2 025LiveAuctionCatalog
Alicia McCarthy · Arleene Correa Valencia ·
Arstanda Billy White · Emma Kohlmann ·
Julia Goodman · Karen May · Maria Guzmán Capron ·
Marlon Mullen · Muzae Sesay · Sylvia Fragoso ·
Live auction
Details and Rules
Use the number on the back of your program as your bidding paddle.
For those who cannot attend Artful in person and want to participate in the auction, proxy bidding can be arranged. Contact rebecca.teague@niadart.org by March 3, 2025.
Winning bidders will be contacted the week of March 10th by NIAD staff to arrange for pick-up. Works can be delivered locally or shipped for an additional fee.
All artwork must be paid for in full before it is released.
Artwork is sold as is without warranty.
NIAD reserves the right to withdraw any lot from the auction before bidding commences on March 8, 2025. All sales are final, there are no returns or exchanges.
LOT 1 Karen May
Karen May, The Rose of California, 2025
Acrylic on found canvas. 27 ½ x 35 ½ in.
Courtesy of the artist and NIAD Art Center
“Some of the things I’m making are collages, some of them are maps. What I do with the maps is I work on them and then they turn into collages… Wait and see what it’s gonna be. Some things have to rhyme. Kitty says a dress is like a red rose. If you had it like a leaf on both sides – leaves are all we need for a flower. I learned about the garden from my mother. I watched my mother sew, and that’s how I learned from her.”
Karen May (b. 1950) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans collage, ceramics, drawing, painting, poetry, and fiber art. 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 détournements were acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work has also been acquired by the Oakland Museum of California Art. A two-part solo exhibition entitled Karen May: ArtForum Interventions (2024) was presented by the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, NY.
May’s work has been published and exhibited widely in the Bay Area, notably at the Oakland Museum of California, Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, and Personal Space Gallery in Vallejo, CA. She has worked at NIAD Art Center since 2011.
Emma Kohlmann LOT 2
Emma Kohlmann, What is In Between?, 2024
Watercolor and sumi ink on paper. 10 x 10 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Silke Lindner, New York
For the past decade, Emma Kohlmann has been primarily working in watercolor and painting, creating a distinct universe in which anthropomorphous figures, flora, and fauna peacefully coexist. Visually informed by a variety of cultural references encompassing Greek and Roman mythology, modern painting history, folk art, and DIY punk ephemera, her paintings manifest a cosmos free from hierarchies. Considering not only human beings, but every living organism, a sense of togetherness and community is palpable throughout Kohlmann’s oeuvre.
Emma Kohlmann (b. 1989 in The Bronx, NY) lives and works in Western Massachusetts. She received a B.A. from Hampshire College and has exhibited in the United States and internationally. Kohlmann has had solo exhibitions at Silke Lindner, New York; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; and V1, Copenhagen. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions including shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson; Venus over Manhattan, New York; and Andrew Edlin, New York. Her work is in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and has been featured multiple times in Vogue. Kohlmann publishes her own zines, and frequently collaborates with artists, writers, musicians and designers. She co-founded and co-runs Mundus Press with her sister, Charlotte Kohlmann.
Muzae Sesay LOT 3
Muzae Sesay, Untitled, 2023
Graphite on paper. 12 x 9 in. (Framed: 16 ¼ x 13 ¼ x in.)
Courtesy of the artist and pt.2 Gallery, Oakland
“Once something sparks my visual joy, I immediately think about how I can transmute that energy through my practice and how I can be a part of the energy that I'm seeing…That process is an endless well of ideas where I can think about macro ideas of human migration and economic systems, history, big things. Then I can also think of really, really small things: my personal relationships, trees in my neighborhood, cracks in the ground, certain types of architectural elements. The well I tap into is just endless.”
Muzae Sesay (b. 1989, Long Beach, CA) lives and works in Oakland, CA. He has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, Museum of Sonoma County, San Jose Institute for Contemporary Arts, United Talent Agency Los Angeles, and the California Governor’s Mansion.
His work is in the public collections of SFMOMA; de Young Museum; Crocker Art Museum; San Francisco Arts Commission; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Svane Family Foundation, and Stanford Healthcare. Sesay has been commissioned to paint numerous public murals, including at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing; and the facade of The Space Residency in San Francisco. He is represented by pt.2 Gallery, Oakland.
Arleene Correa Valencia LOT 4
Arleene Correa Valencia, Corazones Incompleto/Incomplete Hearts, 2024
Textiles and thread. 9 x 9 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
“I grew up undocumented and so my family history and the politics around my status are what truly informs the thematics of my work. I’ve always been really interested in the way that my father’s clothing is a symbol of his sacrifice and his love for my family. And I felt that by using him as an example, I was also connecting to everyone else who has had a father and a mother like mine. For me, the translation of that textile piece into what is an emotion is really important and that’s where my interest in textiles came from.”
Arleene Correa Valencia (b. 1993, Michoacán, Mexico) is an artist based in Napa Valley California. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Bolinas Museum; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR; Catharine Clark Gallery; MCA Gallery, Ontario; Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, WI; and Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.
Correa Valencia was a recipient of the Bay Area Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts, a Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellow, and a Finalist for the SECA Award at SFMOMA. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Crocker Art Museum; Utah Museum of Fine Arts; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art; and Ulrich Museum of Art. Correa Valencia is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.
Sylvia Fragoso LOT 5
Sylvia Fragoso, Untitled, 2017
Glazed ceramic. 11 x 12 x 10 in.
Courtesy of the artist and NIAD Art Center
“I love ceramics, rolling the clay… This [sculpture] is my grandma’s house. There are angels at my grandma’s house.”
Sylvia Fragoso (b. 1962) is a Bay Area artist who has been working at NIAD Art Center since 1984. For Fragoso, making art is deeply tied to family, faith, and community. Many of her ceramics 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” 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, her work has been featured in twoperson and group exhibitions on the west coast, including those at Adams and Ollman in Portland, OR; Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, CA; the Oakland Museum of California; MarinMOCA; and Tierra Del Sol in Los Angeles, CA. In 2023, three of Fragoso’s ceramic sculptures were acquired for the permanent collection of the OMCA. This spring, Fragoso’s work will be featured with two other artists in Off Paradise’s booth at Independent Art Fair in New York.
Julia Goodman LOT 6
Julia Goodman, There are new mountains, 2023
Watercolor on hand-formed paper made from colored bed sheets and t-shirts. 20 ½ x 15 x 2 in. (unframed)
Courtesy of the artist
Julia Goodman creates work that expands the possibilities of handmade paper with deep ties to craft, care, astronomy, and sustainability. Building on the history of rag paper, Goodman gathers, tears, pulps and transforms different color cotton bedsheets and t-shirts – fabrics close to bodies day and night.
Julia Goodman (b. 1979, Atlanta, GA) earned her MFA from California College of the Arts and BA in International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies from Tufts University. Selected exhibitions include San Luis Obispo Museum of Art; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; San Jose Museum of Art; the Poetry Foundation; Minnesota Street Project; and California College of the Arts.
Goodman’s work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the DePaul Art Museum, as well as numerous private collections. Her residencies include JB Blunk Residency, Recology SF, Creativity Explored, and The Space Program. Goodman teaches a papermaking class at CCA and leads workshops throughout the Bay Area including BAMPFA, the Exploratorium, Creative Growth, and NIAD. She lives in the Bay Area with artist Michael Hall and their family.
Maria Guzmán Capron LOT 7
Maria Guzmán Capron, Enamorar, 2025
Oil pastel on paper. 24 x 18 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Nazarian/Curcio, Los Angeles
Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s work explores cultural hybridity, a non-binary sense of self, and the competing desires to assimilate and to be seen.“Drawings have always been a more immediate outlet. I think it's all about getting energy out into the world. Drawings are just such a great way to push the idea out. That's where the gestural mark-making comes in, telling me things that I don't even understand that I'm going through. It's a way of communicating with myself.”
Maria A. Guzmán Capron (b. 1981, Milan, Italy) received her MFA from California College of the Arts and her BFA from the University of Houston. Select solo exhibitions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; UB Center for the Arts in Buffalo, NY; Blaffer Art Museum; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; and Texas State Galleries, San Marcos, TX. Select group exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio; Boston University; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Center; The Mistake Room, Los Angeles; Public Gallery, London, UK; NIAD Art Center; and Deli Gallery in New York. Her works have been written about in Hyperallergic, Variable West, Bomb Magazine, and Art in America.
Guzmán Capron’s work is in the collection of the de Young Museum; the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami, FL; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY. As a 2022 recipient of SFMOMA’s SECA Award, her exhibition Respira Hondo was presented at SFMOMA through May 2023.
Arstanda Billy White LOT 8
Arstanda Billy White, Untitled, 2014
Acrylic on canvas. 28 x 22 in.
Courtesy of the artist; NIAD Art Center; and SHRINE, New York
“Making people happy, okay? That's why I'm here. To make people happy. I'll be drawing on paper -- I already have the designs in my head. 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.”
Arstanda Billy White (b. 1962) is an artist based in Richmond, CA who joined NIAD Art Center in 1994. Primarily focused on portraiture, White conjures personal heroes, local legends, and figures from pop culture through painting, drawing, ceramics, and printmaking. He has cited Van Gogh as a major influence on his gestural painting style and bold color palette. As a deeply social artist and a natural storyteller, White’s works function as intimate conversations among his subjects and with his community.
White is represented exclusively by SHRINE Gallery, and has mounted solo exhibitions at both their New York and 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. White’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Editorial Magazine, and Hyperallergic. His paintings are in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Alicia McCarthy LOT 9
Alicia McCarthy, Untitled, 2019
Mixed media on paper. 11 x 14 in.
Courtesy of the artist and pt.2 Gallery, Oakland
Your paragraph text
Banding together energetic line and color, positive and negative space, results in a dynamic, fluctuating abstract composition, one that the artist notes might be understood as a mirror reflecting what lies before it—the juncture of individuals forming a community. “The process becomes the content,” McCarthy notes, “ an accrual of gestures, exchanges, and experiences.“
Alicia McCarthy (b. Oakland, 1969) received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her signature abstract style that features vibrantly colored lines, often woven into patterns on mixed media panels. McCarthy has received numerous awards, including the Academy of Art and Sciences, SFMOMA's SECA Art Award, and the Artadia Award. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Orange County Museum of Art; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; BAMPFA; and The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles.
Her work is included in a number of prominent public and private collections, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Oakland Museum of California Art; MIMA the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art, Brussels; and the American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York City.
Marlon Mullen LOT 10
Marlon Mullen, Untitled, n.d.
Acrylic on canvas. 26 x 25 in.
Courtesy of the artist; NIAD Art Center; Adams and Ollman, Portland; and Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York.
Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of MoMA New York, describes Mullen’s work as “ a contemporary exemplar of a centuries-old tradition of artists making art about art, an avenue of invention richly represented in MoMA’s collection. Taking the covers of art books and magazines as his subject matter, Mullen transforms them into dazzling paintings that bring him and us into the thick of today’s art world."
Marlon Mullen (b. 1963, Richmond, CA) has worked at NIAD since 1986. His work is currently on view in the solo exhibition Projects: Marlon Mullen at The Museum of Modern Art New York, NY.
He has had solo exhibitions at Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, and White Columns, New York, NY. Select group exhibitions include the 2019 SECA Art Award Exhibition, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Whitney Biennial 2019, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Way Bay 2, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley, CA; and Under Another Name, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. Mullen received the 2014 Wynn Newhouse Award. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both New York, NY; the SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR.
virtual silent auction
Bid on over 50 works by NIAD artists! Online only until 9:15 PM on March 8, 2025
Artworks selected by art world all-stars and friends of NIAD:
Bridget Donahue, Founder & Director, Bridget Donahue Gallery, NY · Carin Adams, Senior Curator of Art, Oakland Museum of California Art · Daisy Nam, Director & Chief Curator, Wattis Institute, CA · Lucy Zimmerman, Art Marketing & Partnerships Director, NIAD Art Center · Margot Norton, Chief Curator, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA · Zully Adler, Director, Further Triennial, CA.
Deatra Colbert, Raptor Cat, 2023
Mixed media on paper. 22 x 29.75"
Selected by Margot Norton
Browse and bid via link below or scan QR code: https://givebutter.com/c/Artful2025/auction/c ategories/32022/silent-auction
Founded in Richmond, California in 1982, NIAD Art Center is a progressive art studio designed for and by adult artists with disabilities Along with sister studios Creativity Explored and Creative Growth, NIAD was dreamed into being by Florence Ludins-Katz and Dr. Elias Katz as a studio and exhibition space for disabled artists to create, display, and sell their artwork, and engage in a creative community where each artist’s voice is valued and heard.
NIAD has since expanded into an in-person and virtual program supporting more than 75 artists who exhibit their work at galleries, museums and fairs worldwide. Working alongside artist facilitators and support staff, NIAD artists sustain vital art practices and take an active role in the development of their careers as professional artists—careers that can span decades.
NIAD artists enjoy representation by established contemporary art galleries such as SHRINE, Adams and Ollman, and Bridget Donahue, and are included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MAD Musée in Belgium, and the Oakland Museum of California. For all its international acclaim, the NIAD community remains deeply rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area. Together, NIAD artists continue to redefine contemporary art.
Thank you to our generous sponsors!
Amy Hosa
Ben Choi & Erica Milsom
Pamela Martin
Nicole Ferdinando
Antonia & Matthew Dapena-Tretter
Alexandra McFarland