Spotted in: Downtown Oakland
Occupation: Community Builder, Gallery Owner
What are you up to today?
I'm meeting one of the gallerists that works at the Naming Gallery. We're going to have a quick meeting before we start our day on 15th Street.
What's your occupation?
I own a gallery and a retail space on 15th Street. My occupation is sort of a funny question, it's a little bit more complicated. I'm working on creating a neighborhood. We've been doing a lot of work on 15th to sort of create, using what tools we have as artists and as curators, to bring music, videography, art and fashion to a neighborhood that been blighted and where people are doing crack. I'm in my 30s, this is our generation—what do we want to see? And we're having fun while we're doing it.
How did you decide to make the leap into doing what you're doing?
You know, the recession happened. I was an environmental biologist working in the Bay Area delta—aquifers, water resource management, and I just started to feel a different shift in how I was developing. When I came to Oakland it was just so vibrant—the underground scene, the music scene, the art culture here is amazing if you get a chance to experience it. I sort of let that nurture me and opened up my own space in 2008 called Upstream Art Lit and it was on MLK. We were just doing meetups where we were talking about different books we were reading, different movements that were going on politically with Occupy Oakland, and also have just having really fun music performances—The John Brothers, Greg Ashley, Miguel. All local, amazing people playing. I don't know if you've had a chance to hear Miguel play but he usually gets voted by the East Bay Express for the best DJ. He also plays acoustic music and we wish he would play more these days!
So you've opened up a couple of different spaces!
Yeah, so that place closed and I found this space. It was more connected to downtown. I feel like one thing we've been striving to do is make downtown accessible to other neighborhoods. I feel like East Oakland is sometimes detached from West Oakland, and we brought the Oakland Mind to do their cyphers. They're an East Oakland crew—they do impromptu hip hop and rap—over beats. So kind of bridging the gaps and bringing people together. We've also been throwing shows with local artists. We've got a lot of street artists. I just sold a $1000 painting that IROT did. He's a graffiti artist. His work was featured in the gallery and also in the East Bay Express two weeks ago. Oakland Magazine wrote about us "From Blight to Bright: the most exciting block in Oakland."
How do you usually get the word out?
You know, I like the fact that it's not a blown-out First Friday thing. Our crew actually helped start First Fridays through KNOW Productions—founded by Josef Lucas—and Saigon Market. We watched it blow out into this thing. It was cool, it just wasn't originally what we cultivated it as, which was more of a family environment, more of a really cool underground adult feel with great music. Anyway, we're recreating that more. We had Anticon playing in the gallery on Second Saturday, and all of the other galleries on the street had opened up and maybe 200-300 people came out—it was really fun.
You said you're also involved in fashion as well?
Yeah, so six months to one year after I opened Naming Gallery with co-curator Josef Lucas, I opened a retail shop called Tilde. I wanted to have fashion that was colorful. I feel like we've sort of entered this midcentury modern minimalist thing that created a lot of gray hues and a lot of dull colors, but the 70s, 80s, and 90s were eras of color and shape in fashion. I've actually worked in textiles for a long time as a hobby. I come from New England—everything is handmade, so that was interesting to me—to do an 80s and 90s kind of pop-y concept shop. I have two friends, Gene and Michael, and they run a label called WRN FRSH (pronounced Worn Fresh). All the vowels are taken out of their label so it links in with my love for literary-themed motifs. It's just worn fresh, it's upcycled, it's really a great line. It's tight—you gotta come check it out.
And upstairs at Tilde there's a free book library. I have two non-profits that I host: Art Beat Foundation and Libros Libres. So you can come, get a free book, they're great books—they're usually advance copies of screened literature for libraries or for different publishing houses. Sarah Carlberg and Nnekay are the two librarians out to make sure that their children have a bookstore on every corner. We curate exhibits at Tilde as well, we're doing a solidarity piece with I AM CHARLES in solidarity with the French protests going on for freedom of speech. It's a really powerful art show curated by my friend Wilson Linker with the artist Meck9 and that's running for the next month. We have two storefronts—we got in there early. I've been there since 2012 and the landlord has trusted me with my aesthetic and what I'm creating. We were just approved to have a parklet on our block, so that'll be something coming in 2015.
Sarah Sexton, who founded Oaktown Indy Mayhem, occupies one of the loft offices at Naming Gallery. She's having an "office hour" coming up where she'll share, grassroots-style, about what it takes to make connections and make bookings with venues in The Bay and that'll be cool to check out.
What's currently showing at your gallery?
There's an exhibit called The Future is Calling with a street artist named Nina. In all of her mural pieces no one's eyes are visible because they're all looking at their phones. It's a really great show.
I also wanted to ask you about your outfit. I can tell you have a love for color!
This jacket doesn't go with this, but this is WRN FRSH! I love the way that they look!
How about the rest of what you're wearing? Looks like you love textures and patterns.
This is just kind of my look. I don't know where all of this stuff came from. Yeah I love textures and patterns. I mix it up. I like baggy, I like drapes. Tilde does a boyfriend look—a great button-up LA cholo lesbian vibe. It's fun because the sexuality is more limitless when you're not hugging the form so much. When you're just able to see that you're this entity that's inside your clothing. So I'm into drapes, and I take it to the next level.
I'll just take a few photos of you on the street to show what you're wearing.
Oh can we take my photo inside my friend's store Owl N Wood? It's just a couple doors down. We used to have a pop-up shop together.
You can check out Tilde's Instagram @tildeoakland.
