While the Art Center is temporarily closed through May 31, we are still offering several free virtual classes that allow our patrons to engage in a myriad of artmaking activities:

In response to COVID-19 concerns and based upon direction from the City of Palo Alto and the Santa Clara County Public Health order, the Palo Alto Art Center will be closed starting Saturday, March 14, 2020 through Sunday, May 31, 2020.

For husband and wife art instructors Jim Smyth and Brigitte Curt, leaving the Art Center in April after teaching painting classes for more than 30 years is an extremely emotional experience.

Palo Alto artist Marilyn Smith wants people to not only look at her art, but to touch it, to play with it, and possibly even break it. “It’s essential that people be able to touch my artwork,” says Marilyn who has created pieces out of wood, stone and paper. “I don’t care if it gets damaged when someone is handling my art, as long as it’s being looked at. How delightful if it gets worn out.”

Walter Passmore, the City of Palo Alto’s Urban Forester, says he is extremely enthusiastic about the Art Center’s winter exhibition, Rooted: Trees in Contemporary Art.

More than three decades after its inception, the Art Center’s Project Look school tour program is still enriching classroom art curriculum, fostering critical thinking, and exposing children to fine art that they may not otherwise have.

If it weren’t for her artistic friends, ceramic artist Tina Semba would not have taken classes here, or be selling her work at the Studio Holiday Jewelry and Ceramics Sale on December 7.

The Art Center’s current exhibition, Encounters: Honoring the Animal in Ourselves, emphasizes real and imagined revelatory encounters the artists have had with animals. But for longtime Palo Alto Animal Control Officer William Warrior, up-close and personal interactions with wildlife are daily occurrences.

Menlo Park resident Charlotte Anthony may only be 11 years old, but her writing and artistic career is already taking off following the recent publication of a book.

A typical morning in the lobby of the Palo Alto Art Center can flood your senses. The warm of the sun radiating through the large windowpanes. The smell of clay being shaped between wet fingers on spinning wheels in our ceramics studio. The taste of coffee in the air as the morning staff starts the day’s activities. And, if you are lucky, you would be greeted by the genuine smile and welcoming voice of Suzanne Ramirez. Program Assistant 2. Our mom.

Once you’ve checked out the Art Center’s Encounters exhibition—on view through December 29—head out to the Barron Park neighborhood in Palo Alto and have a live encounter with the two donkeys that idly clop around in the Bol Park pasture.

Book artist Kathleen Walkup’s career trajectory involves a long journey of self-discovery as well as being in the right place at the right time. She is now a respected professor of book arts at Mills College in Oakland.

Watercolor artist and Palo Alto resident Bonnie Packer took a 50-year break between the first time she picked up a paint brush and her current foray into art, and she has no regrets.

As a professional artist, printmaker, and art instructor, Kathryn Kain sees herself on a mission to shine a light on the discipline of printmaking.

Metal sculptor Rochelle Ford has been creating artwork for the past three decades, but admits she may have been a “late bloomer” when it comes to pursuing her passion.

Many printers have to travel to a studio to use a large printing press to create their artwork. Now, thanks to entrepreneurs using a Kickstarter web site, artists can download software and 3D print their own printing presses.

Studio Program Director and printmaker Fanny Retsek says she is pleased to see the craft of printmaking celebrated at the Art Center this summer.

When Palo Alto resident Greg Osborn reaches out to shake your hand, his vice-like grip suggests his hobby for the past 25 years: He’s a blacksmith.

Artist-in-residence Angela Smith has a lot to say, and is not shy about using her artwork to convey a range of socio-political issues.

Cultural Kaleidoscope instructor Gertrud Turner thinks of her role in the classroom like a two-way street.

Volunteering for the past two years as a Project Look docent at the Art Center has turned into a win/win situation for Jane Gee.

High school students Helena Cirne and Sofia Sierra-Garcia first joined the Art Center Teen Leadership (ACTL) group for some real-world leadership experience, but stayed for the fun.

If there is only one thing that art instructor Ann McMillan wants students to learn in her classes, it is this: Be kind to yourself.

When Art Center jeweler Ji Hwang mentioned to fellow jeweler Leslie Gordon that she was going to Haiti to show Haitians how to make and sell jewelry, Leslie jumped at the chance.

Polish-American scholar and semanticist Alfred Korzybski once remarked, “The map is not the territory,” to metaphorically illustrate the difference between belief and reality. Seattle-based artist Val Britton, who has created an installation in the Art Center’s Glass Gallery for The Sheltering Sky exhibition, agrees with that sentiment.

Palo Alto artist Sukey Bryan creates work that reflects her reverence for nature and her fascination with the ever-changing environment.

Who would have thought that a career as a hardware engineer and chip designer in high tech would prepare Shu-shia Chow to become a jewelry artist during retirement? “I treat every jewelry project as an engineering project,” she says. “I first come up with the idea for a piece of jewelry, make a drawing of it, and then create a three-dimensional model in paper to make sure I have the most efficient design.”

When artist Monica Waldman prepares to create her ceramics on the potter’s wheel, she likes to likes to have all of her shaping and scraping tools laid out before her, as a surgeon would in an operating room. “That’s a good comparison,” she says. “Like a doctor’s tools, they tend to get all messy and dirty when I’m creating a ceramic piece. In fact, we have a couple of people here working with clay in the Adult Studios who happen to be physicians.”

As the leader of the Art Center’s Being Human art project, artist Jill Miller is engaging 10 Bay Area parent-artists who are using their parenting experiences as catalysts for producing art.

Artist Jeremiah Jenkins actually wants people to find his artwork humorous. “When I was an undergrad, I almost quit art to go and study comedy with Second City in Chicago,” says Jenkins, who is one of the artists participating in the Art Center’s Care and Feeding: The Art of Parenthood exhibition. “Comedians have always been a huge influence for me. But then I learned about conceptual art, and there’s something deeper to it than just jokes. When someone’s perception gets messed with in a way, it’s entertaining. And if someone laughs at my works, that’s a success for me.”

During the summer, the Art Center benefits from the assistance of several interns who hone their skills in Children’s Fine Art (CFA) programs, Exhibitions, Marketing, and Development. But these interns from California colleges say they also receive many benefits and rewards from working in a real-world environment at the Art Center.

The best way to describe Ben Venom’s artwork may be to compare it to an iron hand in a quilted glove. “My work is able to operate in three different worlds: fine art, crafting, and the counterculture scene,” says San Francisco-based quilt artist Venom, who is exhibiting one of his pieces during the Paper Cuts: Large-Scale Collage exhibition at the Art Center.

Benicia Gantner, one of several collage artists participating in the Paper Cuts: Large-Scale Collage exhibition at the Art Center June 16-August 26, likes to create installations that compel people to examine the ways in which they communicate with one another and the world around them.

If you were to simply look at a photo of one of artist Mary Anne Kluth’s artwork, you would not be getting the whole picture. Read the whole story to find out why!

How do you engage more tech leaders and workers with the artistic community and boost philanthropic giving? That is the question being addressed by a group of tech employees and others who will act as “Art and Tech Ambassadors” within the technology community for the Palo Alto Art Center.

Giada Parigi has such fond memories of the artwork she created during the four years she spent participating in the Art Center’s Cultural Kaleidoscope program, that she decided to model a community-based leadership project around her experiences.

The Palo Alto Art Center recently conducted an interview with Li Ezzell, the Art Coordinator for the Palo Alto Unified School District who is supervising this year’s Youth Art exhibition at the Art Center. Get the rest of the story by clicking the link!

Sometimes, the best relationships begin with a happy accident. Read about the strong cultural relationship between the Society for Art and Cultural Heritage of India and the Art Center.

Now in its seventh year, the Youth Speaks Out exhibition at the Palo Alto Art Center, from March 23-April 19, will bring together hundreds of students from both Gunn and Palo Alto high schools who will express their hopes, fears, and visions of their own future through their artwork.

If it hadn’t been for cereal boxes and model trains, Joshua Smith might never have become an artist. Find out more by reading the rest of the story!

Sometimes, what isn’t visible in an art exhibition can be as important as what is seen. That's the job of the Art Center's team of professional installers.

The art of collage typically involves the assemblage of different forms of found images to create a whole new work of art. At the Art Center, disparate members of the Drop-In Collage Group meet on a weekly basis to create not only artwork, but a sense of community as well.

Palo Alto Art Center development intern and artist Evelyn Anderson says she takes a very broad approach to her artwork. For Anderson, art encompasses her own worldview as well as themes of diversity and inclusion.

At the Palo Alto Art Center, “art is alive,” says Children’s Fine Art instructor and artist Paulina Shapona. For the last 17 years, Paulina has been teaching drawing, painting, pastels, cartooning, fashion design and puppet performance workshops with her unique perspective on arts education. Read more by clicking the link.

Ceramics artist Gurmeet Lamba, who will be exhibiting and selling his unique wares at this year’s Holiday Sale at the Art Center on December 2, said he is excited about the event for a couple of reasons.

Jewelry artist Margo Plageman says that her creations do not always turn out the way she imagined, but that she always enjoys the challenge of turning her ideas into something wearable.

Artists from the Art Center’s Open Jewelry Studio and Ceramics programs will have original work for sale to suit all your holiday needs on Saturday, December 2, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Palo Alto Art Center.

The Palo Alto Public Art Program presents a new temporary art installation at King Plaza: The Artwork Forge, a retro-style interactive robotic sculpture creating on-demand unique artworks for visitors in just a couple of minutes.

The Art Center is excited to debut The Art Cart—an activity cart filled with art supplies and activities for use in and outside our galleries! Created after more than a year of research and planning, the Cart is intended to provide families with engaging creative activities they can do together.

Color is such an integral part of our lives. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the mood we are in is all linked by our personal preferences for color. Culture also influences. Ultimately, the thing that is so compelling about color is that it is completely and unarguably subjective and personal.—Lisa Solomon

Thanks to a generous grant from the California Arts Council’s Artists Activating Communities Program, the Palo Alto Art Center partnered with Oakland-based artist Lisa Solomon to create a series of workshops for teens focused on color and meditation. In the workshops, Solomon employed a process similar to a warm-up activity she utilizes for her own work—small, water color paintings in which she explores color through repetition of a simple shape. The exercise both clears her mind and get “into the zone” for further creative explorations.