SHOUT OUT // Bestie By Line

So incredibly proud of my sweet, fiery best friend whose article is the cover feature in this week's East Bay Express.  The story outlines very troubling truths about sex-trafficking in Oakland and beyond, and the people who are trying to change the laws to better serve the underage girls who get trapped in the system.  Congrats on a job well done lady- we need people like you shining the light so we all can see. xoxo

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Opening Day // Rebirth of Crown Nine

At 11am this morning I rolled open the door to the new Crown Nine jewelry boutique + art gallery!

I finally feel like my vision has been actualized, the space absolutely feels and looks like me.  I am surrounded by beautiful things made by talented people, in the community I love so dearly.  Many friends and regulars have already popped by today to share in the excitement, it really feels like a dream come true.  And holy jewelry goddess do we have a ton of pretty new inventory by both new and old designers... there really is something here for everyone.

Come by and see for yourself!

OPEN

11-8 Friday November 1st 

12-4 Sat

Closed Sunday November 3rd 

12-6 M-F 

11-4 Sat

Holiday Hours Starting Friday November 29th {Plaid Friday}

11-7 M-F

11-6 S-S

Here are some snapshots of the new space, enjoy!

L O V E + M E T A L

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First Friday Artist Interview // Fingers and Paint

Interview and Photography by Britt Goh. 

Veronica Rojas is a surrealist and multi-medium artist, with her “main squeeze” being painting.  Once, she went to Leon Trotsky’s house and was given a secret tour by his nephew. I asked her if she had to pay, she said it was tip-based.

We met on a Monday afternoon, and I was still rest-weary from my #sundayfunday of drinking mimosas and doing nothing. I asked her,

What does your typical Sunday look like…do you ever deviate from routine?

“My Sunday…”

The possessive is attached to Sunday, like moss to wet sidewalk, or like fog to land in San Francisco. It’s attached, unlike any other day. You never hear anyone say “My Wednesday” like they own it. It’s because Sundays are days to suffer small breakdowns, break your lemon cayenne cleanse, take Tylenol for your “headache,” and sit in a silence or a motion that’s governed by you, not by BART schedules, not by your boss, not by your clients, not by your friends.

Sundays are selfish and muted-reckless. 

She continued, “…I sleep until late. I do some painting. I take a nap. Then, I paint some more and I eat, and maybe we go out somewhere, and then I come back and take another nap and then paint some more, and say, “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. It’s so late.” Then I paint some more.”

You eventually go to work, though. What do you do?

“I work at Creative Growth in Oakland, it’s like Creativity Explored in the city. The same people run both of them. It’s an art center for adults with disabilities. It’s pretty great.” “We have two artists Danny Miller and William Scott that are part of the New York MOMA art collection.”

“It’s amazing.”

What’s your technical background?

“I came to the U.S. to study art. I originally studied photography in New York, but I became extremely allergic to the photo chemicals. I was playing a lot. I would put bleach into the developer to see the grain break.”

“At one point I couldn’t go to the lab any more because I would just shake…so I decided to do ceramics, not knowing that was more poisonous than photography. After NYU, I went to CCA masters program for ceramics. I got sick from that too, that’s when I started to paint, after NYU, after CCA. So, I’m self taught in painting, you could say.”

What piece, that you can identify, started your style?

“I have it right here actually, funny that you ask. I hadn’t explored with amate paper yet, but I explored with this microcosm-cellular-muscle-tissue-symbols-codex-thing. In Mexico there is this tree that only grows in Puebla Estado. The flowers have all these hand shapes coming out of it. This is the first time I drew it. This painting was 2000, actually 1999. It was the only time I drew it, but now I’m going back to it, because I’m actually having hands coming out.”

“This painting just has so much connection with what I’m doing. I wasn’t very good with color back then, it was basically directly from the tube, but the symbols are starting to emerge.”

What’s your process?

“Everything keeps changing and going organically, and I rely a lot on mistakes. I do have the idea beforehand, but some things that work in my head don’t work in reality.”

“I modify…like I don’t plan everything to the tiniest detail, but when I obsess about things, like the tree-hands, I’ll work on it for a long time in sketches, pieces...I even made a little necklace.”

“One art piece takes me to the other. It’s like dominoes.”

“For example, I started reading this book about alchemy, I thought it would be cool to try to make gold.” “They talk about lunar seed, sun seed, celestial water, the virgin earth, and liberating the souls out of the metal. They talk about this heat…not really from fire, not from a fire that people know of.”

In your artist statement on the web, you say that “insects, plants, hands, organs and cells become the main characters.” Why do you choose to personify fragmented form, instead of drawing human form?

“So for example, one of the first paintings I did was after I took a trip to Mexico and the violence I saw was so bad, so horrible, I couldn’t believe everything humans could do to each other. I wanted to do a piece about it, but I didn’t want to be literal. I didn’t want to draw guns, the war, blood, I decided to use plants and hands to show that kind of conflict.”

“Another thing, I hate being literal. The surrealist quality is very important.” “I don’t like people to have the same idea about my art work, I like it to be very open. If I use more symbols than literal imagery, I think it gives people freedom to read it as they want…create a dialogue with the viewer, I don’t want to tell them.”

Do you envision yourself living there again?

“I went back last June and I found it so inspiring. People creating art outside of gallery spaces. It makes me think art is more alive when people start doing that.”

“But I also found that there weren’t many spaces for emerging artists to exist. I thought it would be nice to open an art center for emerging artists. The front would be a gallery and the studios would be in the back. Open studios like Oakland’s First Fridays.” “Yeah…but one of the reasons why I came to the U.S. was because I felt like I wouldn’t be able to separate myself and become a producing artist. I have a big family, I love them, I see them once a year at least, but I felt like I wouldn’t grow if I stayed there.”

Veronica’s Berkeley studio was like one of her paintings.

There was this chair,

kind of like these chairs.

There was this cactus that looked like tiny things built a gate on it.

I felt like I was getting a secret tour of her mind (not run by Trotsky’s nephew).

It wasn’t Sunday. I wasn’t in church. It was only Monday, but I still felt changed.

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Shout Out // Best of the East Bay 2013

I am so honored and thrilled to have my little labor of love recognized as Best Of The East Bay.  Crown Nine started as a strange little experiment, and to have it grow into something that would be noted in this way feels pretty incredible and special.  I love the name of this year's awards, 'The New Authentic', as I think Oakland is really leading a renaissance in a back to basics approach to creating and buying. So thank you East Bay Express, and thank you to all my lovely clients who support what we do, it means the world to me.   I feel so blessed to have so many incredible people championing this dream; thank you for every kind word, every referral, every stop in, purchase, like, share, comment, tweet, and hug!  Thank you! 

MOST COVETABLE GEMS 

One of Popuphood's success stories, Oakland's Crown Nine has flourished into a well-loved jewelry boutique and art gallery, frequently mobbed by First Friday revelers and jewelry addicts alike. Owner Kate Ellen has taken this buzz and launched a new store series, aptly named A Rarity. Every month, Ellen curates a selection of super-limited-edition jewelry — only ten to twenty of each are made — from local artisans, and every piece is available for less than $150. Since the event's inception, works have included a loopy necklace influenced by Oakland's art deco architecture, Egyptian-inspired hoop earrings, a brass fringe bracelet, and Ellen's own Mitsuro bangle, produced using a rare Japanese wax technique. Ellen also delves into the background of each piece on her website, interviewing the designers and bringing photographer Eva Kolenko along to snap behind-the-scenes shots of each studio. This holistic approach to jewelry design and story makes each piece feel like a true treasure, and the entire approach, we admit, feels like a rarity.

L O V E + M E T A L 

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As You Can See, 90% Thorns

Interview and Photography by Britt Goh

James Gayles is primarily a watercolor painter based out of the bay. He says he’s terrible in the morning, but the morning I met him he was great.

James suggested we meet where a large portion of his art was hanging. Not in his studio, but in NextSpace Berkeley, a quirky open floor office, located in the annex of Wells Fargo, built to foster creative ideas and house young startups. The sweat of innovation and the radiating warmth from Macbook pros seemed to heat the place.

The boardroom was in a converted vault, and the decorations looked like molecular yarn pieces bought off Etsy. Part of me felt charmed, part of me felt like I just walked into an episode of Portlandia, interesting all around.

What did you do today?

“Woke up had some Cherrios with plums cut up in it. Got ready to go. I’m a night owl…I’m terrible in the morning, it takes me a while to get started up.”

Tell me a little about your technical history?

“Well, when I was young, I taught myself. I have been painting all my life, as far back as I can remember, predating kindergarten. I was encouraged by my mother, I watched Saturday morning drawing/painting programs like Jon Gnagy.

My mother bought me a lot of paint by numbers sets, but my strongest training was this really thick bible. The book was illustrated by Renaissance masters like Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael, those guys…In early school, while other kids would hang out, I would come home, close my door, and copy those drawings.

“I picked up anatomy, light and dark [from that bible].”

Are you exclusively interested in portraiture?

“My love is for the human element in it, I’m interested in what lies beneath, that’s why I like to concentrate on the eyes.”

Would you consider your art pop art?

“I wouldn’t call it pop art. A lot of pop art to me is devoid of feeling. It’s more about the popularity of the item being done. The technique isn’t as important as the figure or subject in pop art…like that Campbell’s soup can.”

Do you see the work you produce as political in any way?

“If I get a strong feeling about something, I might do an art piece. I have a piece called How to Make a Slave, it’s based on Willie Lynch; he’s from a writing by Frederick Douglass.”

“He was supposed to be an expert on slavery, how to make slaves and keep them slaves. Southern plantation owners hired him as a consultant. His proposal was…when slaves come off the ship, get the biggest, strongest male slave and kill him in front of everyone, women and children…then you take the next strongest male slave and you beat him within an inch of his life…in doing that you get them to witness that their males cannot protect them, they have to fend for themselves. They broke down the whole family system.”

“Even today, black women are so strong because they have to be. Often they take care of the kids, get jobs, and support everyone. Males frequently take off, get drunk, use drugs. I relate to it. It made me angry, so I did a piece.”

“In it, I had an old slave, central piece of the picture. Worn face, bloodied hands. All around it I had different icons dealing with slavery and civil rights: the Western societial concept of beauty, the African concept of beauty, the KKK, blackface, etc.”

“It’s rare for me to do a political piece like that.”

Pause, 

and as I scrolled down my word doc to the next question and adjusted the input sensitivity of my field recorder, James asked, Can I tell you a little bit about my background? 

For that brief moment, I wasn’t the one asking questions. I answered with an emphatic, yes.

“So, as you can see I’m a black male. I am 65. I was a kid in the 1950’s, before the civil rights act, before the black panthers, black power, black nationalism, black is beautiful, before all that. I attended an all white school. I was at a public school before, but I was always getting into trouble. All the people that I went to public school with ended up in jail or got murdered, so my parents took me out of there and put me into catholic school...an all white, Italian catholic school."

“This was in the second grade.”

“My first day, a big fat Italian kid came up to me and said, “I know you think you’re tough because you’re black, but I’m the toughest kid in school.” And then he jumped on me and we got into a fight…that same kid, later on, became a professor at a college back east and he invited me to give a lecture to his class. It was a funny situation.”

“I grew up with an identity crisis and that’s reflected in some of my work. I have a work called, “Transplanted Man,” which is…I don’t know how to categorize it. I took a departure from my usual watercolor, and took prints from previous paintings of faces and cut them up and put them back together to combine one face. It’s collage and acrylic paint.”

Pause again. 

I wanted to react to his story, his history. There weren’t any prewritten questions that I had prepped for this moment, so I started telling a story of my own. “When I was growing up,” I said, “we would play this game…it was called Rose and Thorn, rose being something saturated, dense, compact with beauty, and a thorn being the worst of it...

What were your rose and thorn of catholic school?

“The rose…I was isolated, okay, so the rose was that I learned how to focus on my art work and depend on that. As far as the thorn, it was 90% thorns. You constantly feel like you’re inferior, people commented on your features, your hair, I really didn’t get reinforcement at home, like some African Americans did. I took solace in the fact that there was one thing I could do better, draw and paint.”

“When it was time to graduate elementary school, I had a choice to go to an arts high school or to go to Essex catholic school. I chose Essex catholic, went there four years, excelled in football, I made all state, state champions, etc. My football coach, Greg Rei, was my mentor, he bought my first painting.”

“He got me scholarship to Colombia University for football, but he also got me a scholarship to Pratt Institute. He encouraged me to go to art school. So, I left north New Jersey for good and became a New Yorker. Audrey Flack was one of my teachers. Robert Mapplethorpe was one of my classmates, Patti Smith [too]. It was a good environment.”

Your statement on your site is under construction, if you had to make a statement that would define you and your art at this exact moment, what would that be?

“My site is seven years old, I haven’t updated because I don’t know how. The statement would be…I like taking things that are obscure and bringing them out into the open, the public. I’m interested in music and history. Cultures, how things comes together, make what we have today, what elements were involved in it.”

Have you ever had a sublime epiphany?

“In terms of style…after [Pratt] I departed from fine arts a little bit. My friends and I got together and we tried to start a graphic design business. We were all artists and no salesmen, so that fell through quickly.”

“I started doing layout stuff. I got into music more. My painting fell to the side. I wasn’t creating that much. I had no direction. I did a lot of freelance. But, one day, I was playing around, and I did a self portrait…the face, the organic shapes inside the face, watercolor. I said “wow, that’s cool.”

“The style you see today started with that self-portrait.”

“I landed a job in television. An old girlfriend I used to go to Pratt with was working at WPIX in New York, a local news station, she was going to Europe and leaving her job, so she said her job was open. I interviewed for it, got it, worked for about a year and a half, and the art director for NBC called me and said she’d be noticing my work on TV.”

“I worked my way up to assistant graphic news director for NBC and we won an Emmy for news graphics, a lot of it was my style, which was kind of revolutionary for the time.”

It was strange for me to talk to James about Black history and liberation movements, Zap Mama, his own mother's Jazz record collection, how he would sit in his father's easychair and listen to Duke Ellington, how he rubbed elbows and attended critiques with "Rob" Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith...in such a new space. 

NextSpace is an amazing praire for small business minds to roam, but something about the astroturf and the quiet murmur of social media pitches created a harsh contrast with the old days that I wanted to sink into.

But maybe that friction was good.

Maybe, like James, I should be more interested in how things come together, seeing the current formation and being present for the slow reverse engineering of it. Perhaps I shouldn't just sink into the old days, because in that lies a danger of fiction-mentality and marginalizing plight and suffering. Because history is not a story that remains stagnant and kept, collecting dust and moth holes. History is alive and influential and every day.

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OAKLAND DISH // Cosecha

COSECHA is hands down one of my favorite places to eat in Oakland.  I eat here usually 2-4 times a week, no joke. They are right down the street from Crown Nine and pretty much rule my world.  They are located in the open air of Swan's Market on the corner of 9th and Washington, sharing the floor with Sincere Seafood, Taylor's Sausage, and Periscope Cellars.  Why do I love this place so much?

1 // Best chicken tacos ever.
2 // Best pozole verde ever.
3 // One of my favorite salads, a mixture of chopped buttery lettuce with jicama, firm sweet mango slices, roasted pepitas, and a kumquat dressing that will have you lingering over your last bite
4//  El Yucateco Habanero Verde salsa on the table, which is my all-time favorite hot sauce
5 // Great beer and wine selection, including local favorites like Trumer and 21st Amendment alongside Periscope Cellars chilled dry Rose
6 // Unfussy preparations and service
7 // Flakey fruit tarts + yeasted waffles
8 // Handmade tortillas, thick and crispy chips with fresh pico de gallo salsa
9 // Killer brunch menu including Chilaquiles, Huevos Cuauhtemoc, and a zesty Michaelada to wash it down

If you are in the neighborhood, this is a must stop spot.  Say hello to owner/chef Dominca, who is counted among the alumni from Chez Panisse, Eccolo and Restaurant Soleil in Mexico City.  She is exceptionally welcoming and rarely not there working in the kitchen.  Buen provecho.

Crispy fish tacos on the happy hour menu Wednesday and Thursday

Dominca and staff 

The flakiest, yummiest guava tart you'll ever taste

Blood orange mimosa on the brunch menu

Chilaquiles verdes with pinto beans and avocado

Thick cut chips + salsa

Mango, mint, jicama...

L O V E + M E T A L 

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