In the famous series Dr. Strange, the Sanctum Sanctorum room has the incredible property of being larger on the inside than it is on the outside. As it turns out, this not only exists in science fiction; it sits next to a geodesic bird dome inspired by Buckminster Fuller on the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland.
The newly minted East Bay Creative Lab literally rose from the ashes of the Junior Center of Art and Science [https://juniorcenter.org/], first established in 1954 by the Junior League, which, over decades, offered urban youth a place to discover, learn, and be hands-on in a gorgeous natural setting.
Unassuming on the outside, expansive on the inside, its simple warehouse-like exterior features a few large painted birds, modestly advertising its legacy connection to North America’s oldest official tidal lagoon wildlife refuge. For decades, its programs featured expert care and exhibition of small animal life, in intimate halls and decks toured by area children and families. It made nature into a center of community akin to a theme park or public garden, one promoting the intensity of close observation, and the richness of nature’s diverse forms.
It’s not a big stretch from that awareness to the focus and feedback of making one’s own forms, and when we get closer to the front doors of the current site, a far larger wall image shows, like a billboard, a child working with a paintbrush, hands-on and joyful. Once inside, we quickly notice a woodworking studio and art supply rooms that advertise the resources for all sorts of drawing, coloring, shaping, and showing things, from prints and crafts to media and digital art.
But what is now most prominent at the front side of the facility is a new conservatory, its glass paneling filtering the sunlight through a handful of different colors that land across the furnishings of an open space specifically meant for community members, for lounging, meeting, and spontaneously getting to know each other. Deeper inside the building, another generous,high-ceilinged space is outfitted for meetings or workshops, looking out over the gorgeous island-dotted lake.
These additions, built out after two devastating fires in the early 2020s, have replaced rooms that hosted certain specific programs run by Junior Art itself, but they announce a potent expansion of the center’s purpose. While its legacy has featured, and continues, cultivating free creativity and variety within art making, it now also tells the community to create and bring programs of its own to the center.
In 2026, the story has become one of galleries and workspaces failing all around the Bay Area, many,for example, buckling under terrible economics when trying to keep a gallery open in a given neighborhood. At least one profoundly important counter-story is of a community itself keeping an exhibit or workspace open.
While the sidewalk to the Center is literally paved with acknowledgements of donors who supported the Junior Arts Center over the years, it is interesting that Creative Lab takes a cue from the cooperative model so typical of grassroots artists’ cooperatives by hosting participatory collaborations that define the identity of the place within its mission.
“Activations” is a concept that permeates the Center’s strategy now. It sees itself as part of a group of cultural sponsors bringing the atmosphere and features of Lake Merritt to a more vivid level of recognition and use. Clearly,the lake environment can attract more and more people of all ages as its accessibility is cultivated, and as people go to one nearby place or another such as Children’s Fairyland or Clio’s Books, these establishments benefit by promoting each other as multiple paths to the same nurturing and enlightening environment, shareable across demographics and generations.
The East Bay Creative Lab is efficiently run and hosted by a core staff of four that manages its versatility and quality of experience. On the day of the visit that spawned this article, a larger group was busy cleaning the facility from top to bottom, one day after the end of its summer camp sessions. Its new mascot, a small reptile, wandered about, while the crew prepped the space as if it was proudly headed for a grand opening.
Meanwhile, a quick trip to juniorart.org shows several of the year’s other gallery events to date, boasting a dazzling array of what its main show in June and July called “Made in the East Bay: Fueling the next generation of artists, makers, and scientists”.
In a note that should be taken by managers of arts and culture throughout the region, East Bay Creative Lab demonstrates that the community is the ecosystem they should be addressing.
- Malcolm Ryder August 12, 2026
