Lake Merritt, looking towards the Northeast James and I completed the lenticular murals yesterday by clear-coating them with a protective, anti-graffiti glaze. Touching every square inch of the surface of the images reminded me how much the tiles have been handled over the past eight months, how much care has gone into realizing a hand […]
Category Archives: oakland fusion
Oakland Installation Dispatch
Ene, James and I worked long days in the heat and completed the Oakland Fusion murals by the end of Saturday, exhausted and relieved. Our biggest reward was when word spread among the train conductors to check out our project, and they would make a point of leaving the train to walk by the murals […]
Oakland Installation Dispatch
Oakland’s main tidal outwash to the Bay I’ve had less time to explore lower Oakland on bike as we bear down on the installation of Oakland Fusion, but have made a few early morning tours of the Embarcadero in search of waterways connecting Lake Merritt and the Bay. I find that a bicycle is the […]
Oakland Installation Dispatch
So far this week we’ve completed the murals facing one direction and half of the first image facing the opposite direction. Ene, James and I have established a productive rhythm that should allow us to complete the project by early next week. We’ve learned to use the shadows and the position of the sun to […]
Oakland Installation Dispatch
Ene and James lay tiles for the Kente pattern I’m recouping from a second challenging week installing our Oakland Fusion project. By the end of the week we had laid up the first quarter of two murals, and got over the hurdle of working off the ground, using a new adhesive with a shorter pot […]
Oakland Installation Dispatch
This is to introduce James Crosby, a very talented sculpture student and former Skateboard Pro, who we’ve hired to help with the installation. Thanks to James’ incredible focus and good humor, we’ve been able to stay pretty much on schedule even though we lost a day and a half due to rain. By the end […]
Oakland Installation Dispatch
I’m falling in love with Oakland all over again. Ene and I moved here from the East Coast in 1991 after a formative time living in West Africa, followed by meandering road trips cross-country, capped off with a season of commercial fishing on a salmon seiner in Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago. We spent our ‘crew share’ […]