Art
For a week in July, hundreds of people gather in a small community camping out creekside in the foothills of Placerville to get away from it all. Enlightenment seekers call it Massive, though the movement is better known as Alt Blues Recess making its way through the Northwest, Aspen, Portland, London, Drift Creek and now California.
Despite funding issues that have forced the West Oakland Youth Center to remain closed for now, last week the center’s staff kicked off Friday Night Live, a new series of community events that will run through August.
A monthly art walk is an unlikely place for a shooting, but in Oakland last February, that wasn’t the case. After a man’s death at First Friday, where art lovers crowd the sidewalks and often enjoy food and wine at local galleries, two filmmakers decided to make a movie about the gathering in hopes of starting a dialogue about Oakland’s many facets.
Chipped paint, metal bars and boarded windows and doors are all that’s left of Greenside, a notorious housing complex in East Oakland that was condemned and shuttered 10 years ago. Now, Oakland native and internationally- renowned artist Ise Lyfe has returned to his hometown to convert the dilapidated buildings into a work of art.
An estimated 6,000 cat lovers gathered in Oakland on Saturday for the Internet Cat Video Festival. Yes, you read that right—Internet Cat Video Festival.
Coatlicue drummers and dancers occupied the island between East and West-bound traffic on International Blvd in Oakland, as they celebrated and prayed. With shells at their ankles and feathers on their crowns, over a dozen people congregated and moved to the beat. Smoke from lit herbs such as sage filled the intersection. Police directed traffic around the celebration, as passersby honked and waved.
More than 500 people from around the Bay Area attended a launch party in downtown Oakland Monday to help HUB Oakland try and raise $100,000 so that it can move into a large, permanent space in the Uptown district of Oakland.
After months of preparation, the City of Oakland celebrated the opening of its temporary gallery, “Uptown Art Park,” at last Friday’s Art Murmur.
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) will be opening a new gallery focusing on California Natural Sciences on May 31. A recent behind the scenes sneak peek of the wing—which is still under construction—showed that it will focus on Oakland’s diverse natural environment and encourage residents to observe the diversity in their own backyards.