The arts are alive and well in Emeryville!! This, the thirty-eighth year of the exhibition sponsored by Emeryville Celebration of the Arts, will include works by 154 artists, 45 of whom are new to this wonderful community event.

Among the initial participants in the first exhibition staged thirty-eight years ago, thirty percent were members of the 45th Street Artists’ Cooperative, an early model for artists’ live/work spaces that provided the core for the city’s cultural development.

As parts of the huge industrial complex that developed to support two world wars were eventually redundant, artists eager for large, light filled spaces, found a haven in Emeryville. In the same spirit, a newer model for work spaces has recently been created as The Compound Gallery and Studios providing exhibition space, tools and work facilities for artists.

For fourteen years — a fraction of this long history — it has been my good fortune to participate in the project as it continues to grow and develop. Community indeed! I have been privileged to meet and be welcomed by the participating artists who reflect Emeryville’s enormously varied population. Their enthusiasm for the project and willingness to participate in what is truly a group effort, reflect a state of mind and a period in time that sometimes seems to have disappeared.

What I enjoy in addition to the challenge of placing the enormous variety of works to the best possible advantage in spaces not originally purposed for exhibitions, is the opportunity to meet and work with the artists who volunteer their skills to the complex task of mounting an exhibition in a temporary space without the tools and structure of an established gallery or museum.

Emeryville Celebration of the Arts Annual Art Exhibition is a true community event supported by many volunteers. From extensive studio visits with each year’s jurors selected from Bay Area’s wealth of arts professionals to the building of temporary walls, repairing and painting old structures, moving supplies and tools from storage, installing the art and then repeating all the steps in reverse like so many gypsies breaking camp.

Kathleen Hanna
Curator / Juror