Inland Mujeres
Cynthia, Jessica and Mariana at Inland Mujeres Studio in Downtown Riverside
Inland Mujeres was founded in September 2018 by Cynthia Huerta, Jessica Carrillo, and Mariana Gomez.
Our mission is to create a safe and open space for womxn by womxn based in the Inland Empire. We seek to inspire, connect and empower one another by establishing a diverse collective of womxn across various industries through art workshops, local events and community activism. We believe in the advancement of all womxn and the magic that occurs when we come together!
You recently moved into a physical space in Riverside, this is a huge step! How did you accomplish this? What was your largest obstacle?
Getting space is definitely a huge undertaking, it is something all three founders have envisioned for this collective and for our Inland community, but it was more of a long term goal, not something we were focused at the time. Keeping this in mind, Cynthia was working on a mural project with a local businesswoman in Riverside. The owner of this business shared with her that aside from this she was also in the process of remodeling and renting spaces in downtown Riverside, one specific space being an art studio, she vocalized wanting to keep it in a similar fashion, an art space and thought our collective would be a great fit to take over to serve as our new studio headquarters.
The largest obstacle for us was money, up until this point we have put our own money to fund this collective, so when this opportunity fell into our lap we knew we wanted it but we needed to come up with most importantly first months’ rent plus security deposit. Because like we said we did not plan to get a space until the following year (if that) so we didn’t have money in a special fund for space. Oh, and after committing to space we only had three weeks to come up with the money. Thus, we had a meeting to come up with a plan of action to raise the money from selling shirts, pop-ups, a donation link, reaching out to friends, workshops and in three weeks we did, in fact, reach our goal and were able to get the space and we officially moved in on February 2019.
What types of events and activities do you bring to the community?
In September 2018 after launching our website and Instagram we decided to put the word out and bring this idea for an all womxn’s creative collective to life. We launched with one event, Drawing Con Las Mujeres which translates to Drawing with the Womxn. This was a call out to our friends, and their friends and their friend’s friends to meet up in downtown Riverside to draw and hang out and connect/collaborate in a womxn focused setting. This was such a success it has now grown into a free monthly event every second Friday at Tio’s Tacos in downtown Riverside. In 2019, in addition to Drawing Con Las Mujeres, and with the addition to our new space we are now part of the Riverside Artswalk. Our studio features a gallery to unapologetically feature only womxn artist across a wide range of themes and mediums throughout the Inland Empire. We also feature monthly creative workshops which include: writing, watercolor, printmaking, lettering, collaging, weaving to name a few. In 2019, we launched the Inland Mujeres book club, we collaborated in various pop-ups with local community resources and organizations such as KUCR, Urge Pallet, Division 9 Gallery, Riverside Community Health Network all to give back and bring our community together and share resources to support empower and uplift. help connected our community to awareness of the positive impacts of working together with such as events with different local business and community throughout the Inland Empire including our first benefit merging our love and appreciation for music + arts and community.
What are the next steps for Inland Mujeres?
Our future plans include more creative workshops not just in Riverside but throughout the Inland Empire as well as mural work, we would like to also bring Summer workshops geared towards children and young womxn mentorship. We also hope to open our studio more through set gallery times, and to partnering with new and upcoming Womxn artists for monthly art exhibitions. In addition, we hope to have a retail space in our studio to feature independent womxn artist. Something we would also love to launch is a co-working aspect for our studio and we hope to launch co-work hours during the Summer and see how to navigate this aspect for the future. We will continue to connect womxn in the Inland Empire to reinforce and unite our communities for.
Why is community important for the arts community in Riverside?
Riverside has been a thriving art community for over 20 years and it keeps growing because of the community that supports its continuous efforts. There is no arts in Riverside without the support and collaboration from the community and significant people who have laid the groundwork for it to thrive over the years. Art can and is a vehicle for representation, change, and healing. Thus, the community is reflective of its inhabitants, and the art community in Riverside is significant and it is important to have representation that is authentic to its members for not only the past but also the future. This is no longer a question of a seat at the table, this is a matter creating a table, a viable platform that is lasting and rooted within collaboration from the people within its community.