the Main Gallery at NIAD Art Center.

about NIAD Art Center