The Shadow Travels to the East Bay for Open Studios

The Shadow, at the invitation of his good friend, artist Jaime Erfurdt, traveled to Oakland to view her open studios at Vulcan Studios.

Artist Jaime Erfurdt at her studio space

Jaime's work encompasses digital photography, sketches, and paintings using paint with a very unique ingredient (we will let her tell you what it is).

Top: Jaime with one of her "Map Women" sketches
Bottom: Jaime with her good friend Anne at the Studio

Jaime shares the space at Vulcan Studios with fellow artists Liz Berg and Donna Fenstermaker.

Top: Artist Liz Berg (seated) with a patron with her works in the background
Bottom: A painting from artist Donna Fenstermaker

The Shadow would like to thank Jaime for inviting us to her studio (and the great time we had with friends afterwards) and to Liz and Donna for sharing their work with us.

However, we learned during the course of the afternoon that the Open Studio at Vulcan Studios was part of a region-wide Open Studios event organized by Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland. The Shadow will comment more on Pro Arts in a moment.

On Sunday, The Shadow went to Berkeley with two new companions, Anne and Arthur, to try to take in some of the work in the East Bay Open Studios.

The Shadow met and view the work of several artists including:

• Galerie Dumas
• Zohra Kalinkowitz
• Hadley Williams
• Carol Aust
• Donna Duguay
• Lisa Simonson
• Mirto Golino
• Deborah Stenberg-Service
• Julie Goodson-Lawes

Some of the works The Shadow viewed on Sunday

This Open Studio was not as well attended as it should have been, partially because it was Father's Day, but mostly because of the marketing efforts of Pro Arts.

Top: A work by artist Hadley Williams
Bottom: Artist Donna Duguay with The Shadow and some of her works

It is not The Shadow's place to tell an art organization how they should do their business. But collaboratives like this come together to help artists sell their works. There was scant advertising for this event done in the East Bay and no advertising -- that The Shadow is aware of -- in San Francisco or the Peninsula. The Shadow would recommend expanding your focus in the future to include people west of San Francisco Bay. To put it simply -- The Shadow would love to cover this event and see more artists, but if we do not know about the event, we cannot do that.

If anyone from Pro Arts would like to dispute us on this, you can email The Shadow directly here.

More pictures from the weekend are available here.