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.
About: I savor moments and reflecting on experiences. That is why my work is drawn from memories of my grandmother’s quilts, kinship and passions of identity.
Art Tag involves about 10 Artists who create Art based on an agreed theme, with input from one of the Artists. This link shows the visuals …https://www.ncwca.org/arttag-history.html
Rhythmix Cultural Works’ K Gallery’s link https://youtu.be/ICekDSAzKiA to the AOTAD’s first 2021 Satellite exhibit on-line reception.
Thur. April 22, Take Your Daughter To Work coincides with the start of masked in person Art Engagement/Tea and Talk within my Art Studio. Mom’s with daughters at least 10 years old, welcome by appointment (510) 823-9150
About: My connection to nature, after returning to my Art Studio, are fabricated Fused Glass transparent and opaque sculptural landscapes. Each offers a very compelling variation of window dressing, finished with simple maple color wood frame.
Depending on your placement within your window, these stunning glass scenes delightfully diffuse bright light, block unwanted views, inspires a sense of comfort, and often starts appreciative conversation. Each measures 12″ sq.
These are for non-conforming people who enhance their environment with unique items.
More info: As an avid photographer, very observant while walking along various marinas and within regional parks, inspiration for my sculptural Fused Glass scenes can also be from your photo(s).
I welcome commissions. We can discuss sizes much larger than my 12″ sq. series. I also fabricate life size sculptural heads.
The best way to connect with me is text (510) 823-9150.
About: Writer and Photographer Jennifer Inez Ward uses both these art forms to document the myriad of voices in each community she has lived. That’s 20 years and counting after graduating from University of California Berkeley School of Journalism. She is the author of a collection of poems and a short story entitled “Compared To What”. Her current community is the vibrant Oakland California.
More info: The relevance of my documentation is for informing myself and the interested public, to widen our viewpoints. My photos and literature are not for sale. I will accept emails.
About: Stephanie Thames was born and raised in Illinois, and has lived in Oakland, California for more than thirty years. She is mostly self-taught, but she studied for a year and half at California College of the Arts and Crafts during her early years.
In 2018, Stephanie Thames received the Jan Hart Schuyers Creative Merit Award through The Art of Living Black, establishing her as one TALOB’s Spotlight Artists and Featured Speakers. She has exhibited at The Richmond Art Gallery in conjunction with The Art of Living Black, Jingletown Art Gallery, Merritt College Art Gallery and Float Center & Art Gallery.
She is an emerging painter and sculptor who is deeply rooted in daily spirituality and uses art as part of the healing process for herself and others. In her experience of working with clay Stephanie has learned that, while it is a beautiful thing for our minds to be open to new lessons, creativity is innate, subjective and needs to be nourished on the artists terms.
About: James Gayles is committed to cultivating artists and sharing his work. His vision is to put beautiful, uplifting, and enlightening work out there in the world. He sees art as a vehicle to educate, by portraying ancestral icons who youth and all people can be proud of.
He attended Pratt Institute in New York where he studied under Jacob Lawrence and realist Audrey Flack. He simultaneously pursued careers in both fine art and commercial art. As a commercial artist, he established himself in New York as a graphic designer and illustrator, becoming assistant Director of Graphics at News center 4, NBC-TV. For his work at NBC, he won a TV Emmy Award for design and illustration. James is also a two-time winner of Art Director magazines Creativity Award, one for the News Center 4 logo redesign, and the other for an editorial illustration for the New York Times. He won first place for illustration art at the California Newspaper Publishers Award. He has illustrated of McGraw-Hill, Random House, Essence Magazine, Black Enterprise as well as several advertising agencies on both East and Wests Coasts.
As a Fine artist his paintings have been exhibited in galleries in the Bay Area, through out the U.S’. and abroad. He has won public art commissions from the City of Oakland, the City of Richmond, and the Alameda County Arts Commission. In addition he was three time recipient of the City of Oakland Individual Artist grant and has been selected twice to show at biennial California Watercolor Competition and Exhibition at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara. Most recently he designed a mural in west Oakland, the was honored to be one of four artists portrayed in West Oakland on Fourth street.
These are just a few of his accomplishments, as an Emmy Award winning artist of Oakland, now presiding in Reno Nevada.
More info: Photos for sale as prints: 18″x24″, $200 each, signed Please call for further information (510) 207-6420
