What We Do
GATHERING ARTISANS COLLECTIVE (GAC) is a family-owned and operated, online creative community marketplace founded on the three core creative disciplines of its founders: art, music, and artistry in baking. Our business offers instructional classes in art, music, and baking artistry, plus original art commissions, and retail sales of limited edition fine art prints, inside an online marketplace of culturally diverse artists, and artisans.
How We Got Here
In 2020, COVID-19 completely upended the way everyone, including our family, operated in the world. The pandemic and its ever-evolving consequences had a particular impact on how -and where- students would be taught, and on schooling in general, for both the immediate and the foreseeable future.
Without the ability to teach live, in-person classes, the three of us, James, Clarice, and Jafar turned to the online world to breathe new life into their Art, Baking, and Music classes.
More than merely in survival response or as a solution to work challenges posed by COVID-19, artist James Green was inspired by his love for people, teaching art, and the complimentary talents of his immediate family, combined with a lifetime as an artist and art instructor, to conceive and create GATHERING ARTISANS COLLECTIVE, and extend his creative vision online.
He created the GAC business along with his wife Clarice, a phenomenally gifted and highly sought-after baker, and their son, Jafar, a musician and music historian. Combined, they benefit from over 100 years of creative artistry experience, and expertise.
An accomplished fine artist, Green alone has over fifty years of learning, teaching, inspiring, and being inspired by his love of people, creative expression, and the arts.
This is Our Calling
Each one of us is intrinsically drawn to encourage people from all walks of life to discover the artist within, and provide guidance, a framework, and a platform to unleash, create, and sell their creations in a caring community environment of enrichment, extended family, and self expression.
From Our Hearts to Yours
Our mission is to use our God-given talents to enrich the lives of others. We have always met people who became friends; who became family. Creating relationships is what we live for.
What's Next for GAC?
We are excited to continue growing and evolving our classes and suite of services to continue to serve our students and sharing the power of creativity with the world! We aspire to grow the business into local retail locations, with wholesale and continued online sales of art, art instruction; music and music courses; baked goods, and baking instruction, and other creative supplies and materials. From beginnings in our local San Francisco Bay area, to ten years into the future, we look forward to expanding our brand and our multicultural, multinational network of enterprising artisans to an international footprint; ultimately to global creative brand recognition, reach, and impact.
MEET YOUR INSTRUCTORS
JAMES GREEN
I am a fine artist specializing in sketching, drawing, painting and sculpture. The classes offered are online, in-person and pre-recorded. The classes are for beginners, intermediate and advanced students of art. The instructions and demonstrations range from the basic fundamentals of line and form to the intricate complex details created by tone, color and texture.
CLARICE GREEN
Baking is a fun passion that I want to share with others. I want to share recipes of some of my family traditions and allow others to experience the fun and creative expression they can achieve on their own by just learning a few techniques. I love doing in person classes it is so much fun. Not only do we get to create wonderful cakes but the joy and the laughter makes for such a great time for us all.
JAFAR GREEN
I’m very excited about the opportunity we have, as individual artists & as a family, to be able to share the knowledge, experience & passion for our individual art forms with people. It’s been very encouraging to see our students become empowered to assert themselves even more effectively with the tools & means of expression they get from our classes.
Express Your Creativity with
Gathering Artisans Collective
Our mission is to benefit our artist community members, our members’ customers, and society as a whole through its elevation, digital monetization, and sustaining of the arts.
Through teaching and creating online, we aim to to benefit individuals, groups, schools, and the world’s human family, as it spreads art and the cultural foundations generated through art.
Through our GATHERING ARTISANS COLLECTIVE business, founding owner, and operating family, we find joy in serving and enriching their local community and, by extension, the nation and the world. The joy and promise of our service is accomplished through seeding, establishing, and sustaining the movement, and eventually legacy, for creative enterprise.
