Description
Instead of glamorous hotspots, famous faces and iconic structures, Oakland-based photographer Katherine Westerhout prefers just the opposite. Rather than the latest and greatest venues du jour and the throngs that flock to them, Westerhout has built a career on creating large-scale images which capture the empty places long since forgotten by the general public -- including abandoned hospitals, churches, and theaters.
"I've been photographing in abandoned buildings for about 12 years now, and what I am so drawn to is the way the light enters these buildings and the way it carries color, from the outside, depending on the time of day," Westerhout explains to Spark during a photo shoot at the train depot at 16th and Wood streets in West Oakland.
Crafted from recycled materials, Ma Li’s dream-like sculptures celebrate individual freedom, imagination and play. In Ma Li’s hands, clear plastic bottles transform into suspended fields of jellyfish-like sculptures, and colored foam and clothes hangers resemble migrating flocks of birds. With...
Published 06/22/15
Painter, graphic designer, illustrator, sculptor and stereo photographer Rene Garcia Jr. has been re-imagining popular art in many different ways, but it's his large format sculptural glitter paintings that have gotten the most attention recently. Reproducing such things as retro ads and...
Published 07/23/14
Passion for the art of dance is perhaps the defining quality of Oakland's Ronn Guidi, director of the Oakland Ballet Academy and founder of the famous Oakland Ballet. An ever-energetic mainstay of the East Bay dance scene, Guidi created the Oakland Ballet in 1965 and led the small regional...
Published 07/23/14