Please Sponsor Me – Oakland Running Festival!!

Ok, I lied.  I said today would be about Kuhl Frames but that will have to wait till next week, because I just realized it’s only two weeks until the Oakland Running Festival, and I have yet to get my fundraising on.  So here I go…

I’m taking part in the Oakland Running Festival in two weeks. This will be my first competitive running event, ever.

I am raising money for the wonderful Oaktown-based non-profit organization: The Ella Baker Center For Human Rights, working to build healthy thriving communities in Oakland.

I’ve never asked for money before, so please, if you can, support me in this endeavor by making a donation at my FirstGiving page, which contains more details about EBC, how I decided to get involved, my training regimen, and more: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/oaktown-art/

Even the smallest donations will help!

You can donate online with a credit card. All donations are secure and sent directly to Ella Baker Center For Human Rights by FirstGiving, who will email you a printable record of your donation.

And please feel free to share this with anyone you think might like to donate.

Thank you so much!
Oaktown Art

oakand running festival, 2011 5k route

“Art Sucks. I Quit.”

This is the title of artist Lily Black’s current show, on display at Kuhl Frames through March 26th.

This was our first (and favorite) stop of last Friday night’s Art Murmur, despite hitting several other galleries later in the evening.

Lily Black, repurposed erotic toys, japanese erotic toys

For starters, this show actually opened in February, so the typical crowds accompanying a First Friday opening were not swarming the space. It actually allowed us to spend time with these small and incredibly detailed works of art, and also chat at length with the artist himself.

Surprised that Lily is a “him”? I was too. But that’s just one of seemingly many quirks that makes this artist, and his work, particularly interesting.

For starters, how about creating an art show around the premise that “Art is over”? He goes on to say that “photography is dead” as well, which I sometimes struggle with myself… ah, it’s all been done before, countless times, hasn’t it? And yet, in this exhibit, Black presents us with something fresh, intriguing, and at times, hilarious.

Take for example the pairing of a scrawled note-to-self-list Black found on an AC Transit bus, with a historical photograph of the first steam engine installed in the engine compartment of an AC transit bus. We see in the photograph the number 666 stamped above the engine compartment. The stranger’s list is scrawled on a piece of Catholic Church stationary (an envelope to be precise) and includes such items as:

  • No sex for 530 days Mondays
  • No fighting outside at all with the police
  • Don’t make things
  • No weed to smoke outside or indoors
  • Take children to zoo, not to church, ok
  • Take teenagers to the show, not church
  • Don’t make bikes to sell

And the list goes on… The threads that tie these pieces together are tenuous.  And yet, it makes sense when presented together in gorgeous framing that Kuhl Frames has provided (more on this later). In fact, Black states that the “presentation” of the photographs he’s incorporated, “is the whole of their presence as art objects.  The onus is on the viewer to bring meaning.”  And isn’t this what good art asks of us?

assemblage art, Lily Black, Kuhl Frames, Art Sucks I Quit

The show was a collection of these types of assemblage art (pairings of photographs, historical artifacts, bugs, toys, etc mounted in shadow boxes) and smaller sculptural creations (“re-presented” modified toys, such as the erotic figurines at top, or the “Storytime” tableau below).

What you don’t see in my photo of this seemingly innocent storybook scene, is that Papa Bear and Baby Bear are looking at porn… two large breasts (human, to be specific) fill the pages of their book.

Lily Black, Kuhl Frames, Art sucks I quit

The erotic figurines at top and the robotic figure below are classic Black… reimagined, reconfigured, and repurposed toys with such an acute attention to detail, you’d be hard-pressed to envision these in any previous incarnation.

Take a look at the shoulder shields on this character below… they’re actually Lee Press-on Nails. Talk about creative reuse! The entire piece is finished with a hand painted patina of aging that looks unbelievably realistic. And this is what Black is known for… “His attention to detail, use of random materials, and his thought-provoking messages.” (1amsf.com)

Lily Black, custom figurines, "Art Sucks. I Quit"
After we left the gallery, Tim said, “Why didn’t you take any pictures? You should have interviewed him for the blog! etc.” I guess I was feeling shy or something, or perhaps was just so engrossed in the show and discussion that documenting it all became secondary.

In any case, I went back the next day to take photos (while dropping off several pieces to be framed). And thankfully, someone else has already taken the time to produce a wonderfully humorous and insightful interview with Black… Who is Lily Black? (1:AM SF)

The show is only up for two more weeks – go check it out!

More on Kuhl Frames tomorrow…

And more reading:

Let’s Get Small by DeWitt Cheng (East Bay Express)

New ArtWalk in Jingletown…

On my way to the White Elephant Sale Sunday morning, I passed a place I’d been before… I recognized the corner, and yet it looked strikingly different. What before had been a bleak stretch of blank concrete, bordered by litter and feces strewn dead grass & weeds, had now become a lovely meandering ArtWalk.

Here are a handful of the artworks that span the block of Peterson Street between Ford and Chapman, just two blocks from the Oakland Museum’s White Elephant Warehouse, and equally close to the Institute of Mosaic Arts, which I wrote about when I first launched this blog in 2009 (IMA).

jingletown murals, peterson street artwalk

Ganesh Mural by Darwin Price

mosaic institute mural, oakland tree mural, hand painted tile mural

Tree Mosaic by Kim Larson & Saundra Warren

hand crafted tiles, hand painted tiles, jingletown mosaic

Handmade tiles in Saundra Warren's studio by Jingletown residents

I’m assuming the Mosaic Institute was instrumental in the production of these mosaic pieces. Wrong.  This is why we should not assume.  Duh.  Thanks to Kim and Jill for setting me straight…

This entire project was organized by the Jingletown Arts and Biz Community, JABC, namely Jill McLennan and Cynthia Elliot, and sponsored by Pro Arts and the City of Oakland. The various artworks were created by a host of artists from the community, independent of IMA.

The tree mosaic above was created by Kim Larson and Saundra Warren (of In Saundra’s Garden…) I love the hand crafted tiles incorporated.

jingletown murals, oakland murals, alameda waterfront mural

Oakland Riviera by Bill Silveira

Peterson Street Mosaics, Jingletown Oakland, Jingletown Art Walk

Virgin of Guadalupe by Kim Larson

jingletown murals, jill mclennan

Jingletown by Jill McLennan

man's best friend, oakland murals, jingle town mural, mural of dogs

A Loving Tribute to Our Best Friends and Companions by Carlos Jahen

Seeing these recent installations got me even more excited about the class I’ll be taking at the Institute next month (Mosaic 101). I plan to blog about the specifics here… please stay tuned.
Kim Larson is also responsible for the Virgin Of Guadalupe mosaic below.

vintage car mosaic, mosaic institute, jingletown murals, oakland murals

Auto Mosaic by Jen Rubenstein

Below you can see a hint of what this stretch used to look like… the photo features Lee Krasnow of Pacific Puzzle Works – I shot him in the summer of 2009 for a story in Oakland Magazine.  His workshop is located just across the street. You can see the wall was nearly completely blank, and we both had to be on guard to avoid the numerous piles of poo.

Now the adjacent strip incorporates a waving walking path through tidy mulched landscape and a gorgeous custom laser-cut iron sign requests that visitors kindly pick up after their pets.  I didn’t see one poop!Peterson Street Oakland, Lee Krasnow, Pacific Puzzle Works

ps – The White Elephant Sale was a huge success… volunteers said Saturday was their busiest day, EVER.  (Glad I went Sunday!) I bought 4 sweaters, 1 small bookcase, and a birdhouse that looks like someone’s abandoned woodshop project. I can’t wait to paint it and hang it in my yard…

pps – Friday Night’s Art Murmur was great and I’ll have more on this in the coming days…

ppss – Here’s one last mosaic that you see as you turn the corner onto Ford.  This one is much older as I shot it back in 2009 (but never posted it).

mosaic institute oakland, jingletown mosaic murals

Treasure Hunting – White Elephant this weekend!

So it’s been a bit quiet over here, mostly because I spent the bulk of last weekend stripping a mid-century coffee table purchased on a whim, rather than working on future blog posts.  Bad blogger.

I have to say though, I am really excited about my new (old) coffee table.  For starters, I love old things. Things with history. Things infused with untold stories. And things bearing an artistry and craftsmanship that doesn’t exist today… at least not in my price range.

And I love a good bargain. I’ve always been a garage saler, flea market peruser, and now, craigslist regular. I remember in my college days my friend Tory would grab the newspaper classifieds, I’d get the LA County Thomas Guide (yes, we are old!), and drive around Los Angeles from garage sale to estate sale looking for those incredible bargains and precious diamonds in the rough.

Even if we didn’t buy a thing, it was a fun and adventurous way to kill a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning. What random insights one gains by meeting total strangers through the prism of their discarded belongings.

I think this is why new shows such as American Pickers and Pawn Stars, and the old standby Antiques Roadshow, have gained in such popularity. They’re fascinating. Not just from the voyeuristic aspect of meeting quirky people with their quirky stuff, but also the incredible history that’s learned through these items.

But back to my coffee table…

I’ve been checking craigslist diligently for months now for just the right thing.  Our living room is oddly shaped – being somewhat small, and very long and narrow. The existing features of the room – a long built-in fireplace mantle with side by side bookcases, and our couch – tend to accentuate this length, so I’ve been looking for something special… something non-rectangular with a slim profile. Needless to say, this is not an easy thing to find, especially on craigslist. Mostly I would just type in “mid-century coffee table” and see what came up.

What came up last Friday was not a coffee table specifically, but rather an ad for an estate sale in Oakland, actually 7 estate sales, all under one roof. I thought, hmmm, that could be interesting… So on Saturday morning, since I was up early and everyone else in the house was sleeping (and sure to be sleeping for hours more), I made my way down to the Hudson Warehouse Sale and waited in line as a stream of people emerged from the warehouse bearing lamps, framed artworks, chairs, and more.

I have to say I’ve never been to an estate sale like that before.  It was pretty impressive and what I’ve since discovered is that it was heavily advertised in the local media due to the fact that one of the estates was that of an esteemed and long-time San Francisco interior designer. 

In any case, the coffee table was the last thing I found. It wasn’t even in the interior of the warehouse, but rather outside with a lot of the patio furniture and junkier items. It looked pretty rough with water stains, flaking veneer, loose legs, and generally just an ugly finish, but the shape was cool and the price was right… a mere $45. I grabbed the tag and scrawled SOLD on it. Here’s a pic…

estate sale find, mid-century furniture

I returned home, jubilant with my car full of treasures purchased for a paltry sum. I raced upstairs to inform Tim I had found us the perfect coffee table. He was annoyed that I bought something without his input, but I told him it was cheap cheap cheap and just needed to be refinished. And if it didn’t work out, I could always sell it on craigslist.

He said, “In all the years I’ve known you I’ve heard you talk about refinishing furniture pieces, but you’ve never actually done it.” And there it was… the superlative that you’re, ahem, “never” supposed to use!

So I got to work immediately, just to prove him wrong.

The truth is, I’ve refinished a number of pieces in my day, but I hadn’t done one recently and I actually kind of forgot how much work it is! I spent the entire Saturday afternoon working on it, which got me to here (right side)…

stripping varnish, mid-century coffee table And then most of Sunday afternoon too, at which point it looked pretty darn fantastic. Through the process of stripping all the snot-colored opaque varnish off the table, I had uncovered what looked to be a very very nice table.  Gorgeous grain matched walnut veneers, beautiful legs tapering from rounded square forms at the top to completely round pegs at the bottom, and more.

Unfortunately, the table was still in pieces, needed to be glued back together, cleaned up with one final wipe down, and then finished with a clear coat. The clear coat I could do, the glueing back together I was slightly less confident about.

It was at that point that I decided to take it to a professional. I knew I could do it.  I just knew someone else could do it better, and that it would likely be worth shelling out a few more bucks to have a really beautiful piece, perfectly finished piece.

I took it to Antiques & Modern in Berkeley because they specialize in mid-century restorations, have great reviews on yelp including information about very reasonable pricing, and my friend Jon just bought some stuff from them and was very pleased.

So there my coffee table sits… I have no picture of its fully restored glory for you.  You’ll just have to imagine, but I know it’s going to be a real beauty, and worth all the effort!

I tell you all this because there is another fantastic pseudo-estate sale opportunity coming up this weekend…

It’s the White Elephant Sale sponsored by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board. The sale only happens once a year, so if you miss it this weekend (like I did last year) you’ll have to wait another 12 months for this super-sale to come around again…

It’s free to the general public and all sales proceeds benefit the wonderful (and recently renovated) Oakland Museum of California. In fact, in spite of the recession, last  year’s sale raised $1.4 million for the museum!  That’s not chump change.

What treasures may be awaiting you?

2011 White Elephant Sale
Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6
10:00 am- 4:00 pm
333 Lancaster Street, Oakland, CA
click for map

The White Elephant Sale is the biggest, the best and certainly the most enjoyable rummage sale in Northern California – presenting for sale an extensive offering of quality used vintage clothing, fine jewelry, Asian collectibles, tools, furniture, sporting goods, and more.

The annual sale is made possible by donations by the public.

 

More reading…

Oakland Museum of California White Elephant Sale on SFGate

White Elephant Sale Next Week Benefits Oakland Museum on Berkeley Daily Planet