Daily Inspiration: Meet Eric Murphy

Before leaving Pro Arts Gallery, I began representing another artist with a classmate at Laney College who introduced me to a photographer, Hiroko To, from Fukuoka, Japan, which has been Oakland, California’s sister city since 1962. After successfully introducing the local art world to her work, I began representing other artists, like Emmy Award-winning artist, James Gayles, Gabriel Navar, Penny Harncharnvej, and Samantha Chundur. I pursued this career further when I left Pro Arts Gallery in 2010. I showcased James Gayles work at Linen Life Gallery in San Leandro, Ca. for about a year or two. In 2012, I learned about Oakland and Fukuoka, Japan’s sister city relationship in time for their big 50th Anniversary planning. I connected with OFSCA (Oakland Fukuoka Sister City Association) to coordinate a traveling exhibit between Oakland and Fukuoka that lasted a few months and involved James Gayles representing Oakland and Hiroko To representing Fukuoka, and my assistant Penny, who is originally from Thailand, who helped with the student workshops in Japan. Prior to this I took a Japanese (Nihongo) class at Laney College so I can speak the language a little bit. This led to another project I will mention later.

Also in 2012, I collaborated with Joyce Gordon of Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, CA. as the Gallery Curator and became Gallery Director in September 2023 as she retired and put together a wonderful 20th Anniversary exhibit that included past artists throughout the years, including Sibylle Swagger-Reford, actor Robert Redford’s wife who studied a design class with Joyce before opening Joyce’s gallery in 2003 and before marrying Robert Redford. The gallery has been a huge staple in the Bay Area and Oakland. We exhibited world-renowned artists such as sculptors Ed Dwight, Raymond Saunders, Richard Mayhew, and more. As a commercial gallery, it is unique in the fact that it involves the community around it. Some of the activities you would normally see in nonprofits and museums.

During my time at the gallery, I was still doing independent curatorial projects. One included a project in L.A. with the late Mel Ramos, a famous Pop Artist from the 60s that started out early with his friends, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol doing comic book heroes as they eventually ventured in other subject matters but Mel continued with comic book heroes and female nudes inside commercial products as a response to the pop culture of that time. Anyway, in February 2017, I curated an exhibit in L.A. titled “The Power of Pop” at Greg Escalante Gallery with Mel Ramos, his mentee, my friend Gabriel Navar, and John Waguespack. This was a nod to the “Pop Goes the Easel” exhibit in Texas in the 60s with all the major pop artists  including Mel Ramos and his mentor, Wayne Thiebaud. This was preceded by the LTA Awards at an L.A. Art Fair a few weeks prior that honored Mel Ramos with a Lifetime Award. https://fabrikmagazine.com/gregorio-escalante-gallery-presents-the-power-of-pop-mel-ramos-john-waguespack-gabriel-navar/

Coming back to my one-course study of Japanese language (Nihongo) at Laney College. I began celebrating my 20th Anniversary in the arts in 2019 and launched 2042 company (20 for 20 years in public art and 42 the age I turned when starting this new company.) with a t-shirt design where I created these shirts of Oakland translated in various languages beginning with Okurando, which is Oakland in Japanese with our sister city of Fukuoka, Japan. My second design was Oakland in Amharic, the language the Ethiopians speak. I ran into an Ethiopian model from my fashion photography days who had an Amharic tattoo on her arm, and her parents worked on the translation. I now have Japanese, Amharic, Spanish (Tierra de Roble), Greek, Farsi, Chinese Simplified with our sister city of Dalian, China, Xhosa (Nelson Mandela’s native tongue, Yoruba, Thai, Hindi, Baybayin (a historian Filipino script), Korean in the Hongul dialect Wakandan Script (a derivative of Tifinaugh) and a Chadwick Boseman tribute with his name and information translated in Wakandan Script and Nsibidi.

I currently returned to my collage work but more digital as I add photographs and other elements to found images. I recently had a solo exhibit at Oakland City Hall titled “City of Stars’ which celebrated through the Oakland map, portraits of famous people and community people that you may or may not know that is from Oakland or affiliated with Oakland. Samples include Mark Hamil (the original Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars series), born in Oakland, CA., Zendaya (born and raised in Oakland), the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris (born in Oakland, CA. and raised in Berkeley), Paul Mooney, Daniella Pineda, Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee, Julia Morgan (famous architect), Andre Ward, the boxer, Juan Toscano Anderson, the late Carl Weathers, whose first professional career started as a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders before become an actor and icon role as Apollo Creed in the Rocky series. Steph Curry, who lived in Oakland and still continues to support Oakland, and Van Jones, who is the co-founder of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, headquartered in Oakland. The list goes on. I am now working on Shemar Moore, a native of Oakland, CA. who inspired me to do this project after seeing him host Soul Train back in the late ’90s or early 2000s. He introduced someone on stage from Oakland and told the audience he was also from Oakland.

See Sample works here: https://conta.cc/4adBzqT

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Every journey has its challenges. The biggest challenges was the artists exchange project in Japan. It was the first time I did a project like that with a small group of us and no promised budget to pull it off, but Hiroko and I planned the exchange and student workshop and Fukuoka City Museum projects to the detail. I had to work on host family connection with support from OFSCA, and make sure the artists’ visas were clear to travel through the Japanese embassy in San Francisco. We got support from then Oakland councilwoman Libby Schaff, who later became our previous Mayor. She got the Port of Oakland to help us with the project also. One of the biggest obstacles was finding the company that can crate and ship 30 pieces of artwork to Japan and back. The artwork was loaded on the plane for Japan, and then they realized they couldn’t fit all the crates through the door and had to take it back to the shipping company in S.F. to break one of the crates down into two smaller crates and back on the plane. One of the best projects of my life and great learning experience.

For Mel Ramos, Gabriel Navar, and John Waguespack’s “Power of Pop” exhibit in Los Angeles in 2017, the biggest challenge was spending about a year driving back and forth to find the right space to showcase the exhibit. We worked with a developer down there in L.A. through an attorney friend of mine, but the gallery and warehouse spaces were too big. Eventually, we hired a friend of mine to scout locations, and she came across Greg Escalante Gallery in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, which was a good fit as he was co-founder of Juxtapoz Magazine to help promote our exhibit.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an artist and curator, amongst other things. Also, the Gallery Director of Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, CA. I am mostly proud of my shirt designs of Oakland translated into different languages, and there is some historical research embedded in them. What sets me apart is that I am a contrarian. So, if anything becomes too cliche, I, by nature, am always trying to find a new way of doing things and projects so it can be different and as close to original as possible.