Jen Garrido: (Un)tethered
2026-06-13 | Slate Contemporary Gallery, 5510 College Ave, Oakland, 94618, United States
SLATE is proud to present “(Un)tethered,” a solo exhibition by Jen Garrido. Featuring ten new paintings, marked by layered textures, fluid forms, and varied painterly techniques, this exhibition continues Garrido’s exploration of abstract painting through an evolving visual language. Suggesting atmosphere and imagined place, the works embody shifting environments and abstract spaces that resist fixed interpretation while remaining deeply grounded in sensation and feeling.
A Los Angeles native, Garrido lives and works in San Francisco. She holds an MFA from Mills College and has presented solo exhibitions across the United States, with her work included in galleries and collections throughout the U.S. and Canada.
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, June 13, 4–6pm
Exhibition runs Friday, June 5–Saturday, July 11, 2026
Open Tues – Sat 11am-5pm
SLATE Contemporary Gallery
5510 College Ave, Oakland, CA

Andrea Brewster, Tara Esperanza, Elizabeth Sher: Succulents, Spirals, Blooms
2026-05-08 12:30 - 2026-06-13 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Left to right: Tara Esperanza, “Tenderness”, 2024 acrylic on canvas, 35” x 24”, Elizabeth Sher, “Layered Spiral #e (pink)”, 2026, oil, acrylic and ink on Yupo, 16” x 14”, Andrea Brewster, “Resemblance #2-Peony”, 2026, Digital print on aluminum, 16” x 20”, Photo courtesy of the artist.
Andrea Brewster’s work transforms flowers into speculative, non-biological forms that resemble flora yet are entirely constructed—part specimen, part apparition. Printed on reflective aluminum, images shift with light, offering a quiet, contemplative experience shaped by the distance between nature and its digital afterimage.
Tara Esperanza’s paintings reflect the quiet resilience of succulents as they adapt, thrive, and live in harmony. Rooted in community, these forms support one another, flourishing together as a collective force of nature.
Elizabeth Sher’s focus has turned to spirals, first in rope, then in wire, and now in painted and drawn marks. This ongoing series “Spiraling Out of Control” visualizes a shared emotional landscape: the disorientation and instability many of us feel in these uncertain times. Yet within the spiral, Sher finds a pulse of hope, a reminder of cycles, of return, renewal, and resilience.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, May 16, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

Abby Zhang: Private Weather
2026-05-08 12:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Abby Zhang, “It rains inside,” 2025, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 30″ x 24″, photo courtesy of the artist
Private Weather brings together a new group of paintings by Abby Zhang that explores how thought, feeling, and visual memory take form in space. Built through improvisation, revision, and accumulation, these works move between structure and instability, allowing images to emerge without fully settling. Meaning develops through relation: between marks, between paintings, and between the work and the room. The exhibition treats painting as both image and atmosphere, creating a space charged by tension, proximity, and change. Private Weather points to an inner climate made visible, where perception stays open and everything remains slightly in motion.
Bio:
Abby Zhang is a Bay Area–based painter whose work explores memory, perception, and psychological atmosphere through layered, semi-abstract images. She received her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in 2021, recently participated as a resident artist at Art Bias, completed a residency at Kala Art Institute and Vermont Studio Center, and has been selected for an upcoming residency at the Torrance Art Museum this summer.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception and Talk: Saturday, May 16, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

Charlie Milgrim: Crude Futures
2026-05-08 12:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Charlie Milgrim, “Crude Futures”, 2026, used motor oil on paper, 24″x24″x1″, photo Bri Cheng
Twenty-five years ago, in the shadow of the September 11 attacks, Charlie Milgrim searched for a way to confront the deeper forces fueling global conflict. She turned to the very substance that was a catalyst in those struggles: oil. With a bowling ball as her brush, she rolled long lines across thick paper with used motor oil, setting the “landscapes” in motion. Over the decades, the contaminants in the motor oil slowly seeped outwards, its unpredictable spread mirroring the drifting, uncontrollable nature of an oil spill. Time became an important collaborator in the piece, shaping its quiet but constant transformation.
Now, after more than two decades, the oil has left an indelible stain—much like the omnipresent residue of oil spills that continue to haunt the environment. Despite the rise of renewable energy over these same years, the politics surrounding oil remain largely unchanged. The work stands as a reflection of that persistence: a grim reminder that the world still grapples with the long shadow of oil dependency, its consequences rippling through our present day wars.
Bio:
Charlie Milgrim is a multimedia artist from New York City who moved to the Bay Area to attend the California College of the Arts and later received her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Since then, she has had solo shows at OK Harris Gallery in New York City; Haines Gallery and Gallery 16 in San Francisco; the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, CA; and the Oakland Museum. She is active in the Bay Area arts community and exhibits her work at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception and Talk: Saturday, May 16, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

Gustave Carlson: New American Stillness
2026-05-08 12:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Gustave Carlson, “Perry Hill Screened Porch”, 2026 acrylic and graphite on wood panel, 18″ x 24″, photo courtesy of the artist
“New American Stillness” by Gustave Carlson explores the quiet psychological presence of the contemporary American landscape. Focusing on ordinary architecture—coastal houses, open lawns, interiors, still lifes, and expansive skies—these paintings place absence at the center of experience. Rather than narrative, Carlson emphasizes observation, structure, and atmosphere. Buildings act as anchors within broad fields of light and color, suggesting both stability and solitude. Subtle tonal shifts allow spaces to feel at once specific and timeless, inviting viewers to consider how shadow, memory, and perception shape place. While Edward Hopper often conveys psychological isolation and Fairfield Porter captures domestic intimacy, Carlson draws from both to explore architecture as a perceptual construct rather than a narrative stage. In these restrained scenes, stillness is not emptiness but presence—an invitation to look longer and see more. His work suggests that the contemporary American landscape, when closely observed, continues to offer moments of quiet depth and reflection.
Bio:
Gustave Carlson is an architect and principal of Gustave Carlson Design in Berkeley, California, and a painter exploring the quiet tension between architecture, light, and lived space. He is the author of Pacific Modern Houses of Northern California (ORO Editions, 2018), a widely acclaimed survey of regional modernism. His award-winning architectural work has received international recognition and appears in Elle Decor, Dwell, Wallpaper, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Carlson holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and studied painting there under Color Field painter Adele Alsop. He has attended residencies at Edgewood Farm at Castle Hill in Truro, Massachusetts, and Studio Faire in Nérac, France. His paintings have earned honors including Best in Show at the Greenwich Art Society and have been exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Castle Hill Center for the Arts, Tiburon Library Gallery, Greenwich Art Society, and Mercury 20 Gallery. His work is held in private collections.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception and Talk: Saturday, May 16, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

Multi-Artist Exhibition -- May-June, 2026
2026-05-05 08:00 - 17:00 | Art@Archer, 431 13th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
FIVE BAY AREA ARTISTS FIVE UNIQUE STYLES
Dalit Fresco
Leon Kennedy
Christie Langley
Murray Nelson
Suying Zhang

Jeff Dikio: This Must Be the Place
2026-04-30 12:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Jeff Dikio: This Must Be the Place
April 30 – June 13, 2026
Opening Reception, Saturday, May 2nd, 1-4 pm.
In This Must Be the Place, Jeff Dikio reflects on the quiet spaces where memory, environment, and emotion intersect. Borrowing its title from the Talking Heads song, the exhibition considers “place” not as a fixed location, but as a feeling—something recognized in passing, in fragments, in moments of stillness.
Using paint chips in his collages, Dikio reconstructs familiar “every day” scenes into compositions that feel both grounded and unsettled. What emerges is a visual language of belonging, where home is less about geography and more about resonance.”
Dikio is a Bay Area artist born in 1975 on Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Raised within a transient military culture, he found early grounding in drawing and observation, developing a lifelong sensitivity to place, movement, and change.
In his recent collages, Dikio tries to capture the colorful and quirky architecture and scenes found in his immediate surroundings that are distinctive of the surrounding Bay Area.
He received his BA in Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997, and has since worked across figurative, landscape, and mixed-media practices.

Sonia Gill: Memento Vivere/Remember to Live
2026-04-23 12:00 - 2026-06-06 17:00 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Sonia Gill: Memento Vivere/Remember to Live
April 23 – June 6
____________
​Artists’ Reception
concurrent with reception for Jeff Dikio: This Must Be the Place
Saturday, May 2nd from 1-4 pm
​Artist’s Talk
Saturday, May 16h at 2 pm
Closing Reception
Saturday, June 6th from 1-4 pm
In Memento Vivere: Remember to Live, Sonia Gill’s work invites us into a world where painting is reimagined through paper—where the brushstroke is replaced by the torn edge of a magazine fragment, and color is discovered rather than mixed.
Beginning with a photographic reference drawn from her everyday life, Gill builds her compositions piece by piece through a slow and contemplative process. Drawing from a vast archive of printed matter: pages of magazines, discarded scraps, and remnants of images once whole, she assembles hundreds of paper fragments translating the image into a new state of presence. Within this self-imposed constraint, she embarks on a rigorous and intuitive search for the exact hue, value, or texture needed to bring a scene to life.
​At its core, this body of work is an homage to the quiet, enduring moments that define human life: reading together, tending to small rituals, routine tasks and moments of reflection. In an era often marked by business and noise, Gill’s practice offers a counterpoint—a deliberate slowing down, a careful reconstruction of meaning through attention and care reminding us that life’s significance resides not in spectacle, but in the accumulation of small, luminous moments. This work is a reminder – remember to live.
Trained as a painter and influenced by mentor’s Jay DeFeo and Ron Dahl, Gill graduated with a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, in addition to degrees from Michigan State University in French. With a robust exhibition history, she has shown extensively in the Bay Area with solo exhibitions dating over the past twenty years and inclusion in a long list of juried shows. Her work has been published in Studio Visit Magazine and 48 Hills, among other publications, and recognition in painting and watercolor with awards from the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Northern National Art Competition, Richmond Art Center and Fort Bragg Art Center.

Edges of Attention: Javier Arizmendi-Kalb / Susana Arias, GearBox Gallery
2026-04-16 12:00 - 2026-05-23 17:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
GearBox Gallery presents paintings by the 2025 Juried Show winner Javier Arizmendi-Kalb, and ceramic sculptures from guest artist Susana Arias, in Edges of Attention, April 16th through May 23rd. Artists’ Reception is Saturday, April 25, 1 – 4pm.
“Edges of Attention” brings together the work of Javier Arizmendi-Kalb and Susana Arias in a shared exploration of structure, gesture, and the threshold between control and intuition. Across painting and sculpture, the exhibition engages in a spatial dialogue where perception shifts—where what is seen directly is only part of what is felt.
Arizmendi-Kalb’s large-scale paintings, each rising to six feet in height, operate as immersive environments rather than images, occupying space with both physical authority and emotional immediacy. Suggesting refracted light and architectural spaces, planes of color, linear scaffolding, and gestural marks collide and cohere, hovering between construction and improvisation.
In conversation with these expansive canvases, ceramic sculptures from Susana Arias’ Tree Series rise from four to over six feet tall. These works do not depict trees; they extract their presence. Minimal yet grounded, they quietly shape and divide the surrounding space while rings, joints, and variations in surface suggest time embedded within the material, evoking cycles of growth without literal narrative.
GearBox Gallery: 770 West Grand Ave, Oakland.
Gallery hours: Noon to 5pm Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays

FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTION -- Multi-Artist Exhibition
2026-04-03 18:00 - 21:00 | Art@Archer, 431 13th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Here’s your chance to meet the artists from this wonderfully eclectic exhibition of Bay Area artists. The exhibition closes at the end of April, but First Fridays are the best time to talk to the artists about their work. It ranges from weaving to acrylic paints. From abstract to realism. Come by and enjoy the work of:
Arie Dallas
Ken Knudsen
Nina Krebs
MacArthur Nelson
Shu
Diane Wang
Refreshments will be served.

“Dreamscapes” art by Daisuke Okamoto + Brenda Cibrian
2026-04-03 17:00 - 2026-05-31 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Artist Statement: Daisuke Okamoto
Daisuke Okamoto’s work, “OKAINA IMAGE” is an elaborate and involved system of ink line drawings representing identity and transformation, exploring the cycle of life in the complex, biomorphic narratives of the organic.
Daisuke Okamoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, and currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California. Okamoto’s art is heavily influenced by science fiction and psychedelic culture. Given his intense passion for repetitive line drawing, Okamoto has been known to work over a year on a single piece.
Okamoto partnered with Microsoft on a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 and made a mural for the ad campaign in 2022. And he has also done collaborative projects with PBS KCET in Southern California.
Okamoto’s murals are in CA, TX, NV, OR, UT, MI, NY in the United States, Tokyo Japan, and Berlin Germany.
Artist statement: Brenda Cibrian
Through paintings and murals I seek to make art that uplifts and creates connection within ourselves and with the world around us. My work starts with a feeling first then subject matter, I then add in playful elements with a whimsical visual flair. I use surreal colors, combine imagery that is in and out of focus, with graphical, symbolic shapes to tie compositions together. I like to explore themes of identity, introspection, core memories and nostalgia. Nature, abstract shapes and people are recurring elements in my art and my influences come from my Mexican American upbringing in South Central as well as early 2000s internet culture.
April 3rd – May 30th, 2026
Receptions: First Friday, April 3rd, 5-10pm
Receptions: First Friday, May 1st, 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment

Deconstructing the Gaze: 'Forgotten Eyes': Contemporary Surrealism and Cubist Visions Challenge Perceptions of Reality
2026-04-03 13:00 - 2026-05-30 17:00 | Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Johansson Projects presents Forgotten Eyes an exhibition of painting by Pablo Benzo and sculpture by Soojin Choi. Known for their emotional and undulating compositions, Benzo and Choi exploit the unstable boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. Their representations of life are warped, distended, burnished, and ultimately engaged in a reality that is elastic rather than fixed, shaped by memory, intuition, and shifting sensorial conditions.
Operating at the formal and conceptual nexus of Surrealism and Cubism, Benzo’s paintings reinterpret early 20th-century modernism for the contemporary moment. Grounded in conventions of still life and portraiture, his pastel-hued interiors are rendered as sites of mystery and multiplicity. In Benzo’s painted world flowers float as they wilt and the joints of furniture crease like flesh. Blending the quotidian with the otherworldly, Benzo eschews realism for a dream-like plane of being, offering a comfortable familiarity that always necessitates a double-take.
Choi’s ceramic sculptures similarly forgo conventional modes of representation in favor of more circuitous structures. Often figurative, her work treats the human body as a plastic form. Limbs and faces emerge from painted underglaze applied to hand-built planes of flattened clay that twist and twine around each other. Choi’s figures never engage in a moment of recognition, instead looking outward with ambivalent expressions. Their contorted anatomy foregrounds their alterity, evoking the complexity of human connection, individuation, and the construction of the other.
Forgotten Eyes will run Friday, April 3 to Saturday, May 30, 2026. An opening reception will be held Friday, April 3 from 5-8 pm.

Visible Labor: The East Bay at Work
2026-04-03 - 2026-05-24 | Oakland Photo Workshop, 312 8th St, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
There is an increasingly prevalent opinion that work should either be automated or invisible. The evolution of technology has made all forms of work more precarious and isolated. This exhibition goes behind-the-scenes to show the jobs and workplaces that we don’t usually get to see – or show them from a new perspective. It showcases the important but often overlooked jobs that keep society running, and give viewers a new window into a different side of the East Bay. This exhibition goes behind-the-scenes to show the important but often overlooked jobs that keep society running, and gives viewers a new window into a different side of the East Bay. The show features 23 artists in the gallery and online at ebpco.org/exhibitions/online/visiblelabor

Built Different - Gina Gaiser
2026-04-03 - 2026-05-09 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Manna Gallery presents Built Different, a black-and-white photography series by Gina Gaiser that examines the logic embedded in the urban landscape. Focusing on brickwork, graffiti, industrial surfaces, and architectural grids, Gaiser isolates fragments of the built environment and reframes them as studies in repetition, contrast, and form. Stripped of color, the images emphasize structure and rhythm, allowing overlooked details to surface with clarity. When assembled, the photographs converge into larger visual systems, revealing order within what might otherwise register as visual noise. Built Different reflects on construction in multiple senses, of cities, of environments, and of perception itself, proposing that heightened attention to pattern and geometry is not deviation, but insight.
April 3 – May 9, 2026
Artist Reception: Saturday, April 11, 3-5 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5 pm & First Fridays, April 3 & May 1, 5-8 pm

Leigh Barbier, Jessika Cadkin, Laura Malone, Christine Meuris: Material Differences
2026-03-27 12:00 - 2026-05-02 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
The four artists featured in Material Differences work in painting, sculpture, and weaving. Considered together, their works draw attention to the ways texture, material choice, and scale shape the dynamics of the exhibition.
Leigh Barbier’s series Under the Influence features ceramic heads informed by her intuitive drawing process: pieces created during moments of inspiration, anxiety, or relief. They capture glimpses of an idea, feeling, or dream; fragments of her imagination.
Jessica Cadkin’s sculpture, Cavity, depicts a large‑scale molar, reflecting a lifelong fascination with her teeth and her aversion to dentist visits. Her work explores the tension between attraction and repulsion, presenting the tooth as something both familiar and unsettling.
Examining human subjectivity, Laura Malone’s paintings traverse a range of emotional landscapes. From jubilant bursts of vermilion in one piece to gentle splashes of gray in another, Malone invites viewers to gambol here, only to rest in stillness there.
Christine Meuris’s pieces are examples of overshot weaving, in which a contrasting pattern thread is interwoven with the structural plain weave threads; and the process of inlay, in which areas of pattern are placed only where the weaver wants them. For Meuris, making them was an experiment in layering structures of form and pattern.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, April 11, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, April 3, May 1, 5 – 9 pm
Image: Left to right, Laura Malone, Fire Season, Oil on Linen, 40″x40″, 2026; Christine Meuris, Balance, Woven Cotton, 2 panels at 48″x19″ each, 2024; Leigh Barbier, Under the Influence (WIP), Ceramics, 5″x5″x3″, 2026; all photos courtesy of the artists

Alec Marin: All That You Change/Changes You
2026-03-27 12:00 - 2026-05-02 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
All That You Change/Changes You is a collection of work centered around Alec Marin’s life: painter, scientist, and Chicano from the South Texas border. Each piece is an exploration of some dimension of his varied interests and lived experience, from the perceptual distortions that occur during the phases of intoxication to the hidden reality of racial and economic segregation along the Mexican American border. Recent work focuses on his read of the foundational principles of Mexica (Aztec) philosophy, their symbols and spiritual practices within a contemporary framework. His two latest paintings build upon this by framing the images as the prophetic dreams of an ancestor whose life and works would catalyze the culture and religion of the Mexica people.
﻿
Bio:
Alec Marin is an artist and neuroscientist based in Oakland, California. His work has been published at knowingneurons.com and “The Beat,” an art and literature journal published by The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His work has been exhibited at the Fremont Art Association’s Annual Art Show; “Beyond Boundaries,” a juried exhibition at the Mercury 20 Gallery; and “Ripples” group exhibition at the UCSF School of Law.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, April 11, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, April 3, May 1, 5 – 9 pm
Image: Alec Marin, “Momentary Condensations of Teotl,” Oil on Canvas, 28″x22″, 2024, photo courtesy of the artist

Andrea Guskin: Signals Beneath The Surface
2026-03-27 12:00 - 2026-05-02 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
The networks beneath our forest floors—where tree roots and mycorrhizal fungi share sustenance and signals through intertwined subterranean paths—served as a source of inspiration for Andrea Guskin’s exhibition, Signals Beneath the Surface. This new work continues her exploration of scientific discovery as a metaphor, using metal paintings and photographic processes to investigate themes of ancestry, memory, and interconnection.
Thread, found objects, and imprints of Guskin’s body on the metal paintings translate concealed activity into form, mapping the connections that sustain life below ground and above it.
Within this exhibition, she presents work from her recent project Local Roots, a photo-based community arts project centered on ancestral relationships to herbs and spices, and a new site-specific collaborative installation created with local artists Courtney Griffith and Yaminah Abdur-Rahim.
Bio:
Andrea Guskin is a San Francisco Bay Area based artist working across the disciplines of photography, sculpture, and painting. She began drawing by pillaging her father’s office supplies for fine-tipped pens and yellow legal pads, filling them with figures while lounging on a 1970s shag carpet in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After studying painting at Antioch College in Ohio, Guskin moved to New York City and became a part of the arts community on the Lower East Side. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003, she has exhibited her work throughout the state, including at the Richmond Art Center, BerkeleyArt Center, and Red Poppy Art House.She graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Mills College at Northeastern University in April of 2023. Guskin lives in San Leandro with her husband and two sons.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, April 11, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, April 3, May 1, 5 – 9 pm
Join Andrea Guskin in a participatory activity centered around ancestry on First Friday, April 3, 6:30-7:30 pm
Image: Andrea Guskin, “Radial Expansion,” Acrylic paint on Cinefoil, 2026, photo courtesy of the artist

Orange Crush
2026-03-14 13:00 - 2026-05-09 17:00 | Gray Loft Gallery, 2889 Ford Street, 3rd floor, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
ORANGE CRUSH
8th annual juried color-themed photography exhibit
Show dates: Saturday, March 14 – May 9, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 14, 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Tessier Wine Tasting: Saturday, April 18, 3:00 – 5:00 pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, May 9, 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Gallery address: 2889 Ford Street, #32, Oakland (Jingletown)
Website: www.grayloftgallery.com
Gray Loft Gallery is delighted to present Orange Crush – our 8th annual color-themed juried photography exhibition. This dynamic showcase explores the expressive range and emotional resonance of the color orange through an impressive selection of contemporary photographic works.
The exhibition features elegant and vibrant interpretations of orange across mixed media, alternative processes, traditional color imagery, and hand-colored photographs. Eclectic and thought-provoking, the collection captures the many facets of orange – its warmth and intensity, its symbolism and ambiguity.
Presented in conjunction with PhotoCarmel! Juried by Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art; and Jan Watten, founder, Gray Loft Gallery. This year’s exhibit highlights the work of 80 talented Bay Area photographers who bring fresh, distinctive perspectives to the color orange.
Featured Artists:
Debra Achen, Stephen Albair, Laurel Anderson, Francis Baker, Janet Beaty, Tony Victor Bellaver, Bonnie Blake-Drucker, Rose Borden, Barbara Brundage, Maria Budner, Kimberley Campisano, Mima Cataldo, Ginnie Chabre, Jessica Chen, Susan Chainey, Mark Citret, Marna Clarke, Crystal, Lynn Collins , Jeff Cullen, Fairlight de Michele, Tony DeVarco, Allyson Ely, Susan Felter, Diane Fenster, Ginger Fierstein, Laurie Gabriel, David Gardner, J. M. Golding, Cheryl L. Guerrero, Najib Joe Hakim, Arvian Heidir, Edie Hoffman, Irene Imfeld, Judi Iranyi, Josie Iselin, Becky Jaffee, Patrick Jagger, Sherry Karver, Ellen Konar / Steve Goldband, Patricia Leeds, Scott Leon , Lisa Levine, Nadine Levin, Laurel Malinovksy, Max Malcolms, Jeanne Marino, Lou McCorkle, Melina M Meza, Don Melandry, Sonia Melnikova-Raich, Carolyn Moore, Charles Moulton, Clay Myers-Bowman, Steve Napoli, Charlotte Niel, Fletcher Oakes, Deborah O’Grady, Eben Ostby, Mark Overgaard, Karen Palamos, Anne Morrison Rabe, Mark Reynolds, Malcolm Ryder, Dennis Segers, Neo Serafimidis, Nancy Sevier, Chris Stevens-Yu, Douglas Stinson, Kelly Sullivan, Michael Teresko, Vince Thomas, Cole Thorpe, Pavan Trikutam, Jacqui Turner, Jim Van Slyke, Jennifer Waicukauski, Sally Weber, Susan West, Jeff Weston, Stephanie Williamson, Nick Winkworth, Yelena Zhavoronkova

Alternation: Kristie Hansen
2026-03-13 12:00 - 2026-04-18 17:00 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Gallery Hours: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 12-5 pm and by appointment
Opening Reception, Saturday, March 14th, 1-4 pm
Artist’s Talk, Saturday, April 11th
Transmission Gallery is pleased to present Alternation, recent work by Kristie Hansen, now featured in our Small Space.
Drawing on her love of second-hand fashion, Hansen sources discarded garments and accessories to construct unconventional, layered sculptures. In Alternation, she transforms a single, deeply personal object into a series of intimate sculptural forms. These works originate from a brown suede jacket that once belonged to the artist’s mother—an item passed on during a period of family transition marked by downsizing, aging, and the loss of a long-held home.
Rather than preserving the garment intact, Hansen dismantles and reshapes it, allowing one article of clothing to generate multiple sculptural works. The suede is folded, stitched, and formed into soft geometric shapes that retain traces of their earlier life while becoming something entirely new. Beads taken from her mother’s jewelry are embedded along the seams; introducing variation within repetition and suggesting the individuality of memories that emerge from shared histories.
Through this process, Alternation reframes a private inheritance as a broader reflection on transformation. The work speaks to experiences familiar across generations: the passing down of belongings, the reshaping of family narratives, and the quiet negotiation between holding on and letting go.
Rather than presenting change as a singular event, Hansen treats it as gradual and ongoing. One garment becomes many objects; one story unfolds into multiple forms. In this way, Alternation approaches personal history not as something fixed, but as material that can be continually rearranged—an evolving structure shaped by resilience, adaptation, and persistence over time

Frank D. Cole: The House Inside
2026-03-12 12:00 - 2026-04-25 17:00 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Gallery Hours: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 12 – 5 pm, and by appointment
Opening Reception: Saturday March 14th, 1-4 pm
Artist’s Talk: April 18, starting at 2 pm
Transmission Gallery is pleased to present The House Inside, recent paintings by East Bay painter, Frank D. Cole.
Working from his West Oakland studio, Frank Cole paints from a distance, both geographic and temporal. His large-scale works emerge from reflections on his childhood in Mississippi, with landscape, weather, and architecture forming an enduring visual vocabulary. In this work, Mississippi becomes less a fixed geography than a felt condition, a stand-in for memory and connection, suspended between clarity and dream.
Framed by porches, window casings, and thresholds, Cole’s paintings position the viewer in an interior space, looking outward. Beams, panes, and floorboards divide and measure the picture plane acting as armatures for recollection, holding in place fleeting impressions of light on water, wind through tall grass, or rain dissolving a stand of trees. The result is both architectural and narrative, emerging as quiet meditations on place and time, imbued with reverie and longing.
The paintings carry a subtle tension between shelter and exposure, presence and absence. No figures occupy these interiors; instead, the viewer becomes the inhabitant. The threshold functions as a metaphor for memory–a point where the past remains visible yet inaccessible.
Accompanying the larger canvases, small preparatory studies reveal the evolution of each composition. In these pieces, Cole tests structure, color temperature, and atmosphere. The studies function as concentrated meditations—intimate works where gesture and light are first explored before expanding into the larger paintings.
While rooted in a specific place, these recollections resonate beyond their origin, becoming a point of departure for a broader exploration of early embodied experience – how light filled a certain room, the rhythm of rain on a roof, the view framed by a familiar window. Through carefully constructed interiors and expansive vistas, Frank Cole transforms personal memory into a contemplative space others can inhabit.

Where Are You From? Group Exhibition
2026-03-12 - 2026-03-25 | ARTogether Center, 1200 Harrison Street, Oakland, 94612, United States
“Where are you from?” The eternal question faced by immigrants and the children of immigrants resonates far beyond a simple inquiry. In today’s political climate, it carries charged undertones shaped by power, exclusion, and surveillance, becoming a measure of legitimacy and belonging.
This exhibition gathers artists whose work examines how identity endures, evolves, and is reclaimed. Through personal histories, embodied memory, and lived experience, the works resist fixed definitions of origin. Instead, they center the stories we carry and embody, honoring nuance, diversity, and the shared threads that connect us.
Gallery Hours are Wednesday’s 12-4pm and by appointment

"Who Am I?" portraits by Leslie Plato Smith
2026-03-06 17:00 - 2026-03-28 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
For March we are honored to feature the work of local Bay Area artist Leslie Plato Smith, in her latest show entitled, “Who Am I?”
“We are living in turbulent times. We are questioning our values, beliefs, and education. Our national leaders prove to be untrustworthy, as the media feeds misleading narratives. Our history feels as uncertain as our future. We are having difficulty finding common ground, the truth, and what we stand for. Conflict is everywhere. Everyone is asking themselves: “Who Am I?”
Artist Bio:
Choctaw, Viking, AVChancellor, Governmental Relations, emerita. Highlights: national award for bringing together 60 art departments, creating 125 life-size statues showing how budget cuts negatively impact access and opportunity, democracy and upward mobility; European Cultural Centre’s Venice Biennale: “Who Are We?”; Spotlight Artist for Richmond Art Center, “Vulnerability;” “Clay Sustains: Vessels of Change” Palo Alto Art Center.
Plato Smith’s grandfather was born on the Choctaw Reservation and her orphaned grandmother was born to immigrant parents from Denmark and Sweden. Migration, immigration, resettlement and environment/wildlife are key themes that resonate through her creative practice and professional work. She is very committed to acknowledgement of ALL LIFE. Her mother, Lee Plato Smith, educated at California School of Fine Arts, taught her to draw off the edge and never be afraid of making mistakes.
March 6th – 28th, 2026
First Friday reception: March 6th 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment

Multi-Artist Exhibition -- March-April, 2026
2026-03-06 10:00 - 2026-04-25 18:00 | Art@Archer, 431 13th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Join us in welcoming these wonderful Bay Area artists to our first show of 2026. Varied styles. Varied mediums. Enjoy their artistry!
Arie Dallas
Ken Knudsen
Nina Krebs
MacArthur Nelson
Shu
Diane Wang

ATMOSPHERIC – Rachel Major & Scott Idleman
2026-03-05 12:00 - 2026-04-11 17:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
770 West Grand Ave, Oakland, CA 94612
Contact: info@gearboxgallery.com
Homepage
(510) 271-0822
Gallery Hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 12-5 pm and by appointment
March 5 to April 11, 2026
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, March 14, 1-4 pm
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, April 11, 2 pm
Gearbox Gallery is pleased to present Atmospheric, a two-person exhibition featuring new
work by San Francisco–based artists Rachel Major and Scott Idleman. Though visually distinct,
their practices converge around shared concerns of process, perception, and the dynamic
relationship between structure and spontaneity.
Rachel’s paintings are created through a process of dripping paint onto canvas, resulting in
richly layered surfaces that explore texture, color, and the balance between control and
chance. The series is inspired by her daily encounters with the landscape surrounding her
home in San Francisco’s Richmond District—a quiet, often fog-laden neighborhood bordered
by Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and Ocean Beach. Her work reflects the shifting moods of
this coastal environment, particularly the San Francisco Bay, the Marin Headlands, and the
Golden Gate Bridge as they emerge and recede through fog. The recurring acts of covering
and revealing in these paintings echo the rhythms of the landscape itself.
Scott Idleman’s work similarly inhabits a space between intention and intuition. His grid-based
dot series celebrates intersections: science and art, nostalgia and futurity, the organic and the
artificial, isolation and community. Drawing from his family’s heritage of textile-making, Idleman
merges meticulous patterning with imagined skyscapes and aerial perspectives—an enduring
fascination shaped by the view from above. Based in San Francisco’s Mission District, his
practice is informed by the neighborhood’s vibrant energy and colorful mural culture, translating
urban vitality into structured yet atmospheric compositions.
Together, the works in Atmospheric offer a meditation on place, process, and
perception—inviting viewers to consider how environment, memory, and material intersect to
shape visual experience.
All are welcome to join us for Atmospheric events! Please join us for the Artists’ Reception,
Saturday March 14th. Stop in any time between 1 and 4 pm to greet the artists, enjoy the light
refreshments and check out the artwork 1-4 pm. If you’re curious to learn more about the
artists and their work come out for the Artists’ Talk, starting at 2 pm Saturday April 11th as
Rachel and Scott discuss their themes, ideas and processes. Bring your questions!
More About Rachel Major
Originally from Toronto, Canada, Rachel is a graduate of The Ontario College of Art and Design
(OCAD) as well as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) and received an MFA
from Mills College in Oakland. Rachel has been living and working in San Francisco since 1994.
In her work Rachel explores our complex and often fraught relationship with food using a
variety of media including sculpture, painting, and photography. Her work has been exhibited in
Canada, France and the U.S. In September 2016 she was selected as an Emerging Artist at
MarinMOCA in Novato, California. Rachel works with San Francisco Art Education Project,
LEAP as well as SFUSD teaching art to children in San Francisco public schools.
More About Scott Idleman
Idleman received a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in graphic design with minors in
fibers, painting and photography. He implements a visual language of simple mark-making to
convey impressions of moods and dreams as a form of meditation to connect with others and
self.

One Thing Leads to Another -- Gina Borg & Patrick Crotty
2026-02-21 - 2026-03-28 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Manna Gallery presents One Thing Leads to Another, a two-person exhibition featuring Oakland-based painter Gina Borg and San Leandro–based artist and designer Patrick Crotty. Bringing together painting and marquetry, the exhibition highlights two distinct practices shaped by close attention to materials, process, and the evolving language of making.
Gina Borg explores how color behaves in relationship, using a limited palette of warm and cool shifts layered through repetitive marks to create subtle tonal changes that generate movement, spatial tension, and optical vibration across the surface.
Patrick Crotty works in traditional marquetry, precisely assembling thin wood veneers to “paint” with natural grain, tone, and texture, transforming a centuries-old craft into detailed contemporary imagery.
Together, their work creates a dialogue between gesture and construction, surface and structure, where each decision leads to the next and the process becomes a visible chain of connections.
February 21 – March 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Saturday, February 28, 2-4 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5 pm & First Friday, March 6, 5-8 pm

Body, Quilt, Animal – Pat Guthrie, Jill McLennan, Sara Lisch
2026-02-13 12:00 - 2026-03-21 17:00 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
This group exhibition in The Backroom at Mercury 20 Gallery brings together a human figure, an abstract quilt, and a series of animal forms. The figure is constructed from layered hand-cut paper, the quilt from fabric and dye, and the animals through collage, drawing, and painting. Each piece is arranged through an intuitive search for balance and rhythm, allowing form and pattern to emerge through the process of making rather than through planning or narrative. Across the works as a whole, pattern, repetition, and process play a central role, shaping how the images are built and experienced. Collage, mixed media, and fabric function as constructive tools, with materials layered, pieced, and assembled over time. Rather than describing specific scenes or narratives, the works emphasize accumulation, surface, and structure as the means through which the images take form.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, February 21, 3 – 5 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, March 6, 5 – 9 pm
Images: Left to right, clockwise: Sara Lisch, “Oceanic,” 2026, Layered Paper, 36 x 48 inches; Pat Guthrie,”Rolling Virus,”2026, Textile, 78 x 77 inches; Jill McLennan,”Natures Critters,” 2025, coyote, ink, watercolor, collage on wood panel, 8 x 8 inches, photos courtesy of the artists

Dr. KC Rosenberg: Raised by Wolves
2026-02-13 12:00 - 2026-03-21 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Dr. KC Rosenberg creates her work on the floor of her studio, where raw canvas and paper are walked on, soaked, and marked through movement and touch. Her background in printmaking and textiles informs a material-driven approach that values impressions, repetition, and layered surfaces as records of action. Lines and bands of color function as spaces where stories can unfold. In her newest series, Rosenberg introduces narrative fragments into these abstract forms. Images and words appear like passing thoughts or half-remembered moments—sometimes humorous, sometimes dark—forming a personal visual vocabulary. Using collage, she brings together abstraction, text, and imagery to create poetic connections rather than fixed meanings. The work invites viewers to slow down, look closely, and make their own associations. At its core, Rosenberg’s practice explores how memory, language, and the body intersect, transforming process itself into a form of storytelling.
Bio:
Born in Marin County, California, Dr. KC Rosenberg was raised in a bohemian household shaped by intellectual rigor and domestic improvisation; while her mother worked and studied law, Rosenberg and her siblings were cared for by a shifting network of caretakers, an environment whose chaos fostered early strategies of invention through imagined companions, substitute characters, and close observation of animal behavior. In 2021, medical complications during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a significant shift in her practice toward abstraction, reducing narrative certainty and temporarily setting aside personal history, which later returned as material rather than subject; these formative experiences now register in her work as form and emotional traces rather than representation. Rosenberg has exhibited with Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and her work is held in the collections of the California Arts Council and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. She holds an Ed.D. and conducts social research on collective mentorship systems among artists.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, February 21, 3 – 5 pm, artist talks at 4:00 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, March 6, 5 – 9 pm
Image: KC Rosenberg, “Men Named Merle,” 2025 from Raised By Wolves series, 2026, Acrylic paint and yarn on wood panel, 8″ x 8″, photo courtesy of the artist

Christine Meuris: Wellspring
2026-02-13 12:00 - 2026-03-21 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Using silk thread and simple motifs, Christine Meuris has created a series of semi-transparent weavings that reflect feelings of harmony, joy, flow, and wholeness.
In 2023, Meuris began studying weaving as a way to deepen and ground her creative practice. Working with weaving teacher Travis Meinolf, at the Richmond Art Center and at his eponymous weaving school in Marin County, Meuris was influenced by Meinolf’s judgment-free and open minded approach to weaving, a practice that can otherwise become exacting.
After a period of experimentation, Meuris settled on a simple weaving technique — using plain weave with supplemental weft to construct imagery. In her weavings, Meuris returns to the font of her creativity, the work that steadies her in calm or tumultuous times, repeating simple steps to build something greater than the sum of its parts.
Bio:
Mercury 20 member Christine Meuris lives and works in Berkeley, CA. She has shown her work in solo and group shows locally, notably at the Berkeley Art Center, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and Mercury 20 Gallery, and in group shows around the U.S. She was a resident artist at Kala Institute in 2023 and was the inaugural Digital Artist in Residence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles (SJMQT) in 2020. Her work has appeared in the Surface Design Journal, Fiber Art Now, and the Textile Society of America News, and is included in the collections of the City of Berkeley, SJMQT, Kaiser Permanente, and Four Seasons Residences SF, as well as several private collections.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, February 21, 3 – 5 pm, artist talks at 4:00 pm
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, March 6, 5 – 9 pm
Weaving Demonstrations: Saturdays, February 14, March 7, 14, 21 @ 1:30
Image: Christine Meuris, “Return, Poppy, Rain,” 2025, silk, dimensions variable, photo credit: Mark Serr

California Unseen, Along the Hills of the Central Valley
2026-02-06 - 2026-03-22 | Oakland Photo Workshop, 312 8th St, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
The California Central Valley is more than the giant open fields we cross when driving down from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Interstate 5. It is a place of beauty and complexity, a land of contrast undergoing rapid changes: a housing frenzy, an alternance of droughts and floods, vibrant yet struggling migrant communities, immense fields producing half of the fruits and vegetables of the US, all surrounded by stunning natural beauty. This place has always fascinated artists (from Dorothea Lange to Jack Kerouac, Robert Dawson, and Stephen Johnson) and keeps doing so today. By featuring certain works done in the 1930s by Dorothea Lange and putting them into perspective with today’s works, this show will be an invitation to explore the Central Valley over a century.
This East Bay Photo Collective exhibition, curated by Claire Maen, brings together 6 photographers from the East Bay, Fresno, and Los Angeles (Ryan McIntosh, Stephen Johnson, Noah Gottesman, Michael Behlen, Steve Molnar, and Claire Maen) who explore this land of extremes on film: Polaroid, small, medium and large format. In addition, William Peterson, from Sacramento, will show his 3D ceramics with aerial views of the agricultural landscape. The show will be visible from February to March 2026 at the EBPCO Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Sin Contar Cincuenta: Miguel Arzabe Solo Show
2026-01-17 13:00 - 2026-03-21 17:00 | Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Johansson Projects is pleased to announce Sin Contar Cincuenta, the third solo exhibition by Oakland-based artist Miguel Arzabe with the gallery. Arriving at a moment of heightened social and cultural reckoning, the exhibition features a dynamic body of new weavings that reflect not only a rich “pluriverse” of influences–interpolated ways of being and expression that span the artist’s personal life, Bolivian heritage, and art historical precedent–but also the urgent need to honor and defend cultural plurality in today’s world.
Sin Contar Cincuenta runs from January 17 – March 21, 2026 with an opening reception and artist talk on January 17, from 3-5pm.
For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or info@johanssonprojects.com
