Black Artists In Oakland (CA) (Images of America) [Paperback]

Jerry Thompson (Author), Duane Deterville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2007

OaklandÂ’s famous and vibrant arts heritage is known throughout the country, but many people are unaware of the extent of this city's contribution to the national stage in terms of music, dance, visual arts, and literature. Black Artists in Oakland celebrates this amazing story over the past half century through vintage images, from the early days of Slim Jenkins's nightclub to the changing styles of Esther's Orbit Room and the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. More than 200 photographs lift the curtain on many inspiring artists' masters in their chosen aesthetic and neighbors to the community. Among the artists highlighted in these pages are Ruth Beckford, Raymond Saunders, Alice Walker, and E. W. Wainwright.

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About the Author

Authors Jerry Thompson and Duane Deterville have spent decades in the Bay Area working in all aspects of community service, publishing, and visual arts. Thompson's work has been published in many literary journals and anthologies, while Deterville (cofounder of the Sankofa Cultural Institute) has written for such magazines as The Green, The Black Dot, and the San Francisco Bayview. Culled from private and museum collections from all around Oakland, this volume showcases Oakland's best artists, spanning from traditional disciplines to the avantgarde, from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (July 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738547255
• ISBN-13: 978-0738547251
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,262,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Children of the Diaspora, February 12, 2008

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This review is from: Black Artists In Oakland (CA) (Images of America) (Paperback)

Open this book to any page and chances are you'll find something of value. Between them Jerry Thompson and Duane Deterville have gone to the motherlode and brought back the fruits of their prodigious research, and chosen literally hundreds of rare photographs to illustrate their main points. Arcadia's "Images of America," of course, is built on the image, and some have asked me, when they see this on my desk, why I am reading a glorified caption book. I just glower at these fools! What they can't seem because they can't read, is that even the captions display a grace, a felicity, an abundance of good sense you don't often find in today's media-saturated society. Plus, the book brings back home visually and verbally the complete picture of "art life" in Oakland--not just painters and sculptors either, for Thompson and Deterville define "artists" with broad strokes, including everything from ballet to graffiti.

The book is arranged chronologically, with a sweeping look back at Pauline Powell, the first black artist to be exhibited in California, and string sextets of the turn of the century period. I wonder if there were artists before this group? Possibly so, but without photographic data supporting their existence they wouldn't be allowed a look-in with Images of America. Anyhow the pace picks up right away because before you know it, jazz is born, and the East Bay must have been a hotbed of it. Fantastic pictures of Earl Hines and of Slim Jenkins' nightclub on Seventh Street in West Oakland. Perhaps jazz and rhythm and blues gave Oakland the confidence it took to suddenly blossom out in multifold directions. We get a hint of this when the next section breaks out into all disciplines, from high to low culture. Cartoonist Morrie Turner (cute picture of him glowing at a parade, with the winners of the "Wee Pals Lookalike" contest grinning behind him), Claude Clark Senior and Junior, the father son team who revolutionized black arts in Oakland; trumpeter Rasul Saddik, blowing his heart out in some candid performance shots.

We get the whole panoply of cultural achievement, the still living and vibrant, the sadly gone. Writers will find a lot to admire in this volume, for a lot of space is given over to the important novelists, playwrights, poets and critics for whom the East Bay has been home. Isn't it great to see Reginald Lockett given his full due? -- Four pictures worth and there may be more, for sometimes I get a little exhausted with so much talent blaring out at me from every page. Whether you're into Sly Stone or Calvin Simmons, Ishmael Reed or Marcel Diallo, Destiny or the Pointer Sisters, Maya Angelou or Marlon Riggs, you'll find them all in here. And of course, Messrs. Thompson and Deterville, I have a charge for you, for as you know there's an equal amount of young talent rising up now in the East Bay: you could write just as big a book and publish it in five years, with all different people: go to it!