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The Center for Creativity is living up to its name. Redwood City’s new center for the arts is hosting a series this fall where visitors can see art in the gallery, hear it on stage and also create it.
The Art+Sound on Broadway series, presented by the Center for Creativity, will bring together concerts by area musicians, a visual arts exhibition and hands-on community art-making activities led by local artists. Funded by a grant from the Redwood City Arts Commission, the series, which will be held on three upcoming Sunday afternoons in September and October, highlights Redwood City visual and performing artists.
“We wanted to do some big events where we combined both performing arts and the visual arts, the exhibitions and then the act of art-making together,” said Jill Asher, a member of the Center for Creativity’s Steering Committee.
The Center for Creativity opened in May in downtown Redwood City in the historic Hotel Sequoia, which it will temporarily call home until 2027.
The Art+Sound series kicks off on Sept. 7 with performances by singer-songwriter duo Alex and Maya Valdivia and vocalist and songwriter Melissa Modifer, with a community art activity of impressionistic watercolor flower painting led by artist Elizabeth Gomez.
On Sept. 21, visitors can learn to make an inlaid wood pendant from artist Gadget and enjoy family-friendly music and movement with Andy Z and dreamy pop with The Corner Laughers (full disclosure: Embarcadero Media Assistant Lifestyle Editor Karla Kane is the group’s lead singer and songwriter). Wrapping up the series on Oct. 19 will be all-female trio Ol’ Blue Genes playing favorites from the 1950s-70s and folk and bluegrass with Redwood Souls, plus artist Corinne Feldman will teach visitors to make colorful and quirky cardboard faces.
On view throughout the series’ run will be the exhibition “Art of the Community: Redwood City 2025,” a juried show of works in a variety of media from over 30 local artists, funded by the city’s arts commission as the visual arts component of Art + Sound.
“It’s all artists from Redwood City,” Asher said.
After taking in some art, visitors can roll up their sleeves and make their own artworks.
“People can come and look at the exhibition of Redwood City artists. They’ll be able to sit down, work at a table and create some art, and then they can go outside and listen to wonderful music and performances,” Asher said.
In booking the concert series, Asher wanted to highlight local performers. She already knew some area musicians through her work as co-founder of the Peninsula-based Magical Bridge Foundation.
“I was looking for performers who have performed in Redwood City before — and a mix of performers, but that (played) family-friendly and community-friendly music that would just uplift the community,” Asher said.
“I reached out to some of the performers I knew from when I did concerts for Magical Bridge, and reached out to other artists that have been involved with us and are really talented performers. We’re going to take over (the street) for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.”
The Center for Creativity sits at one end of a block of Broadway that’s closed off for outdoor dining, and for this series, organizers will place a stage at the barricaded end of the street. The exhibition and art activities will take place inside the center, with performances taking place on the street just outside the center. Asher encourages visitors to bring chairs or blankets to sit on and watch the performance.
Although each Art + Sound event is free to the public, the arts commission grant ensures that musicians and activity leaders won’t be working gratis. In addition to offering a small stipend for performers, the grant helped fund the jury for the art exhibition and to pay artists leading the community art activities, Asher noted.
“I applied for a grant from the Redwood City Arts Commission for this to make it a three-part series with the goal of actually paying some of the local artists, because most of the artists just never get paid and compensated for their time,” she said. “We received an $8,000 grant from them, and we are penny-pinching, but we are paying folks to do this, and we felt like it was really important to kick this off with a way of bringing the community together.”
With the series, the center aims to highlight “that art is alive in this community, that it’s valued and that it’s celebrated, that this is a community gathering space,” Asher said.
Art + Sound on Broadway takes place Sept. 7, 21 and Oct. 19 at 4 p.m. at the Center for Creativity, 800 Main St., Redwood City. rwccfc.org/art-sound-on-broadway.
