2727
ARTIST CO-OP
About the Co-op
We are an artist cooperative exhibiting regularly at 2727 California St. Member artists collaborate to show work, develop their art profession, and engage their communities with art-making. Emphasis is on emerging artists and artists from under-represented groups who have had less opportunity to show their work.
2727 California St., Berkeley, CA
https://www.2727.today/artistcoop
Gallery Schedule
The gallery will be open Friday - Sundays during exhibitions.
Check calendar for exhibition information.
2025 Exhibition Schedule
August 1 - 24
November 7-30
Gallery Open Hours
Fridays: 6-8 pm
Saturdays & Sundays: 1 -5 pm
Poster design: Katie Smart
Current Gallery Exhibition
Strange Changes: Concepts of Metamorphosis
November 7 - 30, 2025
For many people, the word metamorphosis brings to mind the idea of a caterpillar in a cocoon, rearranging itself into a magnificent butterfly—a progression both miraculous and eminently natural. Yet a metamorphosis must not necessarily be benign. It is a dramatic transformation, complete and irreversible, and its effects are not always predictable. In classical mythology, metamorphosis was a mixed blessing at best, at worst a form of divine retribution. Metamorphic rocks are produced by heat and pressure so intense that it alters their mineral composition. In the case of societal metamorphosis, change often comes in the form of violent upheaval as political systems shift and collapse. Even for the caterpillar in its cocoon, metamorphosis requires the disintegration and reconfiguration of its internal organs; before the beautiful butterfly can emerge, the caterpillar must dissolve into an amorphous mass.
In Strange Changes, the artists of Gallery 2727 explore the idea of metamorphosis in many different guises through sculpture, painting, textiles, and collaborative work. Through a unique blend of media, the artists in this exhibition invite viewers to contemplate the multifaceted nature of change and its impact on our understanding of identity, growth, and the human experience. From the literal transformations found in nature to the metaphorical shifts that occur in our personal lives, "Strange Changes" presents a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which metamorphosis shapes our world.
Events during the exhibition:
Opening Reception: Strange Changes: Concepts of Metamorphosis, Friday, November 7, 2025, 6-8 pm
Mask Improv Workshop, Saturday, November 8, 2025, 2-4 pm
DIY “Thank You" cards, Saturday, November 15, 2-4 pm
Holiday Art Sale @ Gallery 2727, Saturday, November 22, 1-5 pm
Artist Talk and Closing Reception, Sunday, November 30, 2-4 pm
Participating artists:
Solo Virtual Exhibition
"Family Portrait" - Kelly Dunagan
November 20 - December 31, 2025
… I work primarily as a painter, photographer, and curator, with occasional forays into theatrical design. I am interested in using portraiture to explore issues of identity. Many of my works feature subjects with faces hidden or disguised, as a way of investigating how wearing a mask can allow us to inhabit a different persona, and whether there is some truth, some essential self, that is revealed even when our features are obscured.
This selection of portraits, created between 2022 and 2025, features members of my family, including my husband, children, nieces, nephews, siblings, and parents.
Future Exhibition(s)
Solo Exhibition featuring Lynne-Rachel Altman, January 2026 (virtual)
Solo Exhibition featuring Matthew Felix Sun, February 2026 (virtual)
Past Co-op Exhibition Archive:
Solo Exhibition featuring Janet Brugos, November 2025 (virtual) (cancelled)
Tension/ Expansion, Solo Virtual Exhibition featuring Rebecca Silvers, October 3 - November 15, 2025
Sense of Place, August 2025
Water, May 2025
Labor of Love, February 2025
Corner Store, December 2024
Gold, September 2024
pARTy animals, June 2024
The Secret Garden, March 2024
Winter Sun, December 2023
Lost & Found, November 2023
Elemental, September 2023
Surface Tension, July 2023
Our Members
Carla Golder
The focus of my art is the impact of the African Diaspora and how Black women struggle to overcome oppression and become empowered. The African word Sankofa best expresses the guiding force behind my work: which is to retrieve wisdom that has been lost or taken away, in order to reclaim, revive, and reshape it as we move forward to achieve our full potential.
Lynne-Rachel Altman
LR (Lynne-Rachel) Altman uses a variety of materials and methods including hot and kiln fired glass, installation, painting and sculpture. With a background in public art, social practice, and design, she considers herself a “709.2 Artist," the Dewey decimal system for artists who cannot be categorized.
Michael Sacramento
Michael’s collaged paintings are created with fragments of images, objects, textures and colors that are inspired by his day to day observations. The process of collecting and finding inspiration from these visual cues, then using them to create a new visual experience, is his choice of intuitive self expression.
Colin Hurley
thepainterofcats.com | instagram
I'm an artist who admires kitsch, the modern, and everything else. I love to paint fun, wacky ideas. Art is everything.
Kelly Dunagan
Kelly Dunagan received her B.A. in Studio Art from Stanford University in 2004, where she won the Louis Sudler Prize for Creativity in the Arts. She currently lives with her spouse and two children in Berkeley, California, where she is a member of Gallery 2727.
Francesca Borgatta
Francesca Borgatta mixes media to make her puppets and other art. She makes videos using her puppet characters and sets. She plans art events and performances to involve the community. She believes everyone has a right to experience art-making."
Mary Coffield
instagram.com
Mary’s oil paintings are rich in coloration, drawing inspiration from the natural world. She experiments with a variety of techniques to apply paint to the canvas. To the often chaotic results, she introduces an element of control. She looks for beauty in chaos.
Linden Julien-Lehr
lindenjl.com | instagram | linktree
LindenJL is a transdisciplinary Oakland-based artist and designer. Their work seeks to examine processes of interpersonal connectivity within a shifting, human-expansive ecology through hand-crafting, pattern-weaving, and immersive installation.
Nadir Wright
www.nadirwright.com | IG: nadirwright_
Nadir Wright is a visual artist based in Oakland, California, whose acrylic and mixed media work explores color, whimsy, emotion, and alternate realities. His layered compositions feature human-like characters and fantastical landscapes that challenge perceptions and invite imaginative freedom. Nadir’s process is rooted in sketching and intuition, often shaped by time spent near Bay Area waters with his partner and dog. A former manager in finance and community programs, Nadir integrates structure and spontaneity in both life and art. His work explores themes of joy, identity, and self-expression—often in tension with conformity and containment. Each piece is an invitation to question what’s visible, embrace the unexpected, and reflect on one’s own sense of freedom.
Youngmi Pak
Youngmi is a three-dimensional fiber artist working with paper and textiles. She is inspired by the beauty of everyday objects, architecture, geometry, natural landscapes, the rhythms of seasons and cycles, and human encounters which are translated into feelings, colors, movements, textures, light and shapes.
Janet Brugos
Janet Brugos paints with texture, finding the right example of fabric, string or found object to add to the growing image. Brugos works in themes: Women of the World, Climate Awareness and Urban Landscapes.
Charlene Steen
Trisha Mah
Trisha Mah (she/they) is a Chinese-Japanese American collagist and taiko artist from the East Bay whose work honors memory, identity, and community liberation. Trisha plays and performs with Oakland-based groups, Queer Taiko and Club Hachijo, and teaches beginner taiko at Berkeley Buddhist Temple, fostering cultural sharing and connection. As an emerging visual artist, they were part of the inaugural Emerging Artist cohort with East Bay Open Studios in 2025. Their collages weave dreams, emotions, and lived experiences, inviting dialogue and identity exploration. With a background in nonprofit program management supporting BIPOC youth, Trisha brings organizational leadership and community-centered practice to their creativity. Rooted in youth work and lifelong learning, Trisha embraces art as ancestral inheritance—healing, affirming, and sparking collective imagination.
Ell Boysen
https://ellboysen.cargo.site/ | Instagram: @ellontheinternet
I view image-making as dreaming, as a replication of something beautiful, as a world made, as an evocation or prayer (divinity will never leave us). A photograph is a spilling out after the fact, the memory captured bleeding brightly—a wound in time.
Rebecca Silvers
Website | Instagram
Rebecca Silvers’ paintings invite the viewer to delve into the depths of her abstract worlds. Her works on paper and wooden panels are characterized by bold color palettes, organic shapes, and a deliberate, layered approach. Through this methodical process, Silvers creates compositions that evoke both movement and tranquility.
Xinchen Li
www.xinchenlimetalsmithingsculpture.com | Instagram: @xinchenli_art
Xinchen Li is a jewelry artist and sculptor from China, currently based in the United States. She earned her BFA from the University of Kansas and completed her MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Rooted in nostalgia for her carefree childhood, Xinchen’s work employs a narrative approach to tell stories of her surroundings, weaving together memories and symbolism. Initially focused on small-scale jewelry, she has expanded her practice from wearables to installation-based sculptures.
pan ellington
A multidisciplinary artist from a working class background with the heart of an outlaw, pan ellington’s body of work comprises the written word, performance / guerrilla art, photography & experimental film, with the majority of their visual artwork in recent years photomontage, “a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media,” assembled primarily on found canvases and other material acquired on their daily walks throughout the City of Berkeley, utilizing their own archive of photographic images, clips from newspapers and magazines, material they’ve collected beginning in the late 1990s.
Elaine Nguyen
Katie Smart
Matthew Felix Sun
matthewfelixsun.com | Instagram: @matthewfelixsun
Matthew Felix Sun depicts life frankly and critically, as visual surfaces and interior qualities. In recent years, he has moved away from purely representational work, leaning into shifts of pattern, color, tone, and shape. He tends toward a limited palette and records the world in a muted light; yet sometimes uses more vibrant colors to express enhanced emotions, or allows more exuberant colors to generate a dimension of visual excitement, acknowledging that joy remains, however grim the world may be.
Rosemary Morrison
Translating the world around me on to a canvas is a passion of mine, specifically exploring textures and colors that I have observed in the natural world. I love finding new ways of interpreting my surroundings and recording what I have seen.
Mary Patterson
My work is optimistic, colorful, mostly humorous, adding touch melancholic mood at times, evocative of themes both childlike and adult. My animal characters and their environments, interiors and exteriors represent story and slices of life.
Pixi
fleshdweller.com | Instagram
Pixie (they/he) is a trans, filipinx first gen artist, who grew up in Japan & Southern California, and now resides in Oakland. Pixie’s work traverses many different realms of selfhood, gender, memory, and the ineffable magic of the mundane; creation as a invite to the innards of their world, in hopes it serves as a warm mirror for yours. His world is molded with ambiguous yet familiar creatures, bodies, and forms, which pull you into a strangely cozy, liminal ether; a soft hum.
Swilk
The spider makes their home over and over. When it's destroyed, the spider rebuilds. I spend years on my home to make my belonging permanent. I waste my effort; home is not a place, it is an emotion. The spider masters this emotion with the web, using it as an object to connect them to any world they occupy.
Current member
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