About: Fan Lee Warren lives, works, and teaches drawing, painting, and art history at Laney Community College in Oakland, CA. Born in Birmingham, AL, and raised in Chicago.
Her work depicts a mixture of popular and historical perceptions of black people in the Americas. She arranges her figures within layered fragments of memories and events surrounded by the transformative ancient spiral on the stressed paper.
About: Memories of my childhood play a tremendous role in my approach to creating art today. In my early years, my mother a single parent lived in fear for my health due to the environmental hazards of San Francisco’s Hunters Point district. I suffered from asthma. Therefore, my innate interest in drawing and painting became that of a marriage over sports modeling my pursuit for constant spiritual mental, and physical elevation. Having siblings among others as viewers of my work challenged me to go beyond my limitations. I remember my late grandmother a Barber and tailor sewing for hours at her machine after coming home from work. I would sit at her feet and draw on a paper bag with a pen, marker, crayon or a number two pencil.
Art is an absolute liberation of my imagination, a tool I use to communicate and share my “inner-light.” I have regular memories of my childhood working at the local supermarket, helping elders with their shopping bags. Receiving tips helping my grandmother in her barbershop by sweeping up the hairs to find money mysteriously hidden in large clumps. At the end of each service, those who knew me would say, “ Never stop doing your art.”
Learn how easy it is to set up your own ceramics space
Marisa Burman, Richmond Art Center’s ceramics studio manager, will discuss and demonstrate how best to set-up a space for working with clay in your home. Whether it is a corner of your garage, a spare bedroom, or your dining room table, learn about basic tools/equipment you might want, as well as safety considerations, so that you can create a usable space that is tailored to your needs. Marisa will also demonstrate some creative ways to use household items as clay tools.
Keep your clay spirit alive until we can meet again! This free, drop-in workshop is accessible for all experience levels.
Setting up a Space for Clay at Home Time: Feb 7, 2021 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
About: I am a photographer. I put my camera down after high school and picked it up again after retirement. Photography is the passion of my third life.
My current project explores the possibilities of photography-based abstracts. The project has expanded from saturated colors to include an evocative, dreamy black and white palette. My abstracts are open-ended and inclusive. The viewer contributes the meaning.
I also enjoy the collaboration and intimacy of portraiture. I continue exploring the question “what is a portrait?”
About: Living and creating as a multi-media artist in Oakland California, my jewelry and sculpture are reflections of the unique urban beauty of the bay area. Either working with precious metals or incorporating materials I’ve harvested from the city streets, my work celebrates the natural and manufactured beauty surrounding and weaving through the bay area. I often use materials I find strewn about the city streets like bottle caps and broken glass.
At other times I will embrace traditional metal-smithing and use silver, copper and semiprecious stones. Whichever materials I choose, I do not hesitate to use them in unusual and unexpected ways. All of my works are hand built. It is an important part of my process to slow down and embrace time-consuming techniques like crocheting the thinnest wire or hand sawing many tiny details in tiny forms. Making my art is like tending my garden. I get the most pleasure and learn so very many things by simply taking my time.
More info: Suzane Beaubrun is a proud member of two local cooperative galleries. Her work is available through ACCI Gallery in Berkeley and City Art Cooperative Gallery in San Francisco. She can be contacted through her website.
When I’m creating a Dinnertime piece I am recording a “family memory”. The colors I use are brilliant and positive. This series of artworks are created with the most passion. Every fast pace stroke with the oil pastel has so much meaning/memory. The white areas are always paintef with acrylic paint; This way the white paint against the pastel shows very crisp. Very crisp to me means “Of Importance”. A family’s Dinnertime together is the positive foundation of everything good. As my sister would say “It’s where it all starts”.
Delicious food lures families and friends to the table; however, it is the social connection that is everlasting. Dinnertime gave you your first sense of belonging. Conversation from parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles provides oral history that will be passed down generation after generation.
About: I was born and raised in Oakland but nurtured by the entire Bay Area and it’s reflected in my work. I use the diversity and innovation of the region as inspiration to create vibrant and memorable pieces. My medium up until this point has been heavily concentrated in acrylic painting on canvas, but I am steadily increasing my exposure to graphic design. I want my work to be accessible to everyone and I believe I can accomplish this by adding to my artistic toolbox. If you are interested in learning more about me or you are curious and would like to see more examples of my work, I invite you to visit my Instagram profile (@jessanartist). Website coming soon!
Special events: Please tune in to my monthly radio show, the Groove Allegiance, every 2nd Friday of the month at Lower Grand Radio in Oakland, CA. It is an eclectic mix of all music of the African Diaspora: Classic R&B, Soul, Funk, Disco, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Throwbacks, Afro-Beat, Brazilian Funk, Latin, Dancehall, and so much more. You can tune in online at www.LowerGrandRadio.com/Listen every 2nd Friday of the month from 7-9PM PST! We’re one nation under a groove, gettin’ down just for the funk of it!
About: Artist Freddie Lambright, III is an interdisciplinary visual-based Black artist. Freddie was born on March 1st of 1995 in Oakland, CA. He is a trained illustrator, focusing currently on biological illustrations, working primarily in traditional dry media. Snakes, reptiles, and amphibians are frequent specimens illustrated. Freddie also creates mixed-media illustrations, public murals, graphic design work, music production, and most recently, mixing music and DJ’ing. He currently hosts his monthly radio “The Groove Allegiance” at Lower Grand Radio in Oakland, CA.
He was often around immediate family who always played classic R&B, Soul, Jazz, and Funk music. This, and Hip-Hop, later became a huge inspiration for his visual artwork. Narrative-based illustrations are derived from the synesthetic experience of watching colors, shapes, and textures associated with music dance to create a visual images. Spirituality, Afro-Futurism, and mythology deepen these narratives to make for a more surreal visual illustration. As his participation in music production flourishes, Freddie’s visual process becomes cyclical as the music he creates drives the visual work. Freddie seeks to render narratives and the glory of the imagination through marvelous scenes spawned from music.
More info: I’m submitting artwork from my “Negro Currency” series. This series focuses on the murder of Black people by the police force, and the lynching of Black people by white supremacists. The “Negro Currency” series questions, “What is the worth of Black life?”, as the work visually catalogues the items that cost them their lives. This series is to honor Black people who have died before it was their time, while serving as a historical tool for the injustices Black people face in America.
About: You have probably encountered his work as it has been on some of the most popular TV shows and movies to come out of Hollywood in recent years. From House, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, Californication, Big Bang Theory, The American Housewife, to movie sets (The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Avengers ; Endgame, Horrible Bosses and The Social Network, his acid paintings on copper help set the scene. Richmond based award winning artist Stephen Bruce is not a cliché — he is a phenomenon.
The East Bay Arts Community
Raised in Sacramento, Bruce recently moved his studio from Oakland to Richmond, where he revels in the flourishing community of East Bay Bohemians. Working in a stand alone warehouse in the downtown district, he now enjoys a closer relationship with many of his clients and the galleries that represent him.
More info: Please check my linktree for all of my satellite exhibitions, open studio dates, live artist talks, images of my available inventory and virtual studio tours. In addition, look to sign up for a Hands On Virtual Art & Science Workshop.
