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Public Art Policy

The Ascension of the “AscenDance” Mural

On October 16 2021, “AscenDance,” a large-scale mural produced by the Community Rejuvenation Project, in partnership with The Greenlining Institute, finally held its dedication ceremony. The eight-story mural was completed in 2020, but the official celebration was postponed twice due to the pandemic. Although public safety dictated that the event not be the massive block party originally planned, the scaled-down celebration was attended by approximately 75 people — including several elected officials, Oakland Cultural Affairs Department staff, Greenlining staff, and…

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Meet the Muralist: Priya Handa

Guest artist Priya Handa comes highly recommended. A member of the Precita Eyes families, she comes to the “AscenDance” mural as a veteran of community mural projects throughout California and internationally. Watching her work on this mural is a study in quiet — yet intense — focus and concentration.  Although she professes to be more comfortable with brushes than with words, she has an amazing story (or three) to tell about her experiences painting in other countries, how she communicates…

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AscenDance: Coming Into View

In the last couple of weeks, the AscenDance mural has turned a corner. What once was a bare and unremarkable wall now pulses with color, vibrancy, and life. Gridlines have become outlines; outlines have metamorphosed into distinct figures, Details and backgrounds have emerged. The entire wall has taken on form, shape, and substance. Its new character is being slowly revealed, day by day, brush stroke by brush stroke. There is no going back — only forward.

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Reevaluating the State of the Arts in Oakland

Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Department (CAD) is severely underfunded and understaffed. According to a memo sent by CAD to the Funding Advisory Committee last November 26, current staffing levels are just one full-time employee and one temporary service contract employee. $1.2 million in grants were awarded in the last fiscal year, a number which has not seen a significant increase since before the recession. (By way of comparison, the San Francisco Art Commission handed out $1.6 million in grants in 2014-2015…

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Oakland’s Public Art Ordinance Upheld

  If you’ve been in and around downtown Oakland recently, you may have noticed the area has become proliferate with murals — even though one of Oakland’s most iconic downtown works of public art, CRP’s “The Universal Language,” has been obscured by a new high-rise ).  For most people, this is a good thing: visible art makes downtown seem friendlier and more vibrant, while offering an array of (mostly) local artists, in a dizzying blend of various styles and techniques. …

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The Commodification of Public Art (Op/Ed)

Recently, Pacific Standard magazine  wrote an article about public art in Oakland. Specifically, the story addressed mural brokers, middlemen who connect fat cat developers with artistic talent – for a fee.  Mural brokers, the article explains, handle logistics such as price negotiations, choosing artists, prepping walls for painting, and handling insurance coverage – “everything necessary to make the mural happen except paint it.” The article correctly points out the cultural cachet of murals, and their historical connection to illegal street art,…

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Public Art, BART, and Scraper Bikes

What do public art, BART, and Scraper Bikes all have in common? They are all connected in a new mural painted by CRP’s Desi Mundo. The mural, located on BART-owned property at 75th Avenue and International in Oakland, also connects two ongoing regional initiatives: BART’s Arts Master Plan  and the East Bay Greenway. The mural consists of two sections on either side of the street. Mundo says the design was the result of a community-driven process which included several public…

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Legacies of Respect: Culture, Politics, Art, and the Community Mural Tradition (Part Two)

Part One of this series traced the history and impact of Chicago’s famous community mural, the Wall of Respect—a timeline which connects the Black Renaissance, the Great Migration of African Americans, the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Arts Movements, protests against the Vietnam war, the contemporary mural tradition, the emergence of modern graffiti and street art, and public art policy. In Part Two, CRP Executive Director Desi Mundo further embellishes the legacy of the Wall of Respect, linking a…

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Legacies of Respect: Culture, Politics, Art, and the Community Mural Tradition (Part One)

Chicago’s community mural movement coincided with the emergence of the modern graffiti movement in Philadelphia and New York—underground subcultures which, like Oakland and Chicago, found their artistic voices in expressing messages born out of inner-city life, strife, resistance, and resilience. It also helped give rise to the notion of community-based art lending a sense of cultural identity and attachment to place, long before the term “creative placemaking” came into vogue in public art circles.

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Abatement Alternatives: Why Oakland Needs A Mural Program (Part Two)

In Part One of this series, the Community Rejuvenation Project’s (CRP) work and murals in general received unexpected praise from an unlikely source – a city abatement worker known as Erase, who publicly stated abatement was a waste of money, and that murals might be a better, more cost-efficient, alternative. The post went on to detail extensively why abatement is a money pit which is problematic on many levels, and propose a solution: shift some of the more than seven-figures…

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