Art
Scott Oliver can tell you a lot about Lake Merritt. He can tell you that it’s not really a lake but a tidal lagoon. He can tell you that this place used to be named Lake Peralta and that, for a while, it was Oakland’s sewer. He can tell you that the white pelican who hangs out year-round is called Hank. And no, he does not buy into the rumors about a Lake Merritt monster. Now, Oliver hopes to bring the story of Lake Merritt to anyone with headphones and an audio player.
Desi W.O.M.E, the founder of the Community Rejuvenation Project, says he wants to “transform the San Pablo corridor” by engaging the local community with a series of murals focused on sustainable practices. His plan is to take a huge wall—tagged with graffiti but otherwise blank—and talk to members of the community about what they’d like to see in a mural, then work out a deal with the owner of the building. Then, he says, local artists will turn the vision into a reality.
Check out the Town Spectacle—a whole new kind of living art experience that brings together local artists, musicians and performers to connect with the community.
“The Art of Letterpress” exhibit at The Compound Gallery in Oakland showcases the work of more than 15 print artists from the Bay Area and other letterpress meccas in the U.S. These new wave of printers combine up-to-date design software and materials with printing techniques as old as the Gutenberg press.
If you’ve got a thing for chunky but understated rings, oversized pendants, or funky pins, you have Margaret De Patta to thank. The Bay Area artist, who modernized the art of jewelry making with her one-of-a-kind creations from the 1930s to the 1960s, is being honored in the exhibition “Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta,” at the Oakland Museum of California.
A look at current and upcoming exhibitions at Oakland’s art galleries.
Placemaking–using art to create places of meaning and significance–is catching on in the Golden Gate District with a new project created by neighbors that aims to tell the story of the area, both its history and what people would like to see in the future.
Occupy protesters throughout the nation managed to create an informational campaign that went globally viral for months. Now, as activists scramble to build a phase two, a look at the creative legacy of Occupy 1.0 shows how Bay Area artists helped develop its artistic language.
Deep in West Oakland, a collective of artists called Five Ton Crane (5TC) is hard at work tuning up their submarine Nautilus. Although it doesn’t go underwater, there seems to be little else this lifesize submarine can’t do—it even defends its perimeters with a water spear gun and bumps tunes from its built-in iPad technology.