The Eastsider ventures into the heart of Oakland for his roundup of the fifth Oakland Art Murmur, the East Bay's art walk and finds some Scooby Doo furry action, staple portraiture, and some awesome dismembered heads from John Casey and Lucien Shapiro.

Yowza! It's been a crazy week. Yesterday some young cat tried to mug me while I was on my break from work in Berkeley. He demanded my money and my cell phone three times to which I replied, " F - off! I gotta get back to work!" On his last try, the dude got up my face - yelling so hard his spittle decorated my face like a million dollar Pollock. This time I totally lost it, and could give a F---. I told him, "What are you going to do. Do it. Come on, prick! I'm tired of waiting. Seriously, we're in public. See what happens, see what I'll do. I've a crap day at work and now, I think you really can't make it worse." The dude gets red, looks at me manacingly - then leaves, cursing like a punk. What a jerk. What's even more depressing is this all happened in public with a audience than didn't care to play samaritan, Thank you Berkeley. At least Oakland loves me. In fact, it loved me lots at the fifth Oakland Art Murmur, which I helped put together.
Art Murmur map
Here's my extensive run through of it all. I hit the downtown area galleries first prior to all the crowds and what not. It was rainy already and I sure as hell didn't want to deal with taking photos in midst of everyone and your moms up in a art show. I went to the FRONT GALLERY first, which specializes in photography. They had a show of photos which were taken every ten miles from here to reno in a contineous Kerouac - like scroll loop through the entire place - even in the bathrooms! Fun stuff:

I am always sad when good art and performance spaces close. That's cause there's so many lame ones. Rest in peace Oaklandish, French Fry Factory and now, alas 33 Grand. Landlords suck. I love ya, and hope yall return in some form or fashion in the future. Landlords suck. Alex Munn, your gallery definitely was one of my two or three favorite spaces in Oakland in see art:

Next I trekked through the strong wind and rain, to get an early preview of the shows at Estaban Sabar, Mama Buzz, Ego Park, and RPS. Here's my highlights, starting with Estaban Sabar. I am biased towards street art, illustration, creepy sculptures, and pop surrealism as my longtime readers might have figured already soooo Estaban Sabar's oil paintings aren't my cup of tea generally. It is a large space, with potential(imagine what a guest curator could do such a large place)...that said, I liked this pop culture furry action by Kenny Mencher(though his other works were so - so):

After some free wine and cheese at Estaban Sabar, I headed over to Kevin Slagle's excellent space EGO PARK for a preview of their new show "SOCIAL WORK" by Sara Thacher. Weeks ago, I had heard from friends that some random person was passing out pillows to tired BART(the bay area's overpriced excuse for a subway system which sadly doesn't go enough places and sadder even still, closes at midnight!) commuters. I found that the pillow giving was part of conceptual art project by Sara Thacher which focuses on the idea gifts and personal exchanges in everyday life. Me, I usually don't go for this stuff, but Sara's work was whimiscal and fun. I like the idea of an artist passing out relief in the form of pillows. She got the names and destination info of some the lucky recipients of the said pillows and they were on display. She also set a physical rock, paper, scissors game to be bet on for some of the ol' gouda(rapper and linguistic genius E-40's current favorite term for money). Peep on:

Sara Thacher.
After Ego Park, I headed over to the ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS collective for politically charged "All City Sacred" Show. Here is my fovorite piece of the show by Robert Trujillo:

From RPS, I went the seeming capital of the Oakland art world MAMA BUZZ, with a stopover at the KEY THAT FIT storefront gallery for this excellent installation work byTia Factor

Next door is Mama Buzz which tonights features "Please Don’t Ignore My Instant Messages," a new show by Mark Taylor, which in my opinion is the most fully realized show I've seen there in months. Nice work. It has elements of street art, sparse minimalist printmaking and is well - composed all around. My personal fovorite is this piece which covers an entire wall is like a gritty version of a Seurat painting only with staples in place of paint dots(other pics of his work follow):

From there, I skipped the new shows at the AUTO ART GALLERY and ROWAN MORRISON as I was tired from a way stenous work week staring at old ladies, triathletes, and the occasional cute young lady at the pool in which I lifeguard. Heh, it pays the bills. The last show I ventured to was easily my favorite of the night. "headache: at Boontling Gallery featured new work in the form of sculpted heads from my buddy John Casey(who blogged his work process up on this here blog) and Lucien Shapiro. Shades of Hieronymus Bosch were seen in John Casey's charimgly creepy sculptures and drawings. That have dark, violent yearning quality to them that deserves many watchings. Lucien Shapiro's decapitated heads have a wonderfully detailed naturalism about them and are a great counterpoint to John's less realistic work. Their work draws you into another world rich with provocative emotions and images rife with the detailed grotesque taken to a level of harsh and unequilvoal beauty. John Casey:

Here's John Casey himself and one Ert O' hera, one time fecal contributor and who now does some good work doing up the quite rad JUXTAPOZ website:

Lucien Shapiro:

Lucien Shapiro in front of his art. Nice stuff:

There was a good amount of press at this opening. Twas' funny, it was. Good to see my friends get so much deserved attention. There was a film crew in Boontling and I got interviewed about the Oakland Art Murmur by Tim Kingston of The Oakland Tribune. I hope I came off well and John Casey's "secret stash" of bourbon didn't affect my higher brain functions too much:

I'll be back in a coupla days with a round of the crazy after party action from this murmur and news of the new - that annnnnnnnnd I'll have a write up on a fabled FORTY - NINER HUNT I embarked upon in Richmond's often trecherous, and in my opinion oddly beautiful, Iron Triangle neigborhood(considered by many, one of the most dangerous spots in the entire bay. Yeah Oakland, you ain't that hard...most of Oakland anyways!).

{moscomment}

< Prev		Next >