Art
“This is Jose,” said Captain Steven Tull of Oakland’s Police Department (OPD) District 4. “He doesn’t think about himself — he thinks about others.” Jose Ortiz, a longtime community organizer in the Fruitvale district, smiled humbly as he was honored in many testimonies delivered by attendees at his appreciation event last Saturday evening inside the gym of the Manzanita Recreation Center. Ortiz’s business partner Big Lou Feliciano and members of his Street Inspiration Low Rider Car Club were joined by…
A photography and storytelling project shares the lives, now turned around, of 20 formerly incarcerated residents of Alameda County.
17-year-old Sophie Elkin, named Oakland’s 3rd Youth Poet Laureate in August, writes about what she knows: the grit and grandeur of Oakland’s people and places and the less tangible but no less real world of adolescence. After a childhood struggling to come out to herself and her parents, Sophie hopes her poetry will help other women to find their voices the way she has.
Every week, Oakland North will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s image is by Lauren Stewart. “This photo was taken spontaneously while on a morning walk around the lake,” she writes. “My heart was filled with gratitude and love for Oakland, and I thought to myself, ‘How many cities in America have a beautiful lake in their downtown?’” If you’d like to contribute to “community photo of the week,” just send a favorite photograph taken in…
When several art forms, disciplines and cultural backgrounds blend, there comes reflection, innovation and imagination. James Gayles, an Oakland-based Emmy Award-winning artist and musician, is striving to draw out the aesthetic value hidden in the intersection between painting and literature through a collaborative book he’s titled Reflection. He juxtaposes his own watercolor paintings of iconic cultural and historic figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Miles Davis, Celia Cruz, Nina Simone and James Baldwin, with poems written by people he knows personally….
Brooklyn Basin, a much-anticipated development project, is taking shape on the waterfront in Oakland. But the artists’ community on Fifth Avenue is worried that the condos on the way will disrupt their work and life styles.
The 6th annual Oakland Underground Film Festival opens this weekend at the Grand Lake Theatre, highlighting local independent and underground filmmakers.
Beloved Rockridge bookstore Diesel turns 25 this week. It celebrates its past and looks to the future.
The Oakland Museum and SFMOMA unveil “Fertile Ground,” exploring creative communities in California art.