InBerkeley

The White House yesterday released a list of 45 art works that the president and first lady have borrowed to decorate the Obamas’ private residence and the East and West Wings. Among the works is Richard Diebenkorn’s “Berkeley, No. 52″, painted in 1955, and part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Diebenkorn lived in Berkeley between 1955 and 1966. According to Flavorwire, the painting will hang in the Obama’s private living quarters.

Photo: Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Diebenkorn/National Gallery of Art

Art

My teenage son and I like this piece of street art which is on the old photo-processing shop on the corner of Ashby and Telegraph. It puts us in mind of the notoriously successful British street artist Banksy.

We’d like to know more about it — the artist, the message? Anyone?

Update:  Thanks to reader Cleita we have the answer we were looking for. The artist is Jesse Hazelip and you can find out more about him and his work on his website here.

Art

Photo by Sibila Savage

When I saw an image of Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib 66 (above), I thought of Francisco Goya, the great Spanish painter who captured the brutality of the Napoleonic wars. You don’t, however, need to fly to Madrid’s Prado to see Botero’s work.

The Colombian artist’s Abu Ghraib series is going on show at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) this Wednesday. The 56 paintings and drawings in the series were shown to critical acclaim two years ago at the university’s Doe Library. Subsequent to the exhibition, Botero made a gift of the series to BAM/PFA, in recognition of Berkeley’s historic role in the free speech movement.

Botero painted the series after reading Sy Hersh’s expose of the Abu Ghraib abuses in the New Yorker in 2004. In an interview during the 2007 showing in Berkeley, Botero said, “What I wanted was to visualize the atmosphere described in the articles, to make visible what was invisible.” Botero will discuss his work with BAM/PFA’s Lawrence Rinder on Wednesday evening. The discussion is sold out but a recording will be available on the BAM/PFA site from Friday.

Update BAM/PFA has an exhibition, Material Witness, that uses works from its collection to show how artists have borne witness over the centuries. It includes works by Goya and Andy Warhol. Material Witness runs until December 20.

Art

A recent tweet from Kcecelia got me curious about a place she had referred to as the Berkeley Bulb, which I had never heard of before even though I’ve lived in this area now for 26 years.  Googling the phrase turned up a few references to it, but it turned out that most didn’t really provide much information. Finally, I discovered this article on SFGate from four years ago.

It wasn’t the Berkeley Bulb, but the Albany Bulb. I must have driven right by this place hundreds of times over the years, never thinking there was much out there besides a parking lot for the racetrack. While I watched them dumping trash at the Berkeley Marina and then turn it into Cesar Chavez Park, I had no idea that another dumping ground nearby had met a similar, though less refined, fate.

Read more…

Art, General, In the wild, Nature, Recreation

Tonight, Alphonse Berber, the recently opened art gallery on Bancroft Way, is holding a public reception for its new new group exhibition ”Not as a God, But as a God Might Be”. 

The show presents the work of seven artists whose concerns, as diverse as their origins, include religion, the environment, racism, pop culture, television, and personal mythology.

Read about the gallery and its founders, Jessica Cox and Cameron Jackson, here. Doors open at 6pm for the reception.  Visit the gallery’s website here.

Art, Arts, Events

Brandy Collazo stars as Peter Pan

The stage of the Ashby Theater at the corner of Ashby and Martin Luther King has been transformed into a magical Neverland complete with pirate ship, gangplank, and aerial swings that loft those familiar characters, Wendy and Peter Pan, high up into the air.

For the past few weeks, a new theater company, Berkeley Playhouse, has been selling out its shows of the story penned by J.M. Barrie.  With its high production values, snazzy sets, and a versatile and talented cast, Berkeley Playhouse’s production of Peter Pan is suddenly a hot ticket.

It’s only the fledgling theater company’s fourth show, but its success shows that the East Bay was ready to embrace a professional theatrical group that produces plays for children,

The mastermind behind Berkeley Playhouse is Elizabeth McKoy, 45, who moved to Berkeley from Seattle five years ago with her husband Tim Choate and their children. McKoy, a longtime performer and a teacher at the Seattle Children’s Theater, came to the East Bay with a dream to create a vibrant children’s theater program.

But even before she made the move, McKoy found herself immersed in the tribulations of local theater.

McKoy and Choate held some conversations with developer Patrick Kennedy about building a new theater in his Gaia building on Allston Way. But McKoy soon discovered that the venerable Julia Morgan Theater on College Avenue was just four weeks away from foreclosure. Suddenly the couple was faced with the dilemma of saving an historic theater or pursuing the dream of a new facility.

The pair opted to step in and make a large contribution that enabled the Julia Morgan theater to pay off its debts. Choate joined the board and helped upgrade and restore the building.

In the meantime, McKoy started the Imagination Players, a children’s theater company. In the beginning, when the core of the company was her two children and their close friends, McKoy staged classes and performances in the living room of her Berkeley house. The company soon grew, however, and McKoy moved productions to the Ashby Stage, home of the Shotgun Players. Kimberly Dooley, the wife of Shotgun’s artistic director Patrick Dooley, started to teach and direct plays for the Imagination Players, along with McKoy and other teachers.

Within a few years, McKoy had put the pieces in place to start Berkeley Playhouse, which stages professional productions for children, holds numerous classes ranging from acting to dancing to audition rehearsal for children, and also teaches musical theater to adults. The organization also goes performs in the Berkeley public schools.

The Julia Morgan Theater and Berkeley Playhouse officially merged in July, and will put on its first official production in the late fall,  when it presents the Wizard of Oz. The new organization recently extended the stage to bring performers closer to the audience and have plans to put in a new sound and lighting system.

Captain Hook (Gabriel Grilli) and pirates

Peter Pan will be performed at the Ashby Stage until August 23.

Art

Berkeley artist Eric Drooker (above), who is probably best known for his many wonderful New Yorker covers, has created an animated sequence for Howl, a movie about the Beat movement being released early next year.

Shot in and around San Francisco earlier this year, “Howl stars James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, author of the 1955 poem “Howl” which triggered an obscenity trial upon which the drama is centered.

[Photo credit: www.pmpress.org.]

Art, Arts, Movies Art, Arts, Movies