Naming Gallery, active from 2012–2015, was a community-rooted, multi-disciplinary art space at 335 15th St, Oakland, co-founded by Lisa Aurora Calderon and Josef Lucas. It served as a crucial node in Oakland’s downtown revitalization, blending exhibitions, live events, and collaborative energy to turn a once-sleepy block into one of the city’s most creative corridors.

I am proud to have been a part of supporting the opening of Naming Gallery and the first artist to be featured. From renovation and painting the walls, to putting paintings on the walls, Naming gallery was a crucial part of building my early art career as well as lessons in how to keep the DIY culture of a city alive. Much of my inspiration for Autonomous Gallery is from the whispers of Oakland's once thriving underground art and music culture kept alive by spaces like Rock Paper Scissors Collective, Naming Gallery, Lobot Gallery, TREES, Fort Gallery, and countless others that once brought life to the post industrial and pre-gentrification creative renaissance of the town.
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Photo Credit: Parker Robinson