Art
Oakland does not attract big record labels but it “wakes your game up.”
Some 1,600 people filled the Fox Theatre for this year’s Notes & Words concert. The concert, in its seventh year, benefited the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland and featured local talent like the Oakland School for the Arts choir, as well as high-profile authors and musicians, such as actor BJ Novak and Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin.
Host, Brad Bailey, explores music ranging from innovative music education programs in Oakland to some of the city’s most passionate Springsteen fans.
On April 17, the Oakland Ballet Company will be hosting the second annual East Bay Dances Showcase. This showcase is meant to highlight the diversity of artistry and dance in the East Bay. The event will feature multiple dance groups from the East Bay including Oakland Ballet, AXIS Dance Company, Diablo Ballet, Jubilee American Dance Theatre, The Milissa Payne Project, Patty Chu’s Chinese Folk Dance, Quicksilver Dance, and Savage Jazz Dance Company. Graham Lustig, the show’s producer and artistic director…
Oakland is the right location for a marijuana exhibition, because it is a “cannabis-friendly city,” says curator Sarah Seiter.
Despite being one of the dance capitals of the world, with 73 public and private colleges and universities offer dance majors, for decades there hasn’t been a single-subject teaching credential in dance for the California public school system.
In the window display of Vivian Truong’s studio there are rose petals as soft as a newborn’s hair, tulips as vibrantly colored as wild birds, and daffodils as bright as the early morning sun. It may appear that Truong has finally found the trick for keeping fresh-cut plants alive longer than a week. But a closer look reveals that these flowers are actually carefully handcrafted out of felt and fabric—Truong is a “fiber florist.”
Watercolor illustrator Pamela Baron has set out to capture Oakland’s unique neighborhoods through her hand-painted images of people’s homes, a project she calls “The House Portrait Commission.”
Throughout the years, Oakland librarian Nina Lindsay shelved books, helped cardholders with reference questions, and aided children in interpreting their school assignments, sometimes with instructions from teachers that were somewhat lost in translation. As she helped other people, slowly but surely she was collecting something of her own: poems.