Oakland Style
Fourth Wall Gallery, Manna Gallery, Mercury 20 Gallery, Slate Contemporary Gallery, Uptown Fine Art
25th St. between Broadway and Telegraph Avenue
Oakland
Oct. 12, 2024
A habitué of thrift shops, flea markets, and similar bazaars near and far, artist Melanie Walas is attracted to stuffed animals and toys she finds at the discount emporia she visits. “I feel bad because they’re abandoned,” she said of the items she collects. “They were once loved by someone.”
A few years ago Walas imagined incorporating the stuffed playthings into clothing. She began integrating the discarded playthings — often deconstructing their parts — by sewing them onto garments that seemed to match the clothes’ character. The result are wonderfully whimsical wearables that are eye-catchingly quirky and hilariously fun. The jacket she wore at Mercury 20 Gallery as part of Oakland Style, “A Celebration of Art, Fashion, Music, Cuisine & Culture,” pictured above, featured plush toy Teletubbies in red, green, and yellow. Her kind of thinking turns the corner from merely humorous and enters the realm of outright awesome.
One of my favorite Walas creations was a black bolero jacket with an image of a pink frosted donut on the back, the front adorned with a smaller pink donut on the left chest, and a sleeve sewn with long colorful beads to resemble candy sprinkles.
Chrisbaby at his sewing machine.
Walas’s weren’t the only fashion designs on offer, though. The Uptown Arts and Garage District Art Walk, along with Oakland Art Murmur, as part of Oakland Style Week, a now-annual series of events, hosted a four-hour art walk on Saturday. Participants visited Slate Contemporary, Uptown Fine Art, Fourth Wall, Mercury 20, and Werkshack galleries, where other textile artists and fashion designers displayed their prêt-à-porter creations alongside the galleries’ current exhibitions.
At Slate Contemporary Gallery, a designer who goes by the moniker Chrisbaby was busy at a sewing machine stitching his work, crafted mostly from denim. He said he likes to upcycle: “This is an easy way to keep your clothes alive and experience a one-of-a-kind, unique situation and wear it with pride; Oakland pride.”
Backdrop to the fashions on display was Slate’s current exhibition, “Layers,” featuring new paintings by Angela Johal, Maya Kabat, Eric Bohr, and Mikey Kelly. Johal’s geometric acrylic on canvas paintings were particularly beautiful, their deep, composed color fields hypnotic.
Another designer, Bruno Asaad, an Algerian-French-American artist, worked on and displayed his wares at Uptown Fine Art. He also employs denim, with other materials, for art objects and items like patches, wallets, and bags, as well as clothing.
There I also ran into fiber artist Meghan Shimek, whom I’d met at The Loom during East Bay Open Studios in June. Her work is being shown at Uptown along with sculptural pieces by Ben Trautmanthrough November 16th as part of a show called “Forged & Woven: Textures in Contrast.”
At Manna Gallery we were serenaded by Baseline, a cello duo with Gael Alcock and Carla Kaufman, who met as cellists at the Berkeley Symphony. They played several jazz standards, like “Lullaby of Birdland,” while I viewed Malone’s and Rosenberg’s work.
Malone, who paints on multiple materials — linen canvas, copper, aluminum, and DuraLar (a transparent plastic) told me that the collection on view — “Bodies of Water, Bodies of Light” — has to do with group identity and older women as a subject. The series featured mostly figures swimming. The best, to my mind, was “Laughter Came in Waves” for its use of reds, blacks, and ochre, with figures obscured, allowing the painting itself to prevail.
There was so much to see, and try on.
I didn’t purchase any of the garments I perused, mainly because I didn’t think I could pull any of them off in public, but I’m still thinking about that donut jacket even though I definitely cannot wear a tiny lady’s bolero. Maybe if I spot an unloved stuffed toy that strikes my fancy I’ll commission Walas to create a wearable piece of art suited to my more staid fashion sensibility. Then again, that denim jacket with the pizza face on the back just might be doable…
