The Oakland Art Murmur is an art-galleries-open-late event that happens the first Friday of every month. It is about a year old. It started when two galleries in a cheap-rent district of Oakland got together. Soon other galleries joined them. There was a meeting at which “nothing happened” (according to a gallery manager) but they got together on paying for advertising and printing. How much did it cost each gallery? I asked. “Not much.”
Each month it has grown larger. More galleries and more people. Recently the City of Oakland began a shuttle bus to take people around and a few galleries now participate that are not close to the original ones. The event has a new name, too: First Fridays Art Night. This is not as weird as it sounds; I learned that there are many First Fridays events at cities all over the country, including Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, DC, but Oakland’s is unusually large — around 40 galleries, whereas in Washington DC there are about 30.
In honor of Freakonomics I visited the Rock Paper Scissors Collective, which turned out to be the most crowded art gallery I have ever seen. People were practically lining up on the street to get in. (Inside was a show of cartoon art and a few racks of clothes.) It felt like every artist in Oakland was there. Across the street was the opening of an exhibit of work by Timothy Brown, which consisted of food or food-related things (such as spoons) in blocks of transparent plastic. I really liked some of it. Upstairs at another gallery a dozen people were finishing a meal. Each person had been given $100 (play money?) which they used to bid for the various dishes.
I learned about the Murmur because a week earlier I had met one of the three founders of The Moon, a nearby art store that opened that night. I was surprised that a senior in college (Mills) is starting a small business, much less an unusual one. At the Murmur I met a woman who had just started a preschool. It was two days old. Craig’s List was involved. She had three partners. “I’m very impressed,” I said. “Most people never start anything.” “You’re starting to walk across the street,” she said.
It was way fun not only because most of the art was quite different than what I see in big-city higher-rent galleries (New Orleans, San Francisco, New York) but also because the people I met were friendly and easy to talk to. Not every conversation went well, however. I saw a guy who sells at the Farmers’ Market. “Are you an artist?” I asked. Yes, he said, but that might be misleading because he was a lot of things. “What else are you?” I asked. He was too tired to answer my question, he said, “but thanks for saying hello.”