The Canal Arts promotes, teaches and creates 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, Irene de Leon, Assistant Program Manager, Vladimir Cuevas and Oscar Morales, lead teaching artists, and volunteers  from Voces del Canal.

Family Art

The Canal Arts convenes Saturday family art events for Canal parents and kids, led by our teaching artists who also conduct a related program—our Mural Art Workshops

Mural Art Workshops

The Canal Arts offers courses on art and design, mural history, technique and practice, for those interested in participating in our public mural art projects.

Canal-Marin Art Bridge Program

The most segregated place in the Bay Area, the Canal is unknown to most in Marin, but they depend daily on its vibrant immigrant community. Engagement and collaboration are at the heart of our projects, especially our Canal-Marin Art Bridge Program, introducing interested people to the Canal community, to meet, to learn, to create art together, bridging cultures for an enjoyable time.

Mural Creation

In 7 years, we have completed 17 mural projects with Canal community participation, with more to come. Our largest project, four years in the making, Peoples of the Canal–A Story of 20,000 Years, will be told on 20 interpretive exhibits over 2 miles of the S.F. Bay shoreline path. Designed as an educational destination it will further increase awareness of this place, its history and its peoples, and the Canal’s importance to Marin.

The Canal, densely populated, is surrounded by a commercial industrial area and a healthy, affluent Marin County that depends on the services it provides: