Culture
On Friday, the Oakland Museum of California will launch its newest project—the Oakland Standard. Part art, part music and part venue for conversation, this art series is all about honoring the creative people who live in Oakland or who are from here. And the museum staff is kicking it all off with a party.
Photographers who find their muse in Oakland can now submit their work to compete in the 2011 Visit Oakland Photo Contest, which began Tuesday. Visit Oakland, formerly the Oakland Convention & Visitors Bureau, is dedicated to promoting Oakland as a destination for meetings and travel. This is its fifth photo contest, and so far it has recognized more than 100 photos.
Crowded in the back of St. Vincent de Paul’s community center, dozens of people paint an extensive wood panel with a mosaic of images—trees, faces, buildings and flowers. They’re creating a work for display at the center, but these painters aren’t professional artists, they’re low-income and homeless clients of St. Vincent de Paul.
Snap Judgment—which began airing weekly last July and is produced in Washington’s studio in Oakland—is now the fastest-growing show on National Public Radio, with more than 100 stations airing it weekly and over 160 having played its specials. All the episodes are available to stream on the show’s website (SnapJudgment.org) and to download as a podcast on iTunes.
Early morning rain didn’t stop thousands of people from swarming into a 96,000-square-foot warehouse for the annual preview of the White Elephant Sale, benefiting the Oakland Museum of California. Bargain-hunters scoured the donated goods–from bundles of utensils and slightly charred frying pans to vintage jewelry and ‘80s-style clothing.
On Saturday and Sunday, Oakland’s Chinese community came out to buy, sell and celebrate at the New Year Lunar Bazaar. The bazaar, which was started by the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in 1991, takes place every year at 9th and Franklin Streets in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza.
In a light-filled spacious kitchen, Jeff Gallishaw slices open an orange, squeezes out all the juice and adds it to a cup of homemade soda water mixed with simple syrup. He is working in your typical commercial kitchen, complete with refrigerators, sinks, a stove, griddle and oven. But at the end of the day, he can start up his engine and drive this kitchen away.
At a long table set with small lamps giving off an amber-hued glow, 15 people sit alongside each other, stooped over sketchpads, drawing. Some people are working with pen and ink, others paint with watercolors, while some draw with charcoal or pencils. Every person sitting at the table is a professional artist and was invited to Levende East for a weekly event called “Drawing Wednesdays.”
Oakland resident Wallace Lee crammed himself into a small room in Oakland’s Chinatown with nearly three dozen other parents on Saturday afternoon to hear plans for what many East Bay residents see as an unfilled gap in the area’s education system: a public school with a Mandarin-English curriculum.