This post continues the chronicle of my escapades this past Friday night, another “First Friday” in Oakland. In fact, the rest of the week will highlight the various venues hit… expect posts to get shorter and images to get blurrier as evening progressed!
And a bit of a heads up… next week (while I am on vacation ~ woo hoo!) I’ve got some posts lined up about some of the key influential African American leaders in Oakland’s history. I took a walking tour last weekend (provided free of charge thanks to the city, despite their budget woes) and it was fascinating! I hope you will find it equally so… please tune in next week to read more about the first and second generations of black leaders who shaped the city we live in today.
Last note: cool show at the Stork Club tonight. 9-9:30ish. Two drummers. One sax. Experimental. OUT THERE. Come check it out if you’re feeling brave…


In the meantime… second stop Friday night…. bayVAN, which stands for Bay Area Visual Arts Network. It’s a gallery, housed in a tiny but beautiful space nestled between Broadway and Telegraph Avenues, on the third story of 455 17th Street. But it’s not your run-of-the-mill conventional gallery… Their focus is “[sourcing] opportunities for artists to display, lease and sell original artwork outside traditional gallery venues,” and large scale residential and commercial applications seem to fit this bill quite nicely. They currently have an artists’ registry of 100 strong, and though their 2010 Open Call to Artists is currently closed, you can check back here for future openings later in the year.

BayVAN is headed by three women who’ve been formative in developing the East Bay arts community:
- Brooke Baird is a painter and illustrator who has been working and teaching in the Bay area for 15 years. With non-profit management experience as well as skills in high-end art advertising and real estate marketing, she “takes great pleasure in using original art to bring together beautiful and unique spaces while creating economic opportunities for fellow artists.”
- Kerri Johnson “is a working artist, arts administrator and curator. She is the co-owner of Blankspace gallery, a contemporary art gallery she co-founded in 2005. Ms. Johnson has been a member of the Bay Area fine art community for 9 years and has worked with internationally renowned artists including Keith Boadwee and Anya Gallacio.”
- Nicole Neditch “has been part of the Bay Area Art community for over a decade, as an independent curator, arts administrator and graphic designer.” She opened Mama Buzz Cafe and Buzz Gallery in 2002, and later, with the help of other new gallery owners in the Uptown district, “founded Art Murmur, Oakland’s ‘First Friday’ art walk, which now hosts thousands of Bay Area residents at more than 15 galleries surrounding the Mama Buzz Cafe.” She also recently designed and executed the city’s new art & culture website: OaklandArts.org

The current exhibit, up for the next two months, is a group show that hosts a number of artists with whom they’ve worked over the past year: Brian Caraway, Jason Byers, Steuart Pittman, Modesto Covarrubias, Maryly Snow, Zoe Ani, Eric Larson, Martin Webb. The show is mostly small works, which seem well suited for the narrow profile of their space. It’s not clear to me if the gallery has other open-to-the-public hours, aside from First Fridays. You can check their blog or contact them directly.


I love this mural, despite its dilapidated state. Painted 10 years ago by folks from Laney College, the East Bay Institute of Urban Arts, and Pat McElroy on the corner of 31st and MLK, it’s definitely showing its years, not to mention the heap of dump-destined-junk dumped in front of it. I thought about going back to snap another shot without the pile of junk, but then decided it was more authentic to just show you how I saw it when I first came across it.
This is typical in West Oakland, and the symbolism does not escape me.
Here you have symbols of power and change for people of color – activists, political leaders, artists, musicians, migrant workers, athletes, and more – all stitched together into a positive tapestry of, dare I say, “hope”, and some thoughtless person obscures it with a bunch of trash they’re too lazy or cheap to dispose of properly. It makes me mad. Trash gets dumped here daily, and I don’t just mean kids throwing their candy wrappers on the sidewalk as they walk home from school (which also happens). I mean large trucks advertising dumping & hauling, who likely charge folks to take their trash away, and then come dump it in my neighborhood so they don’t have to pay the city dump fees. Argh. The city still ends up paying for it, through blight clean up crews, and even more so, reduced property taxes.
It sometimes feels like a losing battle… which reminds me of this essay I read yesterday. It’s a breakup letter to the city of Oakland, from a resident who, after many years of struggling to make this city a better place, has given up. She’s movin’ to the country. Check it out… Ode to Oakland.
I’m not there… yet.

Directed by: Edythe Boone and Meera Desai (if that name rings a bell it’s because she was also involved in the Martin Luther King Jr. mural I covered when I first started this blog – To Ignore Evil…)
To commemorate the beginning of Black History Month, I made a visit to the African American Museum & Library on 14th Street, just a couple blocks behind City Center. I have to be honest, and I am ashamed to admit this, but this was my first ever visit to this museum which opened 8 years ago. I guess I’ll just say it was well worth the wait, because it really is a gem of an institution.
First of all, the building itself is absolutely gorgeous! Both an Oakland City Landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s an architectural delight with lovely arched windows and doorways, detailed exterior stone work and incredible craftsmanship inside.

The building was spear-headed by Charles S. Greene, Oakland’s City Librarian from 1889 to 1926, who realized the city was outgrowing its first public library (a wooden structure erected in 1878 where City Hall now stands). He initiated a campaign to build a new one and, along with others including a women’s organization called The Ebell Society, found funding assistance from Andrew Carnegie’s Foundation, which offered $50,000 for the construction of the building. It was designed by architects Bliss and Faville in the American Beaux Arts style, and served as Oakland’s main library from 1902 until 1951.
“The elegant exterior of tan brick and terra cotta is incised with names of authors and disciplines and “Oakland Public Library.” “Free to All” is inscribed above the main entrance. The interior exhibits elaborate oak paneling, classical columns, and ornamented plaster ceilings. The second floor with its coffered, barrel-vaulted ceiling supported by massive columns, is one of Oakland’s most imposing interior spaces.” [Historical Plaque co-sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance]

Once the new main library (at 14th and Oak streets) was opened in 1951, this building served as a branch library, at which point it was renamed the Charles S. Greene Library. It later became city offices, and was eventually abandoned after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. “Following extensive restoration, it reopened in 2002 as the new home of the African American Museum and Library at Oakland.”
The mission of the Museum & Library is to discover, preserve, interpret and share the historical and cultural experiences of African Americans in California and the West for present and future generations.
The library is housed downstairs and consists of unique archives and reference materials on the history of African Americans in Northern California. The reference library houses approximately 12,000 volumes whose subjects include “religion, the military, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Africa in relationship to the African-American experience, genealogy, and California history.” And the archives contain diaries of prominent African Americans, newspapers on microfilm, videos and oral histories, and much more.
The museum is upstairs and “regularly hosts traveling and original exhibitions that highlight the art, history and culture of African Americans.” Here are two of the murals that greet you as you take the stairs to the second floor…

The current temporary exhibit is titled Access to Life: Faces from a Quiet Revolution and will be up through February 27th. It’s a powerful photographic exhibit by 8 Magnum photographers who focus their lenses on AIDS patients both before and for months following their antiretroviral treatments. “The project documents individuals in Haiti, Mali, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, and Vietnam; countries chosen because of the diverse contexts and circumstances driving the epidemic in each one.” To learn more, visit accesstolife.theglobalfund.org. Here are a couple shots…


There is also a permanent multi-media installation titled Visions Toward Tomorrow: The African American Community in Oakland, 1890-1990. “Visions documents the historical accomplishments of generations of African Americans in Oakland from the era of pioneering and settlement to those eras of community formation, development of the press, establishment of local churches, and creation of a lasting legacy of music and the arts.”
If you’ve never visited this wonderful institution, might I suggest that there is no time like the present. In honor of Black History Month, I plan to focus on more African American cultural events and institutions as February continues…
I thought I’d stay in the neighborhood since we’ve been here all week… here’s another mural produced by the folks at Community Rejuvenation Project. This one’s located at 21st and Mandela Parkway, right around the corner from Bee Aware – Connected Worlds…
These guys are busy. I haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of the murals they’ve produced over the last few years and intend to take a field trip down Foothill Blvd. in the near future to photograph many more.

I’m not sure when this one was produced… maybe my friend Desi can chime in and give us a bit more information. In the meantime I’ll tell you that CRP worked with 30 kids during a 6-week grant-funded program last summer to produce positive mural art in various neighborhoods in Oakland. The youth were actually paid for their time (jobs people!), as were the four artist instructors: Desi, Mr. E, Mike360, and Raven.
In addition to learning how to paint, the kids learned basic art concepts, promotional & marketing skills to interact with the local community around the project, documentation & surveying techniques, and even basic job skills like showing up on time and finishing a job through to completion. The unveiling of each mural was typically accompanied by a community block party.

At the end of the summer program they held a week-long workshop to produce the printed magazine S.W.E.A.R. documenting their efforts. SWEAR stands for Street Warriors Enacting Artistic Revolution, and the full 24 page piece was entirely produced by the youth, excluding printing.
It’s a gorgeous glossy full of wonderful vignettes about the projects and participants… poetry, artist bio’s, essays, etc. Here’s a snippet of one student’s essay:
“The CRP program is almost complete; we are still developing and exploring who we are and how art can change our world. During our first week, we dove into training and challenged ourselves to learn something completely new. Some of us had experience in painting, surveying, clean up, or promotion, but besides the lead artists, we were teaching each other.”


They’ve just finished their grant applications for 2010 and are planning for several more murals to be painted in the coming year. A couple locations have been picked in my neighborhood (the 30’s at San Pablo) and I, for one, am very excited!
Just a few blocks from yesterday’s mural I came across something even more magnificent, if only for it’s sheer size. Looks like Bode and friends have been busy since we interviewed him a couple months ago… (ART INTERVIEW: Bode)
This mural, or series of murals, stretches a huge city block between 26th and 28th streets on Peralta… it’s probably two football fields long! Check it out next time you head over to the delectable Brown Sugar Kitchen, just around the corner on Mandela Parkway…









I spotted this mural a couple weeks ago in West Oakland, at 26th and Magnolia…. not far from my home, but amazingly I had somehow never seen it before. I thought it might be new, but the inscription says it was painted by M. S. Hove (aka Scott Hove) in 2003. It’s amazing what you can find if you abandon your regular routines and explore a bit…

This is actually only half of the mural but I wanted to focus on the lovely blue skies during these dreary days of rain and drizzle, so I’ll have to show you the fiery side another day (or you can always check it out on his website if you don’t want to wait).
This one, at least the trees side, has a little bit of that Van Gogh Starry Night quality, don’t you think? He just did a new piece on Telegraph near Berkeley that feels a bit more Miró to me… I’ll feature that another day too.

Hove is another Bay Area native who attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC, now renamed CCA – sans crafts), though he considers himself primarily a self-taught artist. He works in a variety of mediums, his work typically “reflect[ing] on the relationship between the natural world and mechanical civilization, and the drama that occurs during this interaction.”

One of the unusual mediums he works in is light. He actually draws with light, with the help of photographer Bruce Lynn. He has a whole series on his website, and I think this one is one of my favorites. Pretty cool, eh?
















