Mark Your Calendar: "Second Saturday" Art Events

In addition to Oakland's "First Friday" Art Murmurs, "Second Saturday" seems to be picking up momentum as an evening for new art show openings. Case in point: Tomorrow -- Saturday, October 11, from 7 to 10 p.m. -- the Rowan Morrison gallery will host an opening for New York-based artist Raylene Gorum's new exhibition, Volume Too.

In addition to Gorum's sketchbook illustrations and prints, the show features a collection of "large landscapes created using a wide variety of tapes: hardware store varietals, custom manufactured editions, vinyl, and handmade silkscreen-textured adhesive panels. The tapings, assembled upon translucent drafting film embellished with ink and watercolor, draw on themes of fantastical urbanity and its tenuous relationship to the natural landscape."

Left: Hiroshige; right: Gorum

In Volume Too, "Gorum engages in a dialogue with the acclaimed Japanese woodblock print artist Hiroshige. Both artists 'draw with a knife,' producing their works by precise cutting (he to wood, she to tape), and share a celebration of color. Gorum quotes compositions from Hiroshige's prints of travelers in Edo-period Japan, exchanging villagers with modern characters in distorted American vistas."

Left: Hiroshige; right: Gorum

Also on Saturday, from 4 to 9 p.m., Oakland's new Marboe Green Gallery is hosting what sounds like an interesting event: Sentence Drawing Sentence.

Part of a series of art events called Independent Drawing Gig No. 4 happening simultaneously in New York, Istanbul, The Hague, Maastricht, Vilnius, and Seoul, the game includes more than two dozen local artists and writers, as well as anyone else who wants to join in.

"It begins by having each player take a blank sheet of paper on which he or she writes a sentence and then passes the paper to his or her right. The next player reads the sentence and draws a picture that visually depicts the words written. After that the player folds over the sentence so that it is hidden and passes the drawing to the right. The next player sees the picture and writes a descriptive sentence about it. The game continues by altering sentences and drawings until the sheet is filled or the twenty minutes is up. When the time is up volunteers will run the completed games to the gallery and install them on the walls. Our prediction is that by 9 p.m. the gallery will have been transformed by those who participated."

Call it "Operator" with an art twist.