The once grand Hotel Menlo, Oakland, California
Now Empyrean Towers Apartments:
Home to our first Friday Art Event and Open Mic

Once the grand downtown Menlo Hotel, and home to the oldest [still] working elevator in Oakland, the towers have had their fair share of historic moments, including scandal and tragedy, before being converted into an apartment building, and an underground art space.

Our first Friday event has a 1960s art vibe to it, with the kind of innocence, warmth and fun that channels some of the energy of urban conceptual artists like Gordon Matta-Clark & his crew, who inhabited empty buildings and public spaces with a joie de vivre that brought a sense of vitality and renewal to the Lower East Side, creating and curating art among friends.

In the spirit of our muse, Gordon Matta-Clark, we offer this collaborative project of emerging and established artists of all media, to our richly diverse community. We invite you to become part of this celebration of art and community as spectator, as art lover, as artist, and as performer for the open mic.

First Fridays — the art, the artists, and the crowd

This was my first Oakland-based curating project, one which I coordinated collaboratively for over a year. The event was held in the huge lobby/gallery area of the once Hotel Menlo. Artists from Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Germany showed their work during my term as curator. We have held first Friday events since 2011 in the lobby of Empyrean Towers.

Below, is one of the invitations we sent out to friends and colleagues.