Yesterday was another busy day. My friend Devin who is an electrician that will help out with the installation of lights. I’m trying to figure out how to make this space into a gallery for one night as a way of sharing with our community, friends, neighbors, and mechanics.
Speed has a nephew who finished up the painting of the gallery space and it looks great. Speed keeps saying that he has to paint this space and seal it up because the rain gets into the walls because they are made of cement. Judging on how rainy it was this last winter I’m sure a lot of the damage that happened in the office space/gallery space came from this season.
Speed was working on cleaning up and re-painting some early 60′s/pre-60′s Porsche engine parts. He showed us some of the parts. They looked beautiful. I imagine all of these parts were hand machined and you can tell the Porsche company really cared about the quality of their parts.
Later on that afternoon I went back to finishing up some work on a painting that I’m working on. The painting is an auto part and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it look like something mechanical. I dropped in some dark outlines to make it look more detailed and to keep in mind while I work on the painting where the parts are located when I’m painting in the color. I have to work fast because time is running out.
Later Monica came over and we had a talk over beer about how we’ll put some pictures together for an installation of Speed’s work. I haven’t quite figured this out but we are working on something that we think will look interesting to view on a wall.
Later in the afternoon James and I went to meet with Ralus at the San Pablo Flea Market up on 61st Street to discuss how they will work on a sculpture together. Ralus was meeting with the guy who runs the place to discuss problems with his diesel engine. Ralus had problems all day and he talked about how he broke a bolt on a BMW part and it stressed him out because it would cost a lot of money to fix. Later the problem was solved because the parts were able to be taken back free of charge. We had a long talk with Ralus about his ideas with working together on a sculpture.He had many ideas. Ralus then offered some engine parts to James for the sculpture.
Afterwards we talked a little bit about the neighborhood we were standing in. A lot of old houses still stand in this neighborhod. This area was a different town before the city of Oakland had the town incorporated into a neighborhood. Ralus says that he knew an old lady in the neighborhood who was one of the first African Americans to own property here and his friend was related to her. He also pointed out that there was and still may be a big white house in the neighborhood that was the original farm house to this tract of land. Ralus says that his friend remembers that his family told him that all of the neighborhood west of San Pablo used to be staging area for cattle in the old days and that none of the houses were there.It’s always really nice to hear this tidbits of history with Ralus.
