Traveling to Profile Pop-Ups’ Saturday night art showcase is no easy feat. Unlit Oakland streets with rows of seemingly abandoned warehouses make one check their maps obsessively, wondering, “Is this even the right address?” The harrowing streets begin to look less like Profile Pop-Up’s Saturday night art showcase and more like a kidnapper’s infamous second location to an anxious mind. But upon rounding a deceptively harrowing corner, a lively parking lot with a bustling food truck and the Bay Area’s most creative spilling out of the door and onto the asphalt makes that heart rate go back down again.
Aside from the strong smells of tobacco and Mexican food, the first thing that wafts out of the doors is the music; local talent accompanies the art hanging on the brick walls of a barely recognizable rented-out yoga studio. Before stepping into the Profile Pop-Ups-created world for the night, a friend informs me, “The art quiets the music,” a sentiment I only understand 20 minutes later, as I stand surrounded by canvases that seem to occupy my senses so entirely that the music seems a million miles away.
This makes sense, considering the musical accompaniment isn’t supposed to be a focus of the event — going hand in hand with the art, it amalgamates into thematic overtones of making space for creatives where there is none and emphasizing a wide artistic bandwidth.
Artistic duo Bella Veale and Willy Duerr started Profile Pop-Ups in fall 2023, with a hit debut show on Oct. 14 at San Francisco’s Little Raven Gallery. Since then, their Instagram page has been active with dozens of “profiles” on artists spanning locations and mediums. With Duerr currently studying abroad in Madrid, Veale was the spearhead in planning the recent April 6 show. However, she’s not completely flying solo — she’s backed up by the community Profile Pop-Ups has garnered, including friend and photographer Milla Heckler.
In a brief conversation with Veale, she expresses a general frustration with UC Berkeley brushing its burgeoning artistic population under the carpet. She explains the unrealized magnitude of an artistic scene on campus because of a lack of initiation to create spaces to showcase it. In building a haven for creatives, Profile Pop-Ups answers a demand for such a space. But it’s not just the breaking spatial ground that sets Profile Pop-Ups apart, it’s the naturalness with which they celebrate art in every medium.
Among more than 20 artists on display at Saturday’s show, conversations with a few of the featured creatives illuminate the necessity of an organization like Profile Pop-Ups. Lucy Harrington’s abstract forms on both canvas and crocheted yarn demonstrate an intuitive approach to interpreting her surroundings — namely her home base of San Francisco. Despite her influence being such a structural and gray-scale-hued city form, her work reflects it in organic abstract shapes and bright colors because at the end of the day, she says, “It’s all just shape and color.”
Isaac Neri’s paintings loom over the brick-walled room in their magnitude, and as he casually mentions that he’s made an impressively technical painting only just the night before, they seem to grow even larger. It’s hard to refrain from staring at the 3-by-5-foot frame depicting bulls and monkeys seemingly racing off the canvas and into the audience. Still, one might manage to do so when the 19-year-old art practice major at UC Berkeley starts to explain his biggest artistic influences — his family.
Fellow UC Berkeley student Noah Johnson’s three-dimensional printed renderings of abstract structures and nostalgically hazy photos allow possibilities, leaving an itching “what if?” in the viewer. While explaining the potential that a black abstract 3D web-like parachute could have if it was hypothetically 10-foot-tall and in the middle of an urban jungle, Johnson’s eyes light up, along with each invigorated viewer who stops to imagine the capabilities of his renderings.
These artists and their peers find a place amongst the photography, large-scale canvases, crochet creations, 3D printing and televised craftsmanship within an Oakland warehouse creatively commandeered for the night. This is just the beginning for Profile Pop-Ups — to keep an eye peeled for future shows and spotlights, follow the Instagram @profilepopups.
