In 2022, after losing our home of 13 years at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland, Pro Arts continued to operate without a central location and instead as an umbrella organization for other organizations, projects and collectives, holding space in a decentralized fashion and in the greater community of Oakland. 

In early 2023, Pro Arts began discussing options for operating out of another community center and in fact one of the largest community centers and venue spaces in the Bay Area that is run in a spirit of care, social justice and radical generosity - Omni Commons.

We are happy to report that as of May 2023, Pro Arts has joined the impressive roster of projects and collectives that are housed under one roof at Omni Commons and we are looking forward to working in camaraderie with those who contribute to and open and inclusive society.

 

Pro Arts will collaborate with Omni Commons and co-host visual art events, lectures, workshops, film screenings, and performance series. We are reaching out to our community partners, artists, educators, and creatives in Oakland who wish to contribute to Pro Arts programming at our new home at Omni Commons.

If you wish to propose an event or a series of engagements that are artist-driven and community-centered we would love to hear from you! Email us HERE for proposals.

Leadership:

Natalia Ivanova Mount, Director (International)

Natalia is a dynamic cultural producer with extensive experience in nonprofit leadership, development and strategic partnerships. She has curated and produced numerous exhibitions and site-specific projects, experimental theatre productions, music, film, radio and literary programs and events. Natalia is the founder of Pro Arts COMMONS and The Teaching Institute for Art & Law. In the beginning of her career, Natalia worked at MoMA PS1 and the Clocktower, both located in NYC. Mount is the recipient of numerous prestigious grants and awards, in recognition of her leadership, writing, and cultural practice. Mount holds a BA in Criminal Justice, MA in Art Market, and an MBA in Media Management.

Sarah Lockhart, Director (Oakland)

Sarah Lockhart has been involved in organizing and financial management for multi-use arts and community spaces in the Bay Area for over 20 years. Beginning as a volunteer Program Coordinator at the cooperatively run media arts non-profit, Artists’ Television Access (San Francisco) in 1998, Sarah went on to co-found and be the financial manager for 21 Grand (Oakland), a non-profit arts venue that housed live performances, a visual art gallery, artist studios, and a retail store. 21 Grand was volunteer-run, and lasted for 10 years and three locations. Sarah then went on to co-found LCM, a cooperatively run music venue, rehearsal space, and print studio in West Oakland with 8 colleagues. Sarah also worked in financial management and administration for other arts spaces, American Steel Studios and the Paul Dresher Ensemble Studios (both in West Oakland). Sarah is currently the Administrative Director of Safer DIY Spaces, an Oakland-based non-profit that assists low-income artists and community groups in making life safety improvements to “non-code compliant” buildings and consulting on strategies and methods for long-term stability of these spaces. 

Sarah Lockhart is a licensed tax professional, and has been providing affordable tax preparation and consulting services to artists, craftspeople, and grassroots groups for over 15 years. 

Praba Pilar, Director of the Teaching Institute for Art & Law

Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist disrupting the  overwhelmingly passive participation in the contemporary ‘cult of techno-logic .’ Over the last two decades Pilar has presented cultural productions integrating performance art, street theatre, invisible theatre, electronic installations, radio programming, digital works, video, websites and writing. These projects have traveled widely to museums, galleries, universities, performance festivals, conferences, public streets, political meetings, bookstores, bars, and radio airwaves around the world.

Shaped by resistance to the colonial project throughout the Americas, Pilar focuses her solo practice on projects challenging complex state/corporate systems of control, domination and death. She is now in the midst of the Techno-Tamaladas, a multi-disciplinary project of food, generosity, conviviality and dialogue on technologies of life of the Americas. She is co-Director of the Hindsight Institute, is embarked on an all-encompassing post-human/microbiomial multi-species journey with Anuj Vaidya titled Larval Rock Stars; Co-Directs the Bioarts Ethical Advisory Komission, is very active in the Legal, Ethical, Societal and Libidinal implications (LESLi) aesthetic oversite approval committee of the World Congress on New Reproductive Technology Arts, and collaborates extensively on one time events.

Chris Byrnes, Teaching Institute of Art & Law IP lawyer and Consultant

Chris Byrnes is an intellectual property lawyer and folk artist, working at the intersection of art, law, and activism. He is co-founder of art collective AbolishIP and initially joined Pro Arts as an Artist-in-Residence in January 2020. His art explores legal absurdities and pushes the boundaries of how intellectual property can be used to protect and empower artists, primarily through the use of IP morals clauses and IP commoning. Chris is also active in web3, where he engineers IP-NFT ecosystems for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) engaged in decentralized science. His most recent work aims to transform the IP-NFTs he has been building into tools for autonomous artists. He holds a BA in Physics from Denison University, a MTS in Religion, Ethics, & Politics from Harvard University, and a JD from Georgetown University. 

Board of Directors:

Lordy Rodriguez 

Lordy Rodriguez was born in 1976, the Philippines, raised in Louisiana and Texas, and currently lives and works in Benicia, CA. He obtained his B.F.A. degree from School of Visual Arts, New York and his MFA at Stanford University. For several years he has been working on a series of ink drawings that critically look at the effect visual languages have on culture and identity through the use of mapping and cartography. His recent exhibitions include, “Tahoe: a Visual History”, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV (2015),  â€œThe Map at Art”, Kemper Museum, St. Louis, MO (2012), “Code Switch” and “The Map is Not the Territory”, Hosfelt Gallery New York, New York (2013 and 2011 respectively), “Surface Depths”, Nevada Art Museum (2009), “States of America”, Austin Museum of Art (2009), “Optimism in the Age of Global War”, 10th Annual Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey, (2007), “The California Biennial”, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2006), as well as public art projects with the San Francisco Arts Commission at San Francisco International Airport and the Federal General Services Administration.

MARIKO CARANDANG 

Mariko Carandang is an artist-entrepreneur residing in San Francisco. Mariko founded the home decor company ILUXO in 2012 and launched the skincare line Sundays With You in 2018. Her work sits at the intersection of arts, technology, and politics; she uses laser cutting and 3D printing to create art in a variety of materials such as wood, metal, and acrylic.

SCOTT ORTEGA-NANOS

Scott Ortega-Nanos is a bookseller and community organizer in Oakland. His work explores the numerous ways in which books can be used as tools for resistance and liberation. In 2014, he started a yearlong project operating a community bookstore inside a building scheduled to be demolished for new condominiums. In early 2018, he (alongside founder Akande X,) helped start Maji Press, a community Afrofuturist newspaper. From 2018 until 2020, Scott was a resident at Pro Arts Project Kalahati Press & Risograph Studio at Pro Arts in downtown Oakland, at Oscar Grant Plaza. Currently, he is at East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative.

HAILEY MARIA ZALAZAR

Hailey Maria Salazar (Yoeme/Apache) is an Indigenous Education Scholar & Medicine Keeper. Hailey is a founder and board of directors of Copyleft Cultivars, a nonprofit organization working to preserve and protect plant medicine genetics, breeders, and cultivators with copyleft creative commons. Hailey envisions a future of a balanced and integrated ecosystem that supports the many generations of Earthbeings to come. She is currently an Adjunct Faculty at The Evergreen State College, Olympia Washington.

Shreya Shankar

Shreay Shankar is a Worldbuilder living on unceded Ohlone land in Huichin, Oakland, CA. Raised on stories spanning continents and cosmologies, Shreya has been a chimera for as long as she can remember. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in Environmental Policy & Urbanism in 2014 and has been active across city planning, art, tech, and organizing in the Bay Area since 2011. 

Shreya has served as the Executive Director of a climate action nonprofit, Project Manager of Oakland’s first resident-led neighborhood planning effort, and has emerged an alchemist of the built environment.

Shreya Shankar is also the founder of Sacred Rivers Institute (SRI): A cultural strategy cooperative for BIQTPOC artists. Weaving new economies and creative ecosystems from the solidarity economy to the blockchain, SRI centers critical visionaries in the just transition toward liberatory futures. SRI activates ancestral practices from cooperative organizing to spiritual ecology, to address emerging futures. 

Through SRI Shreya Shankar seeks to bridge creative communities into movement-building, and bring BIQTPOC Artists forward as leaders in movements for liberation.

The Teaching Institute for Art & Law, a project of Pro Arts

In 2024, the Teaching Institute for Art & Law will grow to include International sites/nodes of engagement. Following up on our work in 2022, during which we developed The Toolkit for the Autonomous Artist, in 2023 we will continue to work on questions related to the operation of decentralized structure, leadership, and governance. We will continue to develop new methodologies, strategies, and tools that promote transparency & accountability within the new systems we build in the arts.

As we develop these modules, the pedagogy, and the curriculum of the Teaching Institute for Art & Law, we are preparing for scaling up the model and connecting with artists and collectives around the world, who will become the cntributors to the curriculum of the institute. An Advisory Board will assure open and transparent access, and ethics that are communicated and embodied through the porous and flexble structure of the institute.

In Oakland, we look forward to connecting with the public and at our new home at Omni Commons, in the format of workshops, artist-centered long-form curriculum, and performances. For more information and to engage with the The Teaching Institute for Art & Law email us HERE.

The Commons Knowledge Platform International Artist Residency 

The Commons Knowledge Platform International Artist Residency is a residency for an open knowledge production and exchange in the form of peer-to-peer artist collaborations, commissioned projects, exhibitions, site-specific projects, research and print, and collective action.

The COMMON Knowledge Platform Residency puts artists and cultural organizers at the center of artistic and cultural knowledge production, and as the main instigators of civic and community empowerment.

For more information on this program contact us HERE.