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The Canal Arts, founded in 2020 to promote, teach and create lively public art in Marin and San Rafael’s largely immigrant Canal community. Art that inspires, visually celebrating Canal cultures and building connections to other Marin communities. We believe art nourishes a thriving community and its environment, vital to a good life. 

The Canal arts is managed by Rich Storek, Executive Director, Maria Rodriguez, Program Manager, and Vladimir Cuevas, lead teaching artist.

The Canal Arts’ core programs:
1. Public Mural Art
The Canal Arts’ mission is the promotion, teaching and creating of public art with San Rafael’s Canal community, art as a language to inspire and enlighten, building pride in our neighborhoods for all to see, art as communication, and great fun in the doing.
2. Canal Family Art Events
Our program introduces Canal parents and children to artmaking alongside professional teaching artists, with food and music in the Boro Community Center Art Studios. These gatherings often reveal hidden creative talent among community members who were artists in their countries of origin, but who now work in Marin in low-paying service, labor, or construction jobs rather than as artists.
3. Mural Art Workshop Courses These workshops provide lessons in art, design, mural history, techniques, and hands-on mural creation. Participants interested in working with professional teaching artists will gain practical skills and opportunities to contribute to paid public art projects.
4. Canal-Marin Art Bridge
This project is a bilingual outreach program building bridges of goodwill between Marin residents and the Canal community, through conversation, collaboration and shared artmaking with the goal of increasing understanding, respect, and making lasting connections.

This map shows the Canal, bright blue, a crowded, historically underserved Latino immigrant community, part of a commercial/industrial district, light blue, in the midst of a healthy, wealthy Marin County that depends on the Canal, but knows little about it.

Art by Kathleen Edwards

 

The Canal Arts’ Community Supporters:

  • Canal Alliance
  • Dominican University of California
  • San Rafael Chamber of Commerce
  • Art Works Downtown
  • Storek Studio/Architecture
  • Marin School for Environmental Leadership
  • Marin Arts
  • Marin Museum of Contemporary Art
  • Multicultural Center of Marin
  • Marin Open Studios
  • Marin Society of Artists
  • Parent Services Project
  • East San Rafael Working Group
  • Voces del Canal
  • Team Works Art
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