Crossing Oakland

I took these pictures in fading light through the thick Plexiglas window of a BART train as it moved at sunset through Oakland toward the trans-Bay tunnel and San Francisco. Those trendy plastic cameras (like the Diana) that shoot film are inclined to produce pictures that look a lot like these. I infer that I am probably successfully turning my good ground glass lens into a Diana-style plastic lens by shooting through this industrial-strength BART plastic window.

BART

Early Saturday morning I met Mabel Watson Payne and her parents downtown in San Francisco at Powell Street BART station and together we rode the train through the tube that runs along the bottom of San Francisco Bay and then out into the winter sunshine in Oakland.






These pictures became black and white because the fluorescent lighting on BART distorted the original colors past hope of correction. We were on our way to do several things, most important of them (by far) to celebrate the birthday of my daughter.

Orange Achievement

Yesterday morning I came across these tall flaming cannas growing up through a chain-link fence next to a gas station in downtown Oakland. The nights are starting to verge toward frost. Many maple trees along the Oakland streets had intense red and yellow leaves. And these canna plants are putting their last reserves of of the season into one desperate last floral demonstration.

Then only a couple of blocks away I stumbled on the scene below, a long narrow creekside park, skillfully planted and maintained in pristine condition. I think nobody is imagining this scene when they think of downtown Oakland.



But my next discovery (below) was more in the nature of a sad spectacle. At first I could not even figure out what possible purpose these rows of concrete columns might have been intended to fulfill.






The mystery resolved itself when I noticed notches at the tops of some of the columns, and realized this was the ruin of a pergola that once included wooden beams and wooden lattice across the top where vines grew (almost certainly wisteria). I got the feeling it was built sometime in the 1940s.

This lion first came to my notice about a year and half ago when I photographed it here. And it did seem more worn yesterday when I took the picture above, but also it seemed less pathetic – more like an accidental piece of disturbing-yet-elegant postmodern (or maybe post-fascist) sculpture.

Sofa with Flowers

More from the Oakland Museum --

Sofa with Flowers by Jack Mendenhall

Local design galleries

Hanging wire-mesh sculpture by Ruth Asawa

Prone outdoor ceramic sculptures by Stephen de Staebler

Custom-built Day of the Dead altars

Viva La Vida
Virgo Paraiso

En Honor a Nuestros Ancestros
Students of Life Academy of Health and Bioscience

Remembering Mrs. Mishork
Students of St. Jerome School

Figurative

Bay Area Figurative painting flourished from about 1950 to 1965, a movement that was both influenced by the dominant Abstract Expressionism of the time and consciously revolting against its influence. The Oakland Museum has one of the finest public collections of this local school of painting, including works in this gallery by Joan Brown, David Park, Nathan Oliveira and Manuel Neri.







When I first arrived in Berkeley in the early 1970s I learned about this movement from a big show at the University Art Museum, and have harbored a proprietary fondness for it ever since.

Reflections

At the Oakland Museum this afternoon I became enamored of this mirrored cube. I should have stayed longer and explored more of its potentialities except that other galleries also beckoned and I could not expect my companion to dawdle forever.