Connecting communities through collaborative public art

Background

City Canvas is a grassroots project intended to foster neighborhood identity across the East Bay through community-driven public art. A collaboration of seasoned teaching artists, community builders, city planners, and arts administrators, the City Canvas team was brought together by a common desire to contribute to the vibrancy of our cities. City Canvas will create opportunities for shared visioning and creation of public art in neighborhoods across Oakland and Berkeley through partnerships with city agencies, neighborhood schools, businesses, residents, and local artists.

The idea for City Canvas emerged from:

     • Commitment to the diversity and vibrancy of the East Bay, its neighborhoods, its culture, its businesses, and its residents
     • Knowledge that art is a universal language and that collaborative, creative expression helps build individual and collective identity
     • Trust in the transcendent power of our individual and collective connections to the places we love
     • Belief that every individual has a story, a voice, and the ability to share it with the world
     • Love of public art that is bold, beautiful, and an honest representation of the community in which it lives
     • Desire to connect with and contribute to our communities

City Canvas was founded in 2009 and is launching its first two projects in Spring 2010.

Spring 2010 Projects

Sharing the Landscape of Oakland, Oakland
Through a grant from the City of Oakland Public Art Program's Open Proposals, City Canvas will create a series of five mural projects on the City-owned traffic signal boxes in the Lake Merritt/Uptown/Broadway Auto Row neighborhood. Design ideas will be generated through workshops at Westlake Middle School (in the heart of the neighborhood) with 8th grade students. Lead teaching artist and muralist, David Stern-Gottfried will adapt the students' visions and ideas into a format to be painted and instaled on traffic signal boxes. Students, in their class, and community members during at least 2 community paint days, will also help paint the murals on “parachute cloth,” that Mr. Stern-Gottfried will then install.

Celebrating Sustainable Slow Food, Berkeley
North Berkeley's "Gourmet Ghetto" is arguably the birthplace of the sustainable movement in the United States. Working in conjunction with the North Shattuck Business Association, ACCI Gallery, neighborhood residents, and local youth, City Canvas will design and execute a large-scale mural on the 1600 block of Shattuck Avenue. The design will honor the history and power of sustainable food, local farmers, and food justice. City Canvas will facilitate community meetings to generate ideas for the mural and community paint days so that all can participate in the creation of this historic mural.

Founding members

David Stern-Gottfried (dave at citycanvas.org)

David is a muralist and arts educator currently living in Oakland. He is collaborating with multiple nonprofits and community organizations committed to art and vitality in the East Bay. After a whirlwind trip painting murals in Latin America, he has been teaching banner and mural painting to students and communities all over the Bay Area.

 

Ariel Bierbaum (ariel at citycanvas.org)

Ariel is proud to be a relatively new Oakland resident. She is a geographer, a story-lover, a place-maker, and a connector. Ariel was Director of Community Murals at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Programs from 2000-2003, facilitating over 300 murals that were community-driven and professionally designed and executed. Now a credentialed city planner, Ariel works at the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley, an action-oriented think tank that works to keep students and families at the center of urban policy-making.

 

Diana Sherman (diana at citycanvas.org)

Diana is an Oakland resident who was first drawn to the city by the vibrancy of its neighborhoods and many cultures. An urban planner who works in communities across the Bay Area, she is a skilled facilitator with extensive experience in both community engagement and neighborhood development. As a former K-8 teacher, she is also especially interested in developing creative and meaningful ways to engage children and youth directly in planning and community building, and has led a number of youth planning activities.

 

Cris Cristina (cris at citycanvas.org)

Cris is an Oakland resident and interaction designer who specializes in organizing and facilitating creative, collaborative processes. As the current Creative Director for Cranial Rain, an Oakland-based company focused on reducing the organizational and technological barriers between people and government, he has transformed the way people communicate with and within numerous companies and nonprofit organizations across the Bay Area.