The Gardens at Lake Merritt

2014 Autumn Lights Festival Artists

Check our event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/760609070673162/
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OUR ARTISTS
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Susan Bradley is a filmmaker, title designer & graphic artist and is busy as a bee supporting us with all manner of graphic design and various planning for Autumn Lights this year. You’ll be able to see her imagery composition projected in the Vista Room, as she’s tailored an elegant & light-hearted presentation by animating many photographic elements to music that she’s collected from the Garden over the past few months. She hopes the piece will give you a sense of the how fantastic the Gardens are; during the daytime!

You can find out more about Susan here:
http://www.susan-bradley.com
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keiko World renowned artist Keiko Nelson is one of our most renowned artists, with recent installations in Cairo and Kyoto. Here she was exploring the Japanese Garden site of her installation for the 2014 Autumn Lights Festival in the Gardens at Lake Merritt. Keiko plans a construction that floats in the Japanese garden pond, to honor World Peace. The art and light piece will be made of made of 6000 chopsticks to honor Oakland’s Chinese heritage as well as her own Asian roots.

Keiko was recently honored by the Berkeley City Council. Contributing her skills both in Berkeley and globally, Nelson painted a mural for the Cairo University Children’s Hospital in Egypt and regularly designs stage sets, costumes and outdoor installations at UC Berkeley. She was born in Kyoto, Japan, and works as a Visiting Tourism Ambassador for the city.

In response to the award, Nelson said she was thankful: “I was born in Kyoto, Japan. I have been living in California for about 40 years, and have been a US citizen since 1984. At times I have felt like a foreigner. But now after this award – I feel like I am truly at home and that I am a part of the community. I am a citizen of the arts.” Learn more about Keiko Nelson on her website: www.keikonelson.com
TICKETS at this link: https://www.facebook.com/events/760609070673162/760940530640016/

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The inexplicable and incredible Transcender is at our Autumn Lights Festival this weekend!! It was created by Bill Fuller and Shawn Silverman and built with the help of the Love Potion Collective. The body is welded and sculpted Aluminum and translucent polycarbonite sheets. With 1500 full color LED’s and the ability to perform high speed animations it must be seen in person!

Bill is an Oakland native and lives in the West Oakland artist community. He has degree’s in Physics and Electrical engineering. Bill has been technologist/scientist for 30 years and creating art for the Burningman festival and other events for over 10 years. His focus is to create interactive art that inspires wonder and amazement. He creates using steel, aluminum, plastic, wood, electronics, and LED’s.

Shawn Silverman is an LED artist from Winnipeg. He received his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialty in Power Systems from the University of Manitoba. Shawn has been creating art as a member of Love Potion Collective for Burning Man since 2011, the latest being the Amphora art car and the smaller Trancender display. His art plays with the idea of using a large collection of small things that work together in concert to appear as one whole. Check out their web site: https://www.facebook.com/lovepotion.trancender/info trancender
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Come see artist Gabe Babcock‘s work at the Oakland Autumn Lights Festival in the Gardens at Lake Merritt, October 17-18!

Gabe is a powerful sculptor using found materials to explore the natural world and his role within it. He strives to illuminate the tension between nature and humans through art. He is planning a piece made of found redwood, with window like spaces evoking buildings. It will install in the blue disk in front of the Vireya House in the garden during the Oakland Autumn Lights Festival!

Check out his current shows at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the incredible Oregon Garden:

http://www.gabebabcock.com/current-exhibitions/ and http://www.oregongarden.org/events/art-in-the-garden/

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He works between Oregon and Oakland, and we are thrilled to have him with us for the festival.
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Matt Stavis and Andy Mueller have collaborated on two pieces for Autumn Lights!

Icosahedron started as an echo of the obelisks. The triangular sail motif is repeated and tiled to create a closed object, following the same symmetry rules that govern the design of the protein capsules that form the outer shell of many viruses. Contained within is a LED illuminated animated form.

NEST a second collaborative piece Andy Mueller and Matt Stavis
These 12’ tall, pyramidal “obelisks” placed throughout the garden are part of a larger installation called NEST. They, in part, served as a visual edge to define and create a sense of place. An oscillating color palette and animated whimsy fills each obelisk through its translucent skin and casts silhouettes of passerbys.

Fünkenwerk is an Oakland design and fabrication studio producing custom, one-of-a-kind, and limited edition furniture, lighting, and home decor for residential and commercial projects. www.funken-werk.com
NEST1Nest
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Creating art in the garden has been a part of Andrea Hurd’s life since she was a small girl. Growing up in rural Oregon, creating artistic projects out of natural materials was a form of play. In a high school Art History class, Andrea learned about the Earth Art movement, and became a big fan of Andy Goldsworthy.

Over the past 20 years, Andrea has practiced Permaculture techniques as well as dry stacked stone building techniques in her garden designs and installations. As a member of The Stone Foundation, an international stonemason’s trade association, Andrea has gained training in the art of dry stacked stone building in England, Scotland, Mallorca and Cambodia. Her knowledge of the ancient techniques of these regions gives her work strength and structure, to which she adds inspiration to the designs through her own artistic vision. look for her knee pots around the garden. Butterflies, dragonflies and other pollinators will drink from them. The Pollinator Posse loves these and her stone fountains! Look for her at Autumn Lights. http://www.mariposagardening.com/

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Todd Cox is a Sonoma county artist and sculptor who spent many years as a custom stonemason. He attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco for a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and fell in love with working in metal. For Autumn Lights, we are lucky that he is bringing several pieces!

His Praying with Fire is a steel Praying Mantis made of steel and found objects combined in a human sized sculpture. It has two sets of wings and arms stretching outward toward the sky. The praying mantis has a exquisite set of wings reproduced out of copper and brass meshes and hand riveted together.

The mantis has two independent flame effects placed in the eyes that when activated fill the sky with a towering ball of mesmerizing orange fire. Also inside the Mantis is a 3 ft long green neon tube to illuminate the abdomen of the imposing insect. A concoction of gears, conveyor belts, scrap metal, and assorted detritus coalesce into the beautiful gesture filled artwork that is just as thrilling to see during the day, as it is at night. He’ll also bring a piece called Wildflower, an ensemble sculpture made of a Carbon steel stem, with stainless steel flower, brilliantly accented with neon lighting.

www.arcanechicanery.com
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Now we’re talking! Artists Toshi Anders Hoo and Eric Freeman have thrown their talents behind us for Autumn Lights. Their amazing light painting will anchor our new promo pieces! Check out Toshi’s work at http://www.toshihoo.com/ He’s a Bay Area artist, designer and lover of light. Pixelstick is too magical to describe here, but check it out: http://www.thepixelstick.com/ - and enjoy his artistry here! Tickets for Autumn Lights here: https://www.facebook.com/events/760609070673162/760940530640016/ ALF-PromoEdit_04

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Adding to the musical ambiance at the Autumn Lights Festival will be Paul Anderson. He plays Early, Renaissance, and Celtic music on mountain dulcimer. He also sings and plays covers and originals on guitar as well as music on mountain dulcimer and sings and plays a mix of covers and originals on guitar. New original albums are in the works for him. Paul also plays lute with the traditional Irish band “the Elderberries”. You can read more on http://elderberriesband.com/about/ Paulandersonand http://travellersrow.com/
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Here’s another of our fabulous and talented performance artists! Torch singer and multi-instrumentalist Tara Linda loves to transport her listeners to other realms. She manages this, both with a buttery-smooth voice, and lyrics of pure poetry. One of the most diverse vocalists about town, Tara Linda’s original song-stories can take you South to the Border (via boleros and train songs), have you skipping you through a circus (playful waltzes), or seat you in the back of jazzy blues club (bossa novas, stomps, and swings)- and all in one show. Tara sings and plays bass, ukulele, & accordion, and is often joined by the best of the Bay’s musicians in several bands. (Mesmerizing: Oakland Tribune)
http://www.taralinda.com/“The best of Torch singer tradition with Latin and blues touches” SF Jazz Examiner
Tickets at: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU taralinda
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Vanessa Lowe will be joining us for Autumn Lights! She writes songs melding unexpected melodies, surprising chord changes, and literate, eccentric lyrics. Her distinctive finger-picking style on the guitar blends with her mellow alto voice to create an intriguing musical journey. In the world of Lowe’s songs, boats are lost in a bathtub storm, stars guide and then beguile would be rescuers, photographs hold us close to our loves, yet are the demise of the moment.
Vanessa is accompanied by Kent Sparling on “Tiny Instruments” and vocal harmonies, creating a unique and delighting sonic landscape.
Lowe has released 5 CDs of original music.
The East Bay Express pegged Lowe’s music as “dream-pop-meets-indie-folk”, and she doesn’t object to that description.
www.vanessalowe.com

Tickets at: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU

vanessalowe
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Robin North is bringing her talents and her sculptures to join us at Autumn Lights! She’s a sculptor and mixed media artist, a professional gardener – including a long stint as supervising horticulturist at Children’s Fairyland!

Robin is currently working in Sonoma county at her own design/build/maintenance biz and at California Flora Nursery, the renowned native plant nursery. Whether painting or working at mixed media sculpture or creating gardens, she takes inspiration from nature’s awesome array of colors, forms and living diversity.

Robin’s a graduate of San Francisco Art Institute’s Painting program, previously studied botany at the University of Washington.
At ALF 2014, her fanciful ‘Night Flowers’ sculptures will be displayed in front of the Gardens fantastic bee hotel. robin north Tickets: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU
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Patricia Bulitt, dancer and interdisciplinary artist, will perform in the Bonsai Garden during the Autumn Lights Festival on Friday evening, October 17. She has toured throughout Japan, New Zealand, Canada and US as a solo dancer especially drawn to making site specific dances honoring nature. As a veteran performer, Patricia has honored birds of Lake Merritt with her original UNDER THE WING performance, her exhibition BIRDS YOU CAN READ< 11, and children’s workshops associated with the City of Oakland’s Rotary Nature Center. And making another dance,FOUR POSTCARDS, she danced around the lake with a bird expert, celebrating through her solo dance, special spots around the lake.
Honored with grants to study traditional Japanese Noh Theatre in Kyoto, and making an improvisational dance in the Japanese Garden in Tsuwano, Japan, she has served as guest artist to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and made many community programs honoring Nature. On October 17th, Patricia Bulitt will be featured in our Bonsai Garden making improvisational dances inspired by the shape and form of the trees and the environment of light!
Patricia’s dance will begin in the transition of light around 6Pm and continue through the dark, into the night. http://www.patriciabulitt.com/Patricia Bulitt

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More musicians are lining up for Autumn Lights! Singer-songwriter Chris Head brings his unique and eclectic songbook to the Autumn Lights Festival. Chris has headed up the trio Tank Half Full over the past seven years, performing throughout the Bay Area, as well as Santa Cruz and Napa Valley with the group, or as a solo performer.

A native of Louisville, Ky., Chris was raised on a steady diet of country and popular music, early influences included Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, George Jones, Dean Martin, Buck Owens, and countless other greats of the era. He’ll will provide a variety of styles to enjoy wandering through the gardens! Tickets at: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU Chris Las Positas 2014

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Artist John Fadeff is up next for Autumn Lights! He’s crafted a plan to project animations from inside the small greenhouse onto the greenhouse glass so it can be view from outside. Last year he made a couple of animations particularly for the event, and he plans to do the same this year. They are mostly experimental short animations made from a kind of printing process he came up with using plants. (see link below.)

Fadeff’s background in animation is reflected in the narrative quality of his mixed media work. His work has been included in Prographica’s Landscape Part II: Urban and Rural & Equine, Bovine, Canine, Feline…. both in 2012. Fadeff, a California native, has a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University . The Galeria Dos Prazeres in Madeira, Portugal, featured Fadeff’s work in a solo show in 2010 and a group exhibition, A Chavena da Cha, in 2011. His work was also included in Lonarte, a public art project in Madeira in 2011. He has shown at Studio Quercus in Oakland. Tickets for Autumn Lights Festival
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Lisa Graciano is a Balinese-born, Jakarta/Manila/Singapore-raised, Oakland (by way of Amsterdam) singer-songwriter, guitar player and multi-instrumentalist. She serves up a musical grilled Satay: a funky, bluesy offering spiced with savory flecks of folk, reggae, rock, pop, R&B, and gamelan. A true planetary citizen, she’s a manifestation of western musical influences washing up on the shores of Southeast Asia and mixing with already-rich homegrown musical expressions. Her band the Gracenotes bump from the bottom to the top and will drive her inspiring lyrics and tuneful grooves into your heart and hips. Her gamelan-infused group Purnamasari rooted in her cross cultural music project, which she started in the spring of 2012 with the help of her husband Paul Miller, also includes musicians who have been playing non-western musical instruments for a very long time. Lisa has a soft spot for gardens, having been part of an outreach team for a community garden in Berkeley back in 2010 with a music project called “Busking For Beds”. At the Autumn Lights Festival 2014, Lisa will sing some of her compositions, while she accompanies herself with her acoustic guitar and plays the flute at the same time.Lisa 2013 4 ________________________________________________________________

Back In our Sensory Garden, artist Mary B. Smith is imagining glass houses and sparkly crystalline birds perched in our fountain on a glass bird bath. For the 2014 Oakland Autumn Lights Festival sponsored by PGE, Mary will bring her brilliance to the party! Here are some new phones of the work she’s bringing!

Mary’s the is co-head of the Crucible Glass Department in West Oakland. A Fulbright Scholar, she has a MFA in Glass and Painting from California College of the Arts. From 1985-2005, she was head of the San Jose State University Glass Program, taught in the School of Art and Design and the Creative Arts Department at San Jose State University, and has taught workshops at over fifteen institutions worldwide. She is in many collections, including the Corning Glass Museum.

Her current work includes solar powered bird baths, glass flood level markers, and glass watershed maps.she is a Bay Area sculptor/arts educator who likes to link art making and environmental issues, addressing issues of water resources, renewable energy, urban habitats for wild birds and affordable housing. She believes in the power of regeneration, transformation and reuse, uses salvage materials in her work, and often works with many varieties of recycled glass, and found metal parts. See more at http://www.marywhiteglass.com/

TICKETS at this link: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU

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Moving along to performance artists, We are thrilled to have Andrea Farrell with us for the Autumn Lights Festival! She will be strolling the nighttime gardens with her acoustical guitar, adding her original music and classical tunes to the magical mix of the evening. Andrea trained at St. Mary’s in Moraga, in performing arts with a music emphasis. She is in a band called Wreck This Place, she’s also worked in theater. By day this fabulous musician helps runs a construction company! Gotta love our multi-talented Oakland artists. andreafarrell
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This guy! Here’s Mike DeHerrera, who has been with the Autumn Lights Festival since the very first year. He brings his awesome landscape lighting skills to us to uplight our magnificent specimen trees, we couldn’t have done without his help and support! Lighting is the specialty of his MDL/Mike DeHerrera Landscaping. He started the first year with $500 worth of Home Depot lights and is lighting four of our huge trees in the garden courtyard this year with a lot more equipment! The logistics of all this are something to behold, but he makes it all happen with grace and gentle humor. His web site is http.//www.mikedeherreralandscape.com. Mike Herrera

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Brooke A. Levin is the Director of Oakland Public Works and in this show she is able to present a different side of herself , the artist. She carefully collected native flowers and pressed them between waxed paper to create these illuminated works of nature. They are displayed among the succulents at the Gardens at Lake Merritt that her own Public Works staff and volunteers lovingly tend.
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Jamie Vaida has been working working with metal and fire for many years. Vaida has spent many years perfecting his trade. His work showcases many types of metal, and he also often incorporates recycled or reused metals and found objects into his projects. He looks for beauty and shape in a given piece in its raw form, then twists and bends the metal to bring out the full potential hidden within the material.
For the Autumn Lights Festival he is going to share both his fabulous flaming art car and unique, beautiful calla lilies. We are excited to see his work. See more of him at http://www.jamievaida.com/cala lily

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Imaginary Photons and Coil are two Oakland-based collectives of light artists, specializing in atmospheric and environmental installations at live music events and festivals such as Yuri’s Night and Symbiosis Gathering. We combine traditional approaches to scenic lighting with vintage effects and custom software to create unique, site-specific compositions.

They will be producing several installations at the Autumn Lights Festival this year, each of which uses the flora of the garden itself as a canvas. They will illuminate one section of the garden with architectural LEDs, controlled by the “Color Organ” – a keyboard that plays color instead of sound. With a few seconds of instruction, festival goers will be able to paint the garden with vibrant, dynamic color. TheyCoil will also be projecting two collages of moving texture and color in the trees above the event, creating a dream-like canopy rising high over the garden, slowly evolving over the course of the evening.

The artists participating in this installation are Allison Vanderslice, Chris Macklin, Dan Cohn, Elizabeth Blackburn, and Josh Erickson. For contact information and galleries of past work, please check out their web sites: www.coil-lighting.com and www.imaginaryphotons.com.
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The volunteers at the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt

"In the past we have used spotlights on each of our bonsai trees.
This dramatizes the branch structure of each of these museum quality bonsai focusing attention on the beauty of each tree." they said. "This year we'll broaden the purpose of our lighting a bit and improve navigation by adding color to the surrounding landscape as well.

"We've got volunteers from all the Bonsai Clubs in the Bay Area pitching in to help!" they said. "We'll also have a team of bonsai enthusiasts on hand to answer bonsai related questions."

Their plan is to lure festival participants to the bonsai garden's front gate with lighted feather banners. Inside the bonsai garden, trees and shade structures will be decorated with clusters of Japanese lanterns. Our pathways will be lined with a cost-effective version of the luminary: brightly colored plastic cups holding LED candles! A large crab apple tree located in the center of the bonsai garden will be dripping with fairy lights. Three lighted Tokonoma display alcoves will be set up for special bonsai items. tickets: http://goo.gl/4SvkYU
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Stan Clark from Astro Botanicals will be back again this year in the Autumn Lights Festival October 17-18. His giant inflatable flowers create a magical fairy tale forest. Enter and risk indulging your senses and forgetting about everything but vegetable geometry and melting colors! Experience the perspective of a pollinator with larger than life floral sculptures. Enjoy the peaceful coherence of these hypnotic space plants and consider the global community as part of a galactic garden.

He plans to set up as last year, with about eight large decorations in the center of the garden. This year we will also have decorations on the waterfront by the gazebo and around the shore of Fairyland. Stan Clark is a fabric artist sewing giant sculptures and small toys. He grew up in the forests of the mid west, and moved to California to share his vision. http://www.astrobotanicals.com/astro bot 10639734_944460192237818_953257625960579752_n995084_944457778904726_1060339026762371301_n
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Kyle Milligan: is planning to banish the darkness with his lanterns at Autumn Lights, there will be no unilluminated corners if he has anything to say about it! He’s creating lanterns with wood filigree and ice paper interiors. There will be an incandescent light glow from the interiors, and, in keeping with the passion for pollinators in the garden, there will be butterfly lanterns in the mix.

His other work is ‘Informed by Punk roots, inspired by his medium, incapable of obedience, and thoroughly amused by medical terminology.” Oakland-based artist Kyle Milligan creates hefty sculptures in plaster, iron, and rubber. With titles like “Steatopygia” (fat buttocks), “Schistosoma in Copula”, and “Never Rename a Piece”, his large-scale works are funny and uneasy, layered with meaning, both acute and obtuse. In his 2011 solo show Yeast Piss & Poppy Sap, Milligan describes his work as “…Songs, unspoiled by lyrics you have to figure out. kylemilligan photosh edited-1
Kyle Milligan has presented solo exhibitions at The Fake Gallery in Los Angeles and Studio Quercus in Oakland, and has shown nationally at The Oakland Museum, American Steel, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, and Bedford Gallery, among others. He has collaborated with artist Hopi Breton to create The History of Bowling —a performance using molten iron, was co-director of the alternative art and performance space Studio Quercus, and continues his practice of incessant art-making and subtle rabble-rousing in Oakland, California. See his site at http://www.kylemilligan.com/
Inspired by recent sightings of brilliant blue Velellas on our Bay Area beaches, Oakland artist Jan Brugger will create brilliant blue “lanterns” for the Japanese Garden at Autumn Lights Festival. This site-specific installation merges the traditional use of paper lanterns as festival decor with the poetic idea of Autumn as the season/time before death.
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Jan Brugger: “The strange, yet beautiful spectacle of numerous Velellas washed on to the shore illustrate that idea for me,” Jan says. “Within a few hours the creatures will die and their radiant blue will fade. The illuminated “lanterns” scattered around the garden beds will stand for a celebration of their life and of the Earth’s natural cycles.” Check her web site at http://www.janbrugger.com/

href=”http://gardensatlakemerritt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Jan-Brugger.jpg”>Jan Brugger

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Carol Harrell: Here’s another Autumn Lights artist: Carol Harrell! She layers her magic mosaics into glass lantern or globe lights, pulling in so many repurposed elements – then plants a finished light on a tree stump or an elegant piece of twisted driftwood. Sea shells, glass mosaic pieces, ceramics – all these components are unified through her artistic vision. Her multimedia mosaics are all illuminated from within. Her portfolio is in her iPad and it is something to behold! Come find her at the Festival. CArolharrell
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Ethelredd is another great Oakland artist giving her creativity to the festival! She says it best:

“Being a part of Autumn Lights is a tremendous gift to me as I love the Gardens at Lake Merritt. I have volunteered there, and spend as much free time as possible lounging in all the amazing areas offered by the Gardens.

“My ‘Village at the Gardens’ will consist of dozens of unique huts made from Lake Merritt twigs with thatched roofs of various mosses and grasses. They will be lit from within by tea lights (electrical). The Village will have resident huts, a large ‘movie theatre’ showing a slide show film called ‘Amble through the Garden,’ with a musical score. There will be a lively auction house as well where the critters will be engaging in chaos. Various small hidden speakers will let one eavesdrop on all of the activity.
Ethelredd
“The entire Village area will be uplit, much as a city neighborhood is at night.”
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Sarah Lowe is an artist and artisan living and working in Oakland. Check out her amazing web site http://www.slowe.org/ – what a huge range of work she has, from sculpture to stage sets! She has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon also has an MFA from SJSU’s Cadre Laboratory for New Media.sarahlowe

For Autumn Lights she is working with Tyvek, a fascinating material more often seen as the construction skin on new homes. Sarah is making laser-cut filagree designs on the Tyvek to create palm-sized lanterns. They will hang on the garden’s mulberry tree, strung on cord, and illuminated by incandescent carnival lights. Look for her at the festival. Photo by://www.facebook.com/PierceSoracco
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Kim Webster: The Glass Gardener – how is that for a perfect fit for Autumn Lights! Glass goddess Kim Webster is making these organic shapes for the festival, and hanging them in the Angel’s Trumpet tree, whose shape they evoke. Kim hails from Canada and appreciates the preciousness of the natural world, and wants to “preserve those things that are fragile and delicate and full of wonder.” She received the “People’s Choice” award at the festival last year! See her site at http://www.kwebsterglass.com

“Glass is a perfect medium for me, because the material itself speaks to those qualities.” she says. “The history of glass as a preserving medium, combined with my love of the garden provides a foundation for my work which celebrates themes of nurture, memory, tradition and fecundity – all with an inevitable touch of whimsy. Working primarily with glass, I use a variety of processes and techniques, each carefully chosen to enhance the communication of the piece: blown glass with screen printed hand-writing and photographs enameled and fired onto the surface of the glass; kiln-formed glass with sand-blasted imagery; and blown glass sculpture lit from within by low voltage lights.”
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Clive Brown September evenings in the garden find artists immersed in the creative process, things coming together in their minds for the Autumn Lights Festival installations. Clive Brown sat down with one idea and it must have been the waterfalls – he kept thinking of new things. Look for a repeat of last year’s Venusian flower love-blossom, a Midsummer Nights’ Dream of falling in love if you smell the fragrance! And he will populate this beautiful pond and falls with small animals. Clive works with ceramics, LED’s, glass, ceramics, bubbles, smoke, so who knows what could emerge! clive_edited-1
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Susan Casentini: In the Autumn Lights Festival, back in the Palmetium Garden, you’ll enter a Tahitian Village created by collaborating artists Emil Barber, Kyle Milligan and Susan Casentini. They are creating exciting Tiki totems,
lanterns, a 1960’s polynesian dance projected on a palm tree and more!

Artists:
Susan Casentin: film
Emil Barber: Tiki carver
Kyle Milligan: Sculptor and creator of the lanterns.

Http://www.kylemilligan.com/

Susan Casentini: Vintage film collectorsusan
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Steve Capper and Cash French: Art takes many forms in the Autumn Lights Festival. Two amazing waterscape artists/designers have been working in the garden for years, creating a totally natural, ecologically correct filtration system for two of our ponds. Rather than pumping out 4000 gallons of water each week (used in watering, but still!) Cash French (French’s Waterscape) and Steve Capper (Wild Rose Gardens and Ponds) worked with Eagle Scout Jordan Soulman on his project to design a model gravel-and- plant filtration system. Add a pitch of beneficial bacterial and a bunch of Google volunteers who dug the needed three foot hole, and we have a sustainable showpiece! For the Festival, they will add lights to a jet fountain between the ponds. http//www.wildrose4u.com and http//www.fwpond.com/ Cashandsteve
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Artist John Fadeff is up next for Autumn Lights! He’s crafted a plan to project animations from inside the small greenhouse onto the greenhouse glass so it can be view from outside. Last year he made a couple of animations particularly for the event, and he plans to do the same this year. They are mostly experimental short animations made from a kind of printing process he came up with using plants. (see link below.)

Fadeff’s background in animation is reflected in the narrative quality of his mixed media work. His work has been included in Prographica’s Landscape Part II: Urban and Rural & Equine, Bovine, Canine, Feline…. both in 2012. Fadeff, a California native, has a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University . The Galeria Dos Prazeres in Madeira, Portugal, featured Fadeff’s work in a solo show in 2010 and a group exhibition, A Chavena da Cha, in 2011. His work was also included in Lonarte, a public art project in Madeira in 2011. He has shown at Studio Quercus in Oakland. See his animations made from plant based printing at www.johnfadeff.com
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Karen Cusoliti’s powerful steel sculptures will be part of the Autumn Lights Festival! Karen studied at Rhode Island School of Design and Massachusetts College of Art. She worked on several public art installations in and around the Boston area before moving to San Francisco in 1996. Her web site is http://karecuso.com/index.html

Her art has taken many forms, from painting and mixed media to the large-scale steel sculptures she’s presently developing.
She finds drawing to be the easiest and most concise form of communication and the human form a rich arena in which to explore and express emotion, intention, and challenge. Much of her work focuses on humanity and the environment and the delicate balance between the two.

Since 2009, she has been running American Steel Studios in Oakland, CA, which provides studio and gallery space to over 100 artists and small businesses. Here’s a great article about her work:http://www.thefifthsacredthing.com/2012/12/11/tfst-artist-feature-karen-cusolito/
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The Green Heart of Oakland for Fifty Years

Discover the hidden garden jewel on the shores of Lake Merritt in the city of Oakland. We are a seven-acre collection of themed gardens.

The Gardens are open daily:
9am - 5:30pm
Entry is free!

666 Bellevue Ave, Oakland, California
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NOTE: You'll be making a secure tax-deductible donation through Square Market to the Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt's fiscal agent "Oakland-East Bay Garden Center Inc."