I just got back from visiting family and friends in Santiago, Chile. The neighborhood of Bellavista is a great place to hang out and one of my favorite neighborhoods to hang out in South America. Sure, Santiago has competition from more famous Street Art stomping grounds like Sao Paulo and Buenas Aires, but it still holds its own. Again I found the most interesting and relevant artwork on the streets, embedded and enmeshed in the architecture and the lives of the people who are blessed enough to live around this most refreshingly un-American of art-making modes. Yes, America has a huge tradition of Street Art, but I contend that it is not of the same scope as you can presently… Continue reading...

Oakland Swee(t)art’s list:

Top 10 best Oakland Gallery shows of 2009

By Obi Kaufmann

 Note: This is a Lovefest, get ready. I contemplated the 10 worst shows too but don’t have the desire at all to list them. I have seen a lot of great work this year and have been involved as curator and as artist in many exhibits myself. This list does not include any of those shows. I can’t go there. This show does not include a lot of Oakland, namely, Jingletown, the Museum, Oakland East, etc… Continue reading...

Once again I would like to thank Artopic.org for hosting my writing to supplement the shows at Sweetart Drawing Gallery. I realize now that it is one show divided into three parts. For complete information go to http://www.oaklandsweetart.info to link to part one of this essay click here. The images below are representative of the artists exhibiting in the show, reception scheduled Sep 12. 2009. Call for information: 925-951-7501.

Part 2: The Bright Darkness

“Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in presence of whatever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.” –Gilbert Continue reading...

Curator’s Introduction.

The first in a trilogy of shows at Sweetart Drawing Gallery, The Modern Chimera is a group show that represents a bestiary of hybrid creatures from an imagined world. Exhibited drawings include themes which revolve around a sense of nature violated and a world ecology disrupted. Whether these creatures are meant as menacing forces, heralding characters or even guides of accord with a psychological world becomes clear through the mode of the drawing media itself, the origin of all visual art forms.

Show #1: “the Modern Chimera” Aug.7-Sep 9.09

Artists: Teppei Ando, Christine Benjamin, Jon Carling, Matt Decker, Martha Sue Harris, Dave Higgins, Kevin Earl Taylor

I am in the process of starting a gallery. That’s right: a real, physical space on a street in the city that I have come to adore: Oakland, California. (Point of fact: I will be curating the side gallery at The Compound Gallery on San Pablo Ave.) This has been a long time coming and that last bit of the vision is proving to be the most arduous. My little exhibition space will be focused on a particular kind of art…drawing…or is it illustration? I have to get this right in my head before going further. As usual, when faced with an aesthetic quandry of such ancient and dynamic proportions, I to turn to the community. Fortunately, my community is made up of some of the most talented and inspiring Continue reading...