Exhibition - Roadwork

Kala Gallery is excited to present the exhibition Roadwork featuring new works by Cheryl Derricotte & Marcel Pardo Ariza, 2023-2024 Print Public, municipal artist-in-residence fellows.

2023-2024 Print Public Municipal Artist-in-Residence supported two artists with concurrent 20-month artist residencies with Kala and with City of Berkeley’s Planning Department. Cheryl Derricotte worked with Katie Van Dyke and the Pilot Climate Equity Action Fund and Marcel Pardo Ariza worked with Robert Rivera and the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan.

In response to the San Pablo Avenue Corridor Study and in dialogue with local community members, Marcel Pardo Ariza highlights and celebrates seven local businesses along San Pablo Avenue: CASA LATINA, Belmo Cafe, Middle East Market, Heyma Yemeni Coffee, Rainbow Donuts, Everett & Jones, and Mi Ranchito Bayside Market. Through this exploration, Ariza emphasizes the critical role these businesses play in the fabric of the community, underscoring the urgent need for city support in a landscape where vacant retail spaces proliferate across the Bay Area.

Derricotte partnered with the City of Berkeley on three Climate Equity Pilot Projects focused on coalition-building; e-bike distribution, and housing utility electrification. She collaborated with participants from Waterside Workshops / BEEP Berkeley E-Bike Equity Project, Ecology Center Coalition, Northern California Land Trust and Walnut House Co-op. She interfaced with each project either through online meetings, in-person meetings or art activities at Kala. Her work centered the role of the arts in the climate justice movement, through building the visual literacy of participants through their time online and at Kala’s gallery and community workspace. The three components of the Climate Equity Pilot Projects are highlighted in Roadwork through portraits, interviews, and letterpress prints.

The title of the show, Roadwork, reflects the artists’ understanding that their work with the City of Berkeley’s Planning and Civic Art departments was a starting point. In their words: “We are on the road to climate justice. We are on the road to newly defined streetscapes that better support residents and businesses. We are on the road to a society that equitably values the leadership of artists and arts institutions. There is Roadwork ahead.”

Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist whose favorite mediums are glass and paper. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco. Cheryl is also a licensed city planner and for the Print Public project, she combined her expertise both in art and city planning. Working with Katie Van Dyke and the Climate Equity Pilot Project, Cheryl organized community gatherings and art-making workshops to foster conversations about environmental issues, climate resilience, and urban planning in Berkeley.

Marcel Pardo Ariza is a trans visual artist, educator and curator who explores the relationship between queer and trans kinship through constructed photographs, site-specific installations and public programming. Marcel’s work is rooted in close dialogue and collaboration with trans, non-binary and queer friends and peers, most of whom are performers, artists, educators, policymakers, and community organizers. Their practice celebrates collective care and intergenerational connection. For this Print Public project, Marcel worked with Robert Rivera and the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan. They facilitated interviews with the business owners along the three-mile stretch of the San Pablo Avenue corridor in Berkeley.

Print Public Overview: From its founding days, Kala Art Institute was envisioned as a place where people gather to exchange creative ideas and share technology and tools. Expanding on this idea, Print Public, Kala’s public art residency program, takes this exchange from the Kala studios out to the surrounding neighborhood and city. Since its inception in 2012, Print Public has provided an opportunity for artists to create temporary public art projects along San Pablo Avenue and throughout the City of Berkeley allowing artists to meet people where they are, on the street, at bus stops, markets, shops, and in the neighborhood, connecting artists and the community.

During the pandemic, Print Public evolved with support from a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town grant. Kala began partnering with the City of Berkeley’s Civic Art Program to place artists-in-residence in selected municipal departments. The first selected municipal artist-in-residence Lara Kaur and Christine Wong Yap worked with the Department of Health, Housing, and Community Services on COVID-19 recovery with a focus on equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and community well-being. We continued this partnership, this time with the Planning Department and municipal artist-in-residence Marcel Pardo Ariza and Cheryl Derricotte to work on the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan, and the Pilot Climate Equity Fund.

San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan: The City of Berkeley is developing the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan which will create a framework to define a community vision for the future of San Pablo Avenue. The vision will identify opportunities for improvement and help develop policies that can be applied along San Pablo Avenue to encourage and support a diversity of housing, commercial activities and public amenities.

Climate Equity Pilot Project: The Office of Energy & Sustainable Development is partnering with the Ecology Center as part of the Pilot Climate Equity Fund to elevate the voices of under-represented voices in climate and resilience, pilot and build capacity in local community organizations, and increase access to information and resources for climate resilience and electrification efforts.

Special thanks to the City of Berkeley and UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund for supporting this program and thanks to our project partners Dr. Karen Trapenberg Frick and UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design: Department of City & Regional Planning; Katie Van Dyke, Robert Rivera and the City of Berkeley Planning Department; and Jennifer Lovvorn and the Civic Arts Program for collaborating with us. Additional thanks to Waterside Workshops / BEEP Berkeley E-Bike Equity Project, Ecology Center Coalition, Walnut House Co-op, CASA LATINA, Belmo Cafe, Middle East Market, Heyma Yemeni Coffee, Rainbow Donuts, Everett & Jones, and Mi Ranchito Bayside Market, and all the businesses and San Pablo Avenue neighbors who participated in the project.