Steep Ravine has already played venues such as the New Parish, the Freight & Salvage and Chthonic Theater. The band just released its first full-length, Kickstarter-funded album of original material, Trampin’ On, and leaves on tour Monday for Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle and many places in between.

Jan Purat is on violin, Simon Linsteadt is on guitar, Alex Bice is on upright bass and Andy O’Brien is on mandolin.

The Daily Californian talked to the band about its influences, its new album and the terrible price of playing bluegrass for Hawaiian hamburgers.

Daily Cal: How did you come together as a group?

Jan Purat: We were all going to UC Santa Cruz at the time. Simon and I went to the same high school and had been playing music together for a while. We had a bluegrass jam at Andy’s house one time and then somehow got invited to play at this Hawaiian bar and grill. We basically had a regular gig jamming for tips and a free Hawaiian burger.

Andy O’Brien: It was an awkward place to play bluegrass, but we did it anyway because it was so much fun. Plus, the food gave you the shits every time!

DC: Where did the name of the band come from?

JP: We named the band after a hiking trail on Mt. Tamalpais. It leads from high up on the mountain down to Stinson Beach. It’s this beautiful canyon filled with old-growth redwoods. It seemed like a fitting name for our band.

DC: How did you get more gigs starting out?

JP: It’s been pretty amazing with this band how much people have reached out to us. We’ve had to do some work getting gigs but not as much as I had expected. I think a lot of people find it refreshing to see young people really focusing their efforts on this genre of music.

DC: Why bluegrass?

Simon Linsteadt: None of us come from a bluegrass upbringing — we have roots in funk, classical, rock and folk. I think I came to really appreciate the genre around junior year of high school. A lot of people don’t realize how embedded bluegrass is in the musical history of the United States. For me, bluegrass is the diamond of American music.

DC: When you write songs, do you try to replicate that traditional bluegrass sound?

JP: I think we draw a lot from bluegrass, but we also take a lot of elements from folk, jazz and gypsy jazz. Most of our originals have traditional bluegrass instrumentation but pull from a bunch of different genres. It comes naturally — I think that’s what makes us unique; we don’t try to sound like any one thing. Bluegrass is the main ingredient, but not the only one.

SL: Bluegrass is the pot in which everything is melted … Don’t put that in the interview.

AO: We all have very different backgrounds, and it’s hard to not reflect that in our music.

DC: How is the new album different from things you’ve done before?

SL: A lot of the stuff we do live has to be really high-energy because we’re usually playing in bars. This album was our chance to show a spectrum of sound; we have some gentle tunes and some more uptempo tunes, jazz-oriented tunes and bluegrass tunes. We had so much freedom to experiment in the studio.

DC: How was your first experience in a professional studio?

JP: We had an amazing experience at Tiny Telephone Studios. It’s one of the only studios in the Bay Area that records exclusively with analog, meaning that we recorded everything on tape — nothing digital.

SL: Our sound engineer, Jacob Winik, was incredible. He was basically our impromptu producer; he let us get all of our ideas out and made us feel
really comfortable.

AO: I don’t think Jacob has much experience recording bluegrass music, which turned out to be perfect. Since we aren’t really a traditional bluegrass band, his different, fresh approach was more coherent with our different kind of sound.

DC: Where will you be touring the new album?

JP: This will be our first big national tour. We’re basically making a loop to New Orleans and back — we’ll hit LA, San Diego, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado and then Seattle, Portland and the Northwest. It was a lot of work to get all those gigs, but we’re really excited to finally have everything in place for the tour. It’s going to be great.

AO: Everything depends on our 1994 Plymouth Grand Voyager. Once we hit the Rockies, all bets are off.

DC: Will you turn a profit on tour, or are you doing it for the exposure?

JP: It’s really up to us. Unlike a lot of bands, we can busk and play on the street — and we love to do it! If we busk on tour, we’ll definitely make some money. We’ve been playing at the Montgomery and Downtown Berkeley BART stations and doing really well.

Alex Bice: Busking is kind of like our 9-to-5 job.

SL: People are especially happy to see us in the mornings. I think they like to see that musicians can wake up early too.

DC: Why have you chosen to base yourselves in the East Bay?

JP: There are so many great venues to play in the East Bay. Plus, this is a great place to build a following; the people here are really receptive to our music. It feels like home.

You can keep track of Steep Ravine through its website and Facebook page. Its new album is available now.  

Contact Eliot Claasen at eclaasen@dailycal.org.

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Nathaniel Solley/Staff

Featured on the PAX 10 at the highly nerd-popular Penny Arcade Expo last month and recently Greenlit on Valve’s Steam service, “Escape Goat 2” is getting the hype its predecessor, “Escape Goat,” never got. Set to come out within the next month or two, it was created by the studio MagicalTimeBean, which is the name of independent developer Ian Stocker’s company. He, along with a few contractors, is based in Berkeley as they’re finishing up the game and readying for its release.

We sat down and talked to Ian Stocker about the upcoming game and working as an independent game developer in the Bay Area.

The Daily Californian: How did you start working in game development?

Ian Stocker: I started in games as a composer, and I spent eight years doing contracts for music and sound for games and did about 40 titles in that time. And in around 2008, I started making my own games because of the economic downturn and projects getting canceled in the audio realm. So I made a game, purely as a hobby, and launched it without any expectations, but it did well enough that I kind of wanted to do a sequel. And then, I just kept taking it more and more seriously. So “Escape Goat 2” is my fourth game, and I’m actually able to do this full time.

DC: What aspects made you go independent, and why did you decide to stay in the Bay Area?

IS: Well, to retain the IP (intellectual property) is pretty cool so that I can build a brand on my own and hopefully, as it gets ported to more platforms and gets more popular, the revenue increases rather than being a contractor where you just get one check of money for your work. So it’s a little bit more like building a business, which is what I’ve always wanted to do.

The Bay Area is one of the hotbeds of indie game development in the world. GDC (Game Developers Conference) is here, and some other conferences are here. It’s close to LA and Seattle for those conferences, and there’s tons of indie developers if you poke around, like I just meet new people every couple of weeks.

DC: How did the concept of “Escape Goat” come about?

IS: “Escape Goat” started as a challenge to make a single-screen puzzle game in one week, and it was going to be a clone of a DOS game called “Jetpack.” But in the midst of cloning it, I decided to add one new feature, which is having blocks that stack on top of each other. Once you have that, you’ve got a completely new challenge, which was making a physics engine. Any time you have anything stacking or pushing, it’s a physics engine.

So I spent the next 10 months working on what became “Escape Goat.”  It started out as something very small, and it was not even supposed to be more than a tiny detour away from my other game series. The title came from a Reddit thread on the best misused English phrases, and I always thought that “Escape Goat” was a perfect title for a game, so the whole theme came from the title.

DC: What made you decide that you wanted to make a sequel?

IS: When I first launched “Escape Goat,” I wasn’t actually that confident in it, because it was a completely new style of game for me, and I wasn’t really sure how well it would be received. But it turned out to be even more popular than my other series, so even though I had intended to go back and work on those games, which is the “Soul Caster” series, I kind of looked from the business perspective that I’ve got some momentum from “Escape Goat” and that maybe I need to keep working on that series and further that brand a little bit more.

DC: What did you add from “Escape Goat” into “Escape Goat 2”?

IS: If you look at them side by side, the difference in graphics is pretty striking, because “Escape Goat” is very 8-bit looking; it had four color sprites and very small titles and was very pixelated. I did all the art for that one myself, and I choose pixel-style because that was something I could do in a reasonable amount of time.

For “Escape Goat 2,” I’m working with an artist, so the graphics are way better than they would be if I were to try to do it on my own again. Plus, we have a new render that has lighting and shadows, so there’s a lot of great visual effects.
In terms of gameplay, it plays pretty much like the first game — I didn’t tamper too much with the gameplay. There are a lot of new gadgets and new abilities for the goat and mouse. There’s also a new layout for the world, where instead of just going linearly from one room to the next, there are branches and secret doors and alternate path to get through.

DC: What are your favorite aspects and least favorite aspects of working in the Bay Area as an independent developer?

IS: My favorite aspect would be connections to other developers, because there are so many around here. My least favorite — rent is high. I’d say California as a whole is not an ideal place to start a new business or to run any business. I would think very carefully before trying to grow and have employees and stuff like that in California. But so far as a one-person operation, it’s fine.

DC: What are your plans for the future, in terms of the studio?

IS: I’m probably going to stay technically as a solo developer for the foreseeable future, and when I work on projects it will be like a strategic partnership.

DC: Are goats your favorite animal?

IS: Right now, yeah probably.

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Bruce Beasley/Courtesy

Walking to UC Berkeley from the Downtown Berkeley BART station, onlookers have noticed a peculiar development. A cluster of interlocking rings marks the campus’s westernmost entrance. And it’s crawling with kids.

The creator, Bruce Beasley, could not be more delighted.  The sculptor is a rock star in the art world. With more than 200 exhibitions internationally and dozens of public art commissions in numerous cities, Beasley has had a string of continuous successes in his 55-year career. From art galleries to public parks to airports worldwide, Beasley’s presence borders on ubiquitous. His largest sculptures fetch more than $1 million on the market. Most prominently, he made a splash at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing with a sculpture commission for the Olympic park.

Beasley’s 17-by-17-foot stainless steel sculpture “Gathering of the Moons” in front of the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing. It is set to stay in China.

For Oakland-based Beasley, showcasing the sculpture, entitled the “Rondo,” at UC Berkeley means coming full circle with his roots. A UC Berkeley graduate with a degree in sculpture, Beasley points to his early years as a Golden Bear as the launchpad for the rest of his career. We sat down with Beasley to find out more.

The Daily Californian: Why beautify UC Berkeley?

Bruce Beasley:  Because I have very fond memories of UC Berkeley. I was there in the ’50s and ’60s. It’s a beautiful campus, and I thought the campus and the sculptures would have a happy marriage together.

DC: Any favorite places on the campus?

BB: The Faculty Glade … Mature oak trees. Nice grassy contours conducive for sitting or reading. It was a quiet and contemplative place. It’s beautiful. Also, Oscar’s hamburgers on Shattuck.  That was a real hangout for the art students. I ate a lot of Oscar’s hamburgers when I was there (laughs).

DC: What are your proudest moments as a student?

BB: By the time that I graduated, I was the youngest person to have a museum in New York buy a piece in their permanent collection. Then I won the prize for the Biennale de Paris, the largest competitive exhibition in the world for artists under 40. We knocked the socks off the world with the idea that sculptors could cast their own metal. I won the Purchase Prize, which means they bought my sculpture for the French national art collection. We put Berkeley on the art map. The world was rewarding my sense that I had something to offer. I’ve never done anything else since.

Cast in acrylic, “Apolymon,” an early work, was at once point “the largest transparent object in the world,” Beasley said.

DC: Where do you get inspiration for your pieces?

BB: It comes from curiosity. I am fascinated by the idea and the feeling that shape is a human language. And so for me, sculpture is a process of exploration more than I feel it is a process of creation. I find the sculptures more than create them. What I like to do is discover shapes that sing to me and hope they sing to others.

DC: How did you “discover” the “Rondo” series?

BB:  I was one of the first people to use 3-D modeling in 1986. I like to play with shapes the way a composer might make a tune by just trying things. I use a number of modeling programs used in the auto design and the aerospace industries. When I know it’s right on the computer, I know it’s going to be right.

I made hundreds of possible sculptures, and these five that form the “Rondo” series are the ones that sung their song to me at the end of the editing process.

DC: What obstacles did you face creating the project?

BB: You are looking at  a year and a half’s work for five pieces. This is handwork produced with my chief assistant, Albert Dicruttalo.

Now, the impression is the rings pass through each other. Getting the orientations require cranes and forklifts to get them to fit correctly. If they were off even an inch, they wouldn’t intersect, and if they didn’t intersect enough, they wouldn’t be stable.

This “Rondo” series sculpture, near the Valley Life Sciences Building, offers a picturesque outline of the Campanile. “Rondo,” a musical term, is an allusion to something that is circular.

DC: Your work has attracted a lot of attention. What went into deciding on some of the locations of the sculptures?

BB: I knew that the on-campus pieces would have more of a campus-oriented audience. Tolman Hall, for example, is a much traversed part of campus. And the concrete space in front of Tolman looked like it needed something, because it was barren.

DC: What have been some reactions?

Beasley: People who work (at Tolman Hall) tell me that the sculptures have transformed that plaza. People use the plaza more as a gathering pace because of the friendliness of the sculpture.

DC: What is next on the horizon for you?

BB: I’m a technological leader in sculpture. I have a sculpture exhibition using 3-D printing next month. I’ve also been completing the arrangement to Oakland Museum so that my art studio becomes the Bruce Beasley Sculpture Garden upon my demise.

DC: You are so prolific. What motivates you to keep working?

BB: That is the specter that looms in the shadows. It is not physical fear or risk. It’s boredom. What drives me is keeping myself engaged challenged and learning new things. Boredom is the ultimate enemy.

As a result, life is as exciting to me at 74 as it was at 19, because you never run out of things to explore and discover. There’s no less creativity now than when I was younger. I think that the receptivity to that changes through time, through different political and social contexts. And the creative impulse is widely distributed among Homo sapiens. It isn’t created by culture — it feeds culture. Culture doesn’t create creativity; creativity creates culture. There are endless questions to ask — that’s part of the exciting thing about life.

DC: So what, then, is art?

BB: Art is at the very essence of our species. It touched something deeply important to us that is difficult, if not impossible, to identify perfectly, but it is an activity mankind has been participating in since the beginning.

The “Rondo” series will be on display until August 2014. It was made possible by Jim Horner and the University of California at Berkeley Public Art Committee and was funded by Bruce Beasley.

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Derek Skalko/Courtesy

Comedienne Alexa Fitzpatrick’s wry, mischievous smile warms her thoughtfully deadpan delivery. “Serving Bait to Rich People,” Fitzpatrick’s new standup performance about working in an exclusive sushi restaurant in Aspen, Colo., mixes an insider’s look at the outlandish lives of wealthy vacationers with quippy “service industry” humor and interwoven personal epiphanies.

San Francisco is the most recent stop for Fitzpatrick, a New Jersey native turned Fringe Festival nomad, who is currently touring her show throughout North America. The Daily Californian sat down with the dynamic performer to talk about experience, fearlessness and the illegal drug trade in Aspen.

The Daily Cal: How long have you been doing standup?

Alexa Fitzpatrick: Oh, I’ve been doing standup for a long time. But I’ve only been doing it seriously for the past couple years — probably the last three years. And probably for the last 10 months is when I’ve been doing exclusively standup. So last January was when I quit the job at the restaurant, and, knock on wood, I haven’t walked into a restaurant since as anything but a customer.

DC: I know you were on the East Coast, and then you were on the West Coast. What’s going on with all the … ?

AF: What’s with all this moving all over the place? You sound like my mom (laughs). Well, I’ve gone back and forth between New York and LA, and they both are really great cities for different things. And it’s kind of nice to move back and forth because you can learn a bunch in LA and take it back and apply it in New York … And it’s kind of nice to be able to split between the two of them because you get to make sort of more interesting jumps and changes in your career.

DC: Have you found any stability or permanence in Aspen?

AF: There’s no permanence to Aspen (laughs). Aspen is a really transient community. And you’ll hear me joke about this in the show, but I’ve had so many amazing girlfriends leave for incredible opportunities, and that’s how it happens —  you go there, and it’s a great place to live, and there’s a wonderful quality of life. But if you want to do something bigger than that, you’re never going to become Chris Rock in Aspen … Because, it’s amazing, there are so many things that come to us; but it’s still a pretty small town.

And I joke in the show about how I’ve had so many amazing girlfriends leave for better opportunities, but I can’t get rid of one ex-boyfriend. And it’s such a transient community; every season, people take off, and new people come in, and people take off — we call them the freshman class as they roll in, because it’s like a new class, you know? A new crop every year of people who are coming to be ski bums, coming to hide out, coming to do whatever.

DC: Since this is your second show touring the Fringe Festival circuit, do you feel you know more about what you’re doing?

AF: A little bit more. You learn a bit more each year. I think I’ll probably do one more year. From the beginning year, where it was just about figuring out what the hell was going on; to then, the second year, where it’s like, OK, I’m comfortable in this and I’m experiencing this. This is interesting.” And then, I think I’d like to try one more time, just to see — with all the information that I now have — what I could really create.
It’s interesting. When you do it that way, when you jump in and then look for the net, there’s that leap, and the net will appear. And that’s true. When you jump, you rarely die from it — knock on wood.

But what’s interesting, I think, is that when you jump into stuff you have to remember that people are going to talk about how you jumped, and they’re going to talk about why you jumped. They’re going to look for all these things, and you just jumped, right?

DC: How do you feel that your standup performance differs from the more behind-the-scenes things that you do — like your writing and your film prospects?

AF: It’s interesting because people have difficulty separating you from the character or what you’re talking about.

My mom had a very funny comment where she said, “Nobody wants to date a girl that talks about her sex life onstage!”

And I’m like, “Mom, do you really think that’s my sex life? Those are jokes!” But people get very confused about the difference between you and the character, and I think that’s very apparent in one-person shows, ­— any sort of spoken word — because you’re saying “me,” (as in) you, the character. But then people get confused about who that “me” is.

One woman described my show as being “about the cost of cocaine in Aspen.” And when you see the show, I talk about the price of cocaine for maybe six seconds out of a 60-minute show. I guess there’s just some things that offend or stick with some people, and that’s exciting to me. If you can get someone to walk away from your show really hating you, it’s like, you’ve touched a nerve, you know?

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This turned into a six-piece band before finally becoming the current four-person setup of Salman, Murphy, drummer Walker Johnson and bassist Scott Brown. The band has played a variety of venues, from house parties to local spots such as the New Parish and Bottom of the Hill.

The Daily Californian talked to the band about their past, upcoming album and whom exactly Thomas Mapfumo is.

The Daily Cal: Do you have any fond recording memories from recording in the Cloyne basement?

Nate Salman: We took our bass player’s amp and tucked it in the corner of the room when we recorded the song “Water and Stone.” We took a bunch of couch cushions from around the house and threw them on top of it to try and get the drum sound to be separated from the bass, and there was this weird cow pillow in there that we found.

Walker Johnson: We definitely had to work with some props. We also spent some time going around and beating on things like the walls in the room looking for different sounds.

DC: Can you talk about your upcoming album?

Brijean Murphy: I like a lot of the rhythms that are coming out of it. We are working with a four-piece now, so we’re figuring out how the sound and uniqueness of each player can come out. It feels like there’s more layers and depth to the sound, similar to the first EP.

Scott Brown: Another big thing is the fact that we’re a four-piece, but we have both drums and percussion. The only melodic instruments are guitar and bass. Melody and rhythm are the elements that are being explored.

NS: I kind of got over using chords since the last time (laughs). Now there’s a lot of unison guitar and bass lines. We have a focus on implied harmony.

DC: A lot of your influences come from South America, West Africa and Brazil. Could you describe how you initially got into that kind of music?

BM: I started learning the congas when I was a kid because my dad was a conguero, so he has an Afro-Cuban influence, so those were the traditional rhythms that I learned and grew up with, which is also what I bring to the band.

NS: In the very beginning, we were trying to make this huge eight-piece Afrobeat jam band, because I was really into Afrobeat music. We were all learning the style together, but then over time, I started to realize that some of these rhythms that I think are Afrobeat are really more South American-type rhythms.

SB: Before I joined the band, I saw Nate and Walker playing the song “Constellation,” and I thought, “Man, these guys have probably listened to Thomas Mapfumo,” who’s this Zimbabwe guy who makes Chimurenga music.

NS: The secret to “Constellation” is that it’s really just a Thomas Mapfumo song (laughs).

DC: Nate, you’ve mentioned before that you are drawn to singers with androgynous voices. Is this something you still try to incorporate?

NS: I don’t think I’m trying to do it as consciously as I was before. I’m definitely singing more full-voiced than I used to, but it’s something I still really enjoy. I think there’s something really mysterious about androgyny. I like the idea of blurred gender and cultural lines, and I think that’s a theme in our music. For me, it felt natural to sing like this, and all my influences are mainly female singers.

SB: My girlfriend played one of our new songs in her car for some kids she babysits, and she told them to listen hard and say whether it was a boy or girl singing. They said, “That’s a girl, that’s a girl for sure!” When she told them it was a boy, they started freaking out. She actually had to stop the car and convince them, because they still didn’t really believe her. They enjoyed the song, though!

NS: One of my favorite singers is Jonsi Birgisson, the lead singer of Sigur Ros, and he has this beautiful androgynous voice, and every time I see him sing, it’s like seeing some sort of angel singing. It doesn’t matter what the sex of the person is or their sexual orientation — this person’s voice is the sole thing that exists; it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from.

DC: Do you feel the blurring of gender, cultural and other lines is a goal of the band in some way?

NS: There’s kind of a theme of not getting too caught up in how things are supposed to be. We have all of these cultural rules that are thrown at us describing how things should be, how you get to the next level, how you make money, you have to make lots of money, all of these ideas are imposed upon us, and we sort of just accept them over time.

I feel I’ve spent the last year thinking a lot about those things and trying to get away from them. As pretentious as it sounds, I want to make something that resonates with something deeper within us all.

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Oakland Art Murmur/Courtesy

Last Friday, art, music, performance, food and thousands of people exploded onto the streets of Oakland for the first Oakland First Friday Art Festival of the semester.

The event now boasts upward of 20,000 visitors, but its beginnings were far more modest. The original First Friday in January 2006 was an art crawl presented by the eight associated galleries, which they called Oakland Art Murmur.

OAM has come a long way since then. It now has about 30 members, and while it still participates in First Friday, the management and organization of the event are now under the responsibility of a distinct First Friday organization. From the Saturday Stroll gallery walks to fundraising events to programs in schools, OAM is aggressively moving into new territory and will continue to evolve and grow in pursuit of its mission: to bring art to the people of Oakland.

The Daily Californian talked with David Abernathy, who became the new executive director of OAM in June and is now charged with steering the organization forward.

The Daily Cal: Can you tell me a bit more about your background?

David Abernathy: While I was working at (an) investment bank, I took on a position … for a tech startup. And then I quit the investment bank and the tech startup right before the big financial collapse of 2008, which was sort of a fortuitous accident.

(In 2009, I helped) start a financial services and consulting firm for the medical cannabis industry. We launched that firm and ran it from 2009 to 2012. In 2012, I volunteered to help bring Oaksterdam University back after they were raided by the federal government.

DC: How did you get connected with OAM?

DA: I heard that they were looking for a new executive director, and I had previously co-founded and helped run this arts organization. I have always been passionate about the arts, especially because I am not an artist (myself).

DC: Where do you think that passion for the arts comes from, then?

DA: I’ve always sort of been impressed with (art) just because a talent for creativity, especially visual creativity, has never been one of my strong suits … I also like the fact that it’s a way for a lot of people who don’t fit the standard paradigm of academic success to find a sense of fulfillment in their own lives through producing art and sharing it with the world.

We have a very narrow definition of academic success in this country, generally speaking — one that is based on Industrial Revolution-era thinking. As manufacturing jobs become more and more scarce, and as more and more jobs are being outsourced overseas or taken over by computers and robots, we really need to find new outlets for human productivity. I think that art is one of those outlets that almost by definition has to remain in the human realm.

DC: What do you think OAM has done for Oakland in the last five or 10 years in that regard?

DA: Certainly, we have made the country more aware of the fact that there is a huge and thriving arts community in Oakland. We’ve made Oakland more aware that there is a huge and thriving art community in Oakland.

Many of these galleries are only open a few days a week, and they often struggle to survive … A lot of the galleries end up not making money at all … but they’re still important to the atmosphere in Oakland. They help bring in visitors from other cities and even other states to spend their money in Oakland. They help raise property value in Oakland — and just add to the beautiful and wonderful diversity that Oakland has.

DC: OAM has changed significantly since its inception. Can you discuss where OAM is now and where you could see the organization being in 10 years?

DA: One of the first things we did when I came on as executive director was to have the board vote to remove all geographic restrictions other than the city of Oakland. We’re in the process of taking on quite a few new galleries in areas of Oakland that previously were not covered in OAM.

The stated mission of OAM has remained … it’s to promote awareness of and participation in the visual arts in Oakland. One of the things that I’m very actively pursuing is figuring out ways that we can more broadly pursue that goal … We’re going to be launching quite a few initiatives to help existing organizations with — as well as eventually launch our own — charitable outreach programs to try to develop new audiences for the arts and spark interest in the arts among Oakland’s youth.

DC: What goes on during First Friday — crazy activity in the street, the shooting last spring, etc. — can often get conflated with the organization OAM. Do you think that the massive growth of First Friday has been overall positive or negative for OAM?

DA: My opinion is that it has been very positive. Among our members, there are a variety of opinions about whether or not (First Friday) is good for their individual galleries. A lot of our members think it’s absolutely fantastic and love it; some of our members think it’s a little too high-energy and not in line with their specific target audiences for their art.

DC: What do you think is the best part about that First Friday walk?

DA: Absolutely the diversity. Diversity in every sense. The diversity of the art that’s represented. The diversity of the people that show. And that diversity is not just racial or ethnic diversity … Geographic diversity — people come from all over the place. Socioeconomic diversity. Diversity of age. Everyone from babies to senior citizens enjoy Oakland First Friday.

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Andria Lo/Courtesy

Zarouhie Abdalian, recipient of the 2012 Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award from SF MOMA, has her first solo exhibition with the Berkeley Art Museum’s MATRIX Program, presenting three pieces that show the subtle and dynamic relationship between sight and sound and interior and exterior spaces. Her SECA Art Award Project, entitled “Occasional Music,” will be displayed at the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in Downtown Oakland from Sept. 14 to Nov. 17. Since coming to the Bay Area from Philadelphia to pursue graduate school, Abdalian has established herself as an up-and-coming artists in the East Bay art scene.

The Daily Californian: What aspects of the Bay Area, or more specifically Oakland, do you find compelling and made you stay after graduating from California College of the Arts?

Zarouhie Abdalian: First, the relationships I’ve built during graduate school with other artists and writers helped me stay after graduate school and helped make the transition fluent. My partner also went to Mills College. In addition to having the exciting art and music scene, Oakland specifically is the only place besides my hometown that I feel connected to. It has much to do with the working and art community, as well as other communities that I have been able to connect with. More importantly with me, I work with elderly folks in nursing homes, and connecting with an older group of people who’ve lived in Oakland their whole lives has been very important and one of the reasons that I decided to do a public art project.

DC: How did your experience as a CCA graduate student affect your art and career path, and what do you recommend for aspiring artists interested in these types of graduate programs?

ZA: One of the strengths of the programs from CCA is the connection you make with your peers and also with other colleagues in the community through advising units for the semester … Forming these relationships with others in this big and diverse community where people are making lots of different types of artworks made the experience very productive. There is also a curatorial program, and that was important, because the first shows I did were from people who were in the curatorial program, some of whom I still work with.

For aspiring artists looking at schools, look for schools with bigger communities that perhaps includes writers and curators. This will be helpful because these are the people who you will be working with when you become a professional artist.

DC: As an artist, what is your process for conceptualizing and building these pieces for these exhibitions?

ZA: No matter what the project is — whether it’s going to be more discrete objects or sculptures or something that’s a large installation or topic-specific — I tend to start the same way, which is trying to get as much information about where and when the exhibition will occur … Before beginning at the Berkeley Art Museum, I just sat around the galleries looking and observing the site. I try to get a sense of the time at which the exhibition will occur to gain the broader context of it … Then I start working with materials that I find interesting or inspirational during the research process. This involves messing around with the materials in the studio and thinking about how they will relate to the site or to each other.

DC: How does the Bay Area location reflect upon your other more location-specific works, such as your SECA Art Award project?

ZA: The SECA project, which is called “Occasional Music,” could probably happen at various times. But it is very specific to the neighborhood. These networks of bells on rooftops really made sense with me with the architecture of Downtown Oakland and how the area around Frank Ogawa was used in recent history and is continued to be used. The work is meant to be viewed within the context of this specific location, whereas the MATRIX project was meant to be viewed as individual objects and within the context of the MATRIX program.

DC: You’ve stated in the past that you were impressed by the Frank Ogawa Plaza for being a site for protests, such as the Occupy movement, and a public meeting place. What else made you choose this site specifically for your “Occasional Music?”

ZA: The idea for “Occasional Music” was one of those rare times I thought of materials and the general idea of what I want happening before I know the site. Thinking of these bells and neighborhoods, I tried to think about other places, but it didn’t make sense until it was in downtown, where it is a traditional place for bells to appear. But also looking at the specific architecture in Frank Ogawa Plaza, it is designed already to act as a center point and a gathering place. I position the bells at points to roughly make it the center where you might hear all the bells in a cacophonous way from the plaza, and outside of it you might hear more individual sounds.

DC: What kind of public responses or discussions do you hope you’ll arouse through your sound project in Frank Ogawa?

ZA: While I’m finishing this program, it seems elaborate, but I’m hoping the experience at the site doesn’t feel that elaborate. Understandably so, there was a broad range of associations with the ringing of bells. Historically, they’ve been used for various purposes — shift changes, alarms, the passage of time — so I think how the viewer recognizes the signal of the bell is determined by those associations and also within the context of Downtown Oakland.

There is also a possibility that these bells just become a part of the background noise in the city from the competing sounds. I have my own personal hopes for what happens, but I think it’s more interesting to just see what actually happens.

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