Bummer

I got this piece ready for a juried show I thought it would be perfect for...only to find that the gallery closed. It's a little bit of a Charlie Brown feeling. So, I guess I will just post some images here for laughs. Hopefully someone will do another show about Oakland!

It was good to get the piece done in some finished form though. Here is my artist's statement about it.

Back in 2003 I got sick of our local freeway system. I had been commuting from East Oakland to Richmond Art Center for 3 years and the thought of getting on the freeway in the morning made me crazy. I decided to only take surface streets.

This is a long drive.

My daily journey took me through Friutvale, Eastlake, Downtown Oakland, Lower Telegraph, and practically nearly all the length of San Pablo Ave. However, I started noticing a lot of cool stuff that I would have missed on the freeway commute. Odd little buildings, strange juxtapostions, scenes that looked like Edward Hopper or Caillebotte paintings depending on the weather.

I started taking along a little Radio Shack Flatfoto camera. It's about the weight of a credit card and hangs easily from the neck or wrist while driving. Its low quality photos had a impressionistic quality that I came to appreciate and toyed around with in image software. I did this for a couple of years, amassing dozens of photos.

Last year I began to notice something. Some of my favorite places were disappearing from my ride. A whole block that was my first subject has been demolished and new buildings are being built there at this time. I'm sure my "favorites" were likely abandoned firetraps that hadn't been used in years. But I miss them and I'm glad I took their pictures before they were razed.

This is a collection of 20 postcards from this project. Naturally not all of these places have been demolished. Some of them are simply relics of a different time. But who knows, they might be next.