Revolving 'Slate' Public Art Graces City Center Bishop Ranch

SAN RAMON, CA – With a goal of celebrating the East Bay’s cultural diversity, City Center Bishop Ranch is unveiling its revolving artist "canvas" showcase entitled "The Slate."

The inaugural installment features over-sized banners on the front of the retail-dining-business complex's façade, with a display of works by four prominent Northern California artists, whose pieces were specially curated for The Slate’s debut.

“City Center is an exciting new presence in San Ramon,” said Alexander Mehran, Jr., president and chief operating officer of Sunset Development, owner and operator of City Center Bishop Ranch. “It offers a special experience for every visitor—and we’re building on that through an art program that celebrates some of the East Bay’s boldest voices in art and design alongside City Center’s top-tier shops and restaurants.”

“The Slate” is meant to complement the center's urban architecture, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

The current featured artists are:

Joan Brown: Late painter Brown was the only young female artist in the Bay Area Figurative Movement, and her work is considered to be among the most important contributions to the mid-20th Century art movement. Begun in San Francisco in 1950, the Bay Area Figurative Movement consisted of artists who moved away from the styles of the Abstract Expressionists. She produced what is considered her most mature work from 1955 to 1965. Brown, a San Francisco native born in 1938, attended the California School of Fine Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute).

Richard Diebenkorn: Diebenkorn, who lived in San Francisco from the age of 2, was an immensely talented and renowned painter and printmaker, who also played a seminal role in the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Diebenkorn, who passed away in 1993, was admired for his early work with abstract expressionism and later, for his extensive series of geometric, lyrical abstract paintings.

Raymond Saunders: Saunders is a painter acclaimed for his abstract mixed-media paintings that include collage elements and found text with sociopolitical undertones. His paintings blend figuration with gestural and calligraphic abstraction inspired by improvisational jazz and the work of artists such as Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. Saunders, who was born in 1934 and lives in Oakland, is also admired for his careful draftsmanship, sculpture, installation and curatorial work.

Paul Wonner: Wonner was another prominent figure in the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Wonner, who died in 2008, was renowned for still life paintings, landscapes and figures featuring the vigorous brushstrokes and dynamic compositions of Abstract Expressionism. Wonner’s works today are held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, among others.

“We view The Slate Art Program, and City Center itself, as an important new means of enriching the East Bay community by weaving together culture, civic life and commerce,” Mehran said. “In the future, we plan to create 2-D and 3-D installations that showcase the East Bay’s outstanding innovations in science and technology, as well as its culinary and wine culture, our nationally recognized theater companies, and the renowned musicians and athletes who have proudly made the East Bay their home.”

For more information about The Slate and City Center Bishop Ranch’s stores, restaurants and community events, visit www.citycenterbishopranch.com.

City Center Bishop Ranch, located in the heart of Bishop Ranch, features 300,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment, and will be anchored by THE LOT, a 10-screen cinema, and Equinox, a personal fitness, training and yoga center.

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--Images via City Center Bishop Ranch