REPAIR SHOP

a new art center founded by Lena Wolff & Miriam Klein Stahl
at 1220 4th Street, Berkeley, California

with 501c3 fiscal sponsorship by Headlands Center for the Arts (all contributions are tax-deductible)

Sign up to our monthly newsletter to learn upcoming workshops free public events!

 

Miriam at REPAIR SHOP (before)

 

Now is the time for artists to do what we have always done, to fill the gaps with unexpected life.

* * *

ABOUT REPAIR SHOP

Repair Shop is a one-room schoolhouse, collective art studio and gathering space founded by longtime Bay Area artist couple Lena Wolff and Miriam Klein Stahl. Starting out in a little bungalow in the Gilman district in Berkeley to pilot the project, Repair Shop will operate as a social-profit organization, serving local artists and the general public alike, offering: 

  • hands-on workshops in art and craft practices in a wide range of mediums and disciplines: providing the reciprocal benefit of high-quality art classes in the Bay Area and a revenue stream for local artists

  • space for the development of new work and collaborations

  • a small Risograph studio 

  • a sewing studio

  • a lab for natural color making and color theory experimentation

  • free to low-cost art programming for young people, led by long-time Berkeley Public School art teacher, artist and illustrator, Miriam Klein Stahl

  • a range of free events including book releases, readings, salons, talks, conversations, temporary exhibitions, skill-shares, and action-oriented gatherings focused on democracy, civic participation, and care for the environment.

Guided by the ethos and mission of repair with a broad perspective, the site will provide ongoing opportunities to come together in-person for intergenerational creative activity and the furtherance of personal, societal, and environmental well-being.

Recent Events:

Sunday, October 4th - midterm postcard party
Sunday, October 18th - FREE drop-in screen printing for the Valkyries + Art for Democracy midterm poster give-away

Upcoming Events:

Support the Project! Donate to Headlands (NOTE: for Repair shop)

A note from Lena and Miriam:

We are deeply grateful for the support of the wider arts community of the Bay Area! Please contact us to learn more about the space and find out how to help bring Repair Shop to fruition. Donations to the center are fully tax-deductible through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, Headlands Center for the Arts.

PEOPLE

Founders: Miriam Klein Stahl & Lena Wolff

Advisory Council:
MJ Brown: Deputy Director of Headlands Center for the Arts
Carolyn Choy: Managing Director of Real Estate, at Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST)
Lauren Schiller: strategist, author, artist and media producer

ABOUT US

Miriam Klein Stahl is an artist, arts educator, activist, and the New York Times-bestselling illustrator of Rad American Women A-Z and Rad Women Worldwide. In addition to her work in printmaking, drawing, sculpture, paper-cut and public art, she is also the co-founder of the Arts and Humanities Academy at Berkeley High School where she’s taught for the last three decades. As an artist, she follows in traditions of making socially relevant work, creating portraits of political activists, Queer icons, movement leaders and collective efforts for social justice. As an educator, she has dedicated her teaching practice to address equity through the lens of the arts. Her work has been widely exhibited in local and national exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Oakland Museum of California, the Smithsonian, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is currently in her final year before retiring from BUSD and working on illustrations for a book on the Bearded Lady Truckstop Cafe, a centerpoint of the Dyke scene in the early 1990’s in San Francisco (coming out in 2027, on AK Press).

Lena Wolff is an artist, craftswoman, and democracy activist who has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1990's. Her work extends out of American folk-art and quilt making traditions, minimalism, geometric abstraction, pattern and decoration movements, feminist art and social practice, with a studio output that spans drawing, collage, sculpture, text, frequent collaboration, and public projects. In 2017, she formed Art for Democracy, a project that began with an anti-hate poster that has since grown to become a public art campaign to encourage voter participation, with ongoing, national reach across the United States. Her work has been presented in galleries and museums across the country and is held in the collections of ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Arts Commission, University of Iowa Museum, Stanford University and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, among others. In addition to her work as an artist, she volunteers to raise funds and awareness for small progressive grassroots voting organizations led by people of color in the US.

* * *

In recognition of their work merging art and civic participation, Lena Wolff and Miriam Klein Stahl Day was declared in perpetuity by Mayor Jesse Arreguin on November 12th, 2019 in the City of Berkeley.

Repair, 2024, water color and hand-cut paper, 7 x 18 inches