Prepared by the Richmond Art Advocates ©2025 Please ask for permission before quo>ng this material Tes$monials From Richmond’s Ar$sts (and one small non-profit) Tiffany Conway-Cornelius In 2023 Public Art Advisory Commi7ee and the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission awarded ar=sts Tiffany Conway -Cornelius and Ari Takata-Vazquez $100,000 for their sculpture =tled Living Room, to be located at Kennedy Park. The ar=sts spent months mee=ng the project’s requirements without a contract. Upon learning that the first payment would be made at least 45 days aTer submission of their invoice, they unsuccessfully tried to nego=ate a shorter payment turnaround. They were advised to either get a fiscal sponsor or take out a personal loan. Tiffany maxed out her credit card in order to pay for the up-front costs ($7,000), but the award was rescinded aTer a year without explana=on. Tiffany took a second job to pay for the credit card debt their project generated. Rebeca García-González Rebeca was the lead ar=st of the large restora=on project of two of John Wehrle’s murals under the highway 80 underpass. In 2023 and prior to the contract being signed, she had to convince the project’s team of nine ar=sts to individually purchase general liability insurance at $800. The crew waited for more than a year and never got to begin work because of city-generated delays. The Arts and Culture manager promised she’d find the money to get them reimbursed, but then she said that the City didn't have the money to do so, and that the crew would have to wait un=l they got paid from the contract. ATer six months of this, Rebeca was forced to use her own money to reimburse three of those ar=sts for fear they would leave the project. She later resigned from her lead ar=st posi=on once she ran out of funds. She was finally was reimbursed in 2025. Regina Gilligan In 2024 Regina was awarded $5,000 through an NPA grant. Her California na=ves mural was going to be completed in Mendocino Park, in the Richmond Annex neighborhood. Early on she no=ced a “lack of transparency regarding expecta=ons” from the Arts and Culture Manager. Finding that the requirements greatly exceeded the risk generated by the project, she sought help from a City official in Parks and Recrea=on who came up with a workaround, but this solu=on was rejected. She was later informed that she could only paint the small mural under a general contractor’s contract, who would keep at least 10% of the contract. The nail in the coffin was that the expenses generated by the requirements ate her fee ($2,000). The manager told Regina that the funds “couldn't be released before paying the fees because the Risk Management Office wouldn’t allow it.” These unsurmountable obstacles forced Regina to withdraw her project. Erin McCluskey Wheeler Erin is a Richmond na=ve and a working ar=st who has had mul=ple residencies and who has received funding for several Bay Area ci=es. Twice she pitched two different projects in front of panels composed of members of the Richmond Art and Culture Commission during the interview por=on of grant applica=ons. She was laughed at for placing a number in the wrong place in the project’s budget. A panelist shouted that her mail art project was “poorly thought-out” and “not funding-worthy” because it had “no outcome” and “no deliverables.” The panelists objected to her Point Molate project because the work would be made solely by her. Unlike other East Bay ci=es, Richmond does not fund
Prepared by the Richmond Art Advocates ©2025 Please ask for permission before quo>ng this material individual ar=st projects. Erin walked away feeling the panelists were missing “connec=on with applicants and a sense of empathy and humanity.” Richard Muro Salazar Richard was the lead ar=st for the $451,000, 2,800 square foot mural spanning 88 soundwall panels at the entrance of Parchester Village. It was a Love Your Block and Arts and Culture Division project. As the lead ar=st, he used the first payment from the project to pay his crew, supplies and equipment, reasoning that he would pay himself out of the second payment. But even though he “met all his benchmarks,” Richard experienced delays with each of his seven payments It took them almost 10 months to pay the 5th payment where. They said the mural wasn’t 100% finished, so they finished the mural. Then the reason was that their insurance didn’t meet the contract requirements. So Richard updated his insurance. ATer involving the city manager, he only received half the payment aTer 5 months. Richard was forced to pay $3,000 for hazmat coverage in order to receive the 2nd half. The sixth payment went smoother once Richard began working with the city manager directly. The Arts and Culture Manager would not release the last payment un=l Richard provided a financial report which I was not required. Jennifer Riggs Her 2024 project was a collabora=on with two non-profits and a business. They were going to create a mobile mural with youth and families from one of the non-profits. The theme was Richmond and the environment, and it was going to be displayed at three Richmond locales. There were checklists but “the deadlines changed as they went along.” Jennifer turned in all of the required paperwork plus proof of insurance on =me, but the contract was never approved and she never recouped the money she spent on insurance fees. There were con=nual delays and Jennifer’s rela=onship with her community partner was severely impacted by the delays. Because she was the contact and had to keep delaying the project implementa=on, the partnerships soured. “Non-profit partners can't work this way.” Her contract was never approved. John Wehrle ATer years of paying out of pocket for the graffik abatement of his public work in the city, John became the original lead ar=st of the large project that began in 2022, the restora=on of two of his murals painted during the 1990’s under the highway 80 underpass. Risk Management had told him that the pollu=on insurance requirement had been waived. But then a new department head came on board and she reinstated it. We protested this, to no avail. His team researched the cost and found out was going to be $22,500 for our 9 ar=st team. The lead ar=st was then asked to write a pollu=on plan which was turned in. Risk Management finally waived this requirement aTer the project director intervened, because it would have been too costly. Tiny Village Spirit Tiny Village project is a very small non-profit with a volunteer staff, organizing a large project provides 12 units of dedicated housing suppor=ng unsheltered young people. Tiny Village Spirit was awarded $9,000 specifically to pay for the small mural part of this much larger project. TVS’s total budget for the panel project was $15,000. Richmond high school students presented their mural designs to the RAC six months ago, but they have yet to paint them because Risk Management did not waive a pollu=on insurance requirement that would cost almost half as much as the grant award itself.