RTS is excited to host Real Talks with resident artist dani lopez and special guest Richard-Jonathan Nelson on Thursday, February 20 from 6-8pm PST at RTS located at 125 10th St. Oakland.
dani lopez is a textile artist working within weaving, embroidery, and textile sculpture to explore lesbian desire, non-linear narratives, disidentifications, and femme identity. She received her MFA in Textiles from CCA. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Surface Design Journal, Warp and Weft, and Other People’s Pixels. lopez has shown at Bedford Gallery, MACLA in San Jose, Berkeley Art Center, and 120710. Her work was in Queer Threads at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. In 2022, she received a Puffin grant and a Money for Women grant for her project “3 Dykes Walk Into a Bar…”. lopez was named a Lucas Visual Art Fellow at Montalvo Art Center. She also teaches tapestry weaving at Richmond Art Center.
Richard-Jonathan Nelson’s textile works explore new visions of Blackness through an associative vision steeped in the languages of science fiction and craft. Nelson’s experience with textile work dates back to his childhood in Savannah, Georgia, when his mother and grandmother taught him to sew. Stitching together different materials, the artist discovered how sewing could allow him to build his own worlds.
The cosmic explosions that appear in Nelson’s work harken back to his upbringing in the Southern Evangelical Church, where the threat of Armageddon loomed large. Living in the South as a queer Black man, that threat was always present, causing Nelson to feel alien in his environment. Accompanying these images are excerpts of poetic language, taken from the closed captions on films and television that the artist is accustomed to reading, having grown up with a hearing-impaired uncle and Deaf Interpreting mother. In his work, they serve as subtle clues, stepping stones amidst a noisy and highly-saturated amalgam of images, forms, and colors. Collectively, these elements come together in a material sense to build a new aesthetic of Blackness, one that is gentle and soft-spoken, yet simultaneously self-assured, bold, and primed to take the next leap into an ever-evolving future.