100 Years of Creative Visions
2025-09-24 11:00 - 2026-04-26 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA, 94613, United States
In celebration of the Mills College Art Museum’s centennial, 100 Years of Creative Visions features an intergenerational and cross-cultural selection of major works from the permanent collection that emphasizes creative communities and the importance of artist friendships. Thematic sections throughout the exhibition highlight the strengths of the collection, such as, ceramics, Modernist Photography, California Impressionism, Mexican Modernism, Printmaking from Dürer to the Expressionists, Asian and Asian American art, and more.

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

Howard Harawitz: Protest Photographer of the 60's
2026-03-04 12:00 - 2026-03-29 17:00 | The Grand Gallery, 560 2nd Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Start date: March 4, 2026
End date: March 29, 2026
You’re invited to the Grand Gallery’s Artist reception for protest
photographer Howard Harawitz March 7 from 1-5pm.
With his Leica camera in his hands, Howard Harawitz
documented protests during the Free Speech
Movement in Berkeley from 1964-5. The photographs in
this exhibit reveal the conditions in the Bay Area that
birthed many of the protests of this time. From fair housing
to farm workers’ rights with the Free Speech Movement at
the core, Harawitz shines a light on present-day parallels
as a reminder to us all:
People have the power.

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.

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

"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

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

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.

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

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

Topographies: Mixed Media Monotypes by Deborah Sibony
2026-03-21 13:00 - 2026-03-28 15:00 | Dictée Art & Exhibitions, 2117 11th Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94606, United States
Topographies is a solo exhibition by artist Deborah Sibony, currently on view at Dictée Gallery. The exhibition officially celebrates its Opening Reception this Saturday, March 21st, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, followed by an Artist Presentation on Saturday, March 28th, from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM.
The collection features mixed media monotypes that explore the landscape as both physical terrain and intangible ground. Sibony’s work focuses on the intersection of architecture and nature—specifically abandoned industrial structures caught between deconstruction and renewal. Using litho transfers, ink, and painting, the artist reveals a delicate tension between the strength of construction and the fragility of memory.

Gallery Hours:

Mon – Thurs: Closed
Friday: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Saturday: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Sunday: 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Open First Friday: Built Different - Gina Gaiser
2026-04-03 17:00 - 20:00 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Built Different is 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

“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

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.

Opening Reception: Visible Labor: The East Bay at Work
2026-04-03 18:00 - 21:00 | Oakland Photo Workshop, 312 8th St, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Join us for an opening reception for Visible Labor: The East Bay at Work curated by Liam O’Donoghue. We will have refreshments and music from Chungtech from 6-9PM.
This open call 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 exhibition features 23 artists in the gallery and online. We look forward to seeing you!

Jason Bellarco and Bruce Barlow: Artist Reception – Saturday, April 4th 5-8pm
2026-04-04 17:00 - 20:00 | The Grand Gallery, 560 2nd Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
The Grand Gallery is proud to present the works of Jason Bellarco and Bruce Barlow.
Artist Reception – Saturday, April 4th 5-8pm
560 2nd St Oakland
Show runs April 1-28th
Bruce Barlow is an Oakland native actor, horror makeup artist and prop maker known for his for his work in The Phantom (1996)
Jason is an oil painter whose process is deeply rooted in the same discipline used by the old masters of Raphael, Caravaggio, and Michelangelo.

Rubeena Ratcliffe: Return to Form
2026-04-11 11:00 - 2026-05-30 17:00 | Slate Contemporary Gallery, 5510 College Ave, Oakland, 94618, United States
Visit the gallery to see new work by Canadian painter Rubeena Ratcliffe.

Artist's Talk - Kristie Hansen: Alternation
2026-04-11 13:00 - 13:30 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Kristie Hansen Artist’s Talk: Saturday, April 11th starting at 1 pm.
Mark your calendar and please join us for the Artist’s Talk, Saturday, April 11th. Starting at 1 pm, San Francisco-based conceptual artist, Kristie Hansen will discuss the evolution of her art practice and her approach to developing her work.
Now on view in the Small Space at Transmission, Alternation includes 20 pieces from Kristie Hansen’s recent Parts of a Whole series in which she sourced discarded garments and accessories to construct multiple sculptural works that retain traces of their earlier life while becoming something satisfyingly new, as if they were always meant to attain these new 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. See the work at Transmission Gallery through April 18th, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 12-5 pm.

Women in Focus - by Denise Deleray
2026-04-11 13:00 - 16:00 | Studios 11, 560 2nd St Oakland, California, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Art showing at the Studios11 Gallery, 560 Second Street in Oakland, near beautiful Jack London Square.
Portraits of women from multiple backgrounds on view.
Saturday April 11, 2026 Opening Reception 1-4pm

Artists’ Talk ATMOSPHERIC – Rachel Major & Scott Idleman
2026-04-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Rachel Major and Scott Idleman discuss their two person exhibition, ATMOSPHERIC on Saturday, April 11th at 2pm. Though visually distinct, Major’s and Idleman’s practices converge around shared concerns of process, perception, and the dynamic relationship between structure and spontaneity. Join us in the dialogue.

Artist Reception: Gina Gaiser - Built Different
2026-04-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Join us for the reception of Built Different, a series of black-and-white urban studies that examines the constructed world through a distinctly attuned lens. In these photographs, Gina Gaiser documents brick facades, graffiti, industrial textures, and architectural grids—evidence of how humans have reshaped and engineered their environment. Working in monochrome, she strips away distraction to foreground repetition, geometry, and contrast. Individual images are brought together to form converging patterns, reflecting a way of seeing that gravitates toward structure and system. What may appear chaotic or incidental resolves into rhythm and order. In Built Different, the title operates on multiple levels: the city is built, the environment is built, and the mind observing it is built differently. The work suggests that difference in perception is not a flaw but a precision, and an ability to recognize pattern, coherence, and design embedded within the grit of the everyday.
Built Different
New Work by Gina Gaiser
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

Opening Reception – Andrea Guskin: Signals Beneath The Surface
2026-04-11 15:00 - 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, Berkeley Art 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” (Detail), Acrylic paint on Cinefoil, 2026, photo courtesy of the artist

Opening Reception – Alec Marin: All That You Change/Changes You
2026-04-11 15:00 - 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.
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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, “Reseeding the Garden,” Oil on Canvas, 36″x 48″, 2025, photo courtesy of the artist

Opening Reception – Group Show: Material Differences
2026-04-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Leigh Barbier, Jessika Cadkin, Laura Malone, Christine Meuris
﻿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)
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, April 3, May 1, 5 – 9 pm
Image: Left to right, Leigh Barbier, Under the Influence (WIP), Ceramics, 5″x5″x3″, 2026; Laura Malone, Fire Season, Oil on Linen, 40″x40″, 2026; Christine Meuris, Balance, Woven Cotton, 2 panels at 48″x19″ each, 2024; all photos courtesy of the artists
