Some artists prefer to work in complete solitude, isolated with their materials and their creative visions. Others, however, thrive in the hive of an artistic community, supporting and sometimes mentoring each other, collaborating, and arguing about intent and process.
Oakland’s The Dome Center for Art, Music and Dance has been the perfect example of the latter live/work environment since 1976, when sculptor Peter Voulkos bought a dome-shaped former food-processing building, partnered with ceramicist Marilyn Levine, and turned it into a space that has nurtured four generations of Bay Area artists, both visual and performing.
Yet until now there has never been a major museum exhibition dedicated to The Dome and its artists. On view at San Francisco’s di Rosa Center through Sept. 12, “The Dome Show” remedies that omission. It features work from Voulkos, Levine, Bella Feldman, Tom Holland, Clay Jensen, JoAnn Gillerman, Donald Farnsworth, JP Long, Takming Chuang, Juan Santiago, Leah Virsik and others, some of it selected from di Rosa’s permanent collection.
Kate Eilertsen, di Rosa executive director and chief curator, lived in Oakland for 20 years and knew many Oakland-based artists. So when The Dome reached out to di Rosa’s curator of exhibitions and programs, Twyla Ruby, about the upcoming 50-year anniversary of the complex’s founding, they both visited it.
“We were blown away,” Eilertsen said in a phone interview. “I fell in love. That visit inspired the exhibition. Peter Voulkos was an amazing influence on so many mediums.”
The synchronicity between The Dome’s vision and the di Rosa’s was clear. “The Dome’s spirit of experimentation and collaboration mirrors the ethos of the di Rosa collection itself,” Eilertsen said. “Our organizations have a shared belief in supporting and championing artists, embracing the offbeat, and creating space for new ideas and ways of thinking, which we’re excited to explore in this show. We would be so happy if we had artists on campus all the time.”
In selecting works to be shown in “The Dome Show,” the co-curators wanted to create a feeling of “salon,” Eilertsen said, and also wanted to highlight some of the female artists, such as Levine, Feldman and Gillerman, who have not gotten as much recognition as they deserve.
Feldman, for example, was a mentor to sculptor/painter JP Long, whose works from his “Carbon & Canvas” series are featured in the exhibition. Long was a teenage student at the California College of Arts & Crafts when he encountered The Dome. “I always wanted to get into it,” he said. This wasn’t easy, but at age 21, Feldman hired him as her second assistant. He considers himself part of the fourth generation of artists working at The Dome.
“There was a mutual mindset” between him and the sculptor known for her work in steel and glass, Long said. In discussion with Feldman, he told her, “I don’t fear failure. Fear is your greatest handicap.”
Although Long only knew Voulkos briefly before The Dome founder died, he described his observation of the interactions between Voulkos, famous for prioritizing “process over polish” and ceramicist Levine, known for the precise detail of her representations of leather shoes, bags, briefcases and other objects.
Long remembered a story Feldman told him about Levine when she was a grad student. “The assignment was to make a pair of shoes. She spent so much time making one shoe so realistic that she didn’t have time to make the second shoe,” he said. So she made a “peg leg” to accompany the first shoe. Voulkos’ much more “everything in the moment” approach had a resonance with Levine’s often-impish humor.
Both Voulkos and Levine also figure in another concept behind “The Dome Show,” Eilertsen said. “Craft has gotten a bad reputation [in the art world],” she said. But in this show, the intersection of craft and art is shown perfectly. “Crafts are a Northern California strength. When I go out, I see craftsmanship at its finest,” she said.
“The Dome Show” exhibition also includes “rarely seen and never-before-exhibited works,” according to di Rosa materials. These include a colored pencil work on handmade paper by Judy Chicago from “The Birth Project,” made in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth in the early years of The Dome; a clay-and-fiberglass sculpture by Levine; and a work from Feldman’s “Utility/Futility” series “that transforms domestic, feminized utilitarian objects into monumental sculpture.”
A concurrent exhibition at Orchard Galleries will present contemporary work by current Dome artists alongside historic pieces by Feldman and Joseph Slusky. Together, the two venues will host a series of collaborative events and public programs throughout summer 2026.
Long suggests viewing the exhibition as a way to see the diversity and richness of the voices.
“You can see the connections,” he said. “The way they are playing off each other. When you walk into The Dome [itself], you know people are thinking about what their role is there, and in the history of art. The building was almost totaled. [Instead it became] a community of misfits who have propped each other up all these years.”
Di Rosa materials conclude: “At a time of ongoing uncertainty for arts institutions, The Dome Show affirms the resilience of artist-led communities and their essential role in shaping the cultural life of the Bay Area.”
Upcoming events:
Love Supreme: Fundraiser for Coltrane Arts + di Rosa
June 6, 5-7pm; $20
“Live/Work”: Panel discussion about history and future of live/work spaces in Bay Area
June 27, 6-8pm; $10
Artist talk with Takming Chuang, Clay Jensen, JP Long
Focus on thematic and material connections cross-generationally in The Dome. Also featuring screening of Elizabeth Sher’s short film on Bella Feldman
Aug. 1, 4-5:30pm; $10
World premier of short film “The Dome” by Tom Franco, and closing party
Sept. 5, 6-8pm; $20
‘The Dome Show,’ through Sept. 12, at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, 1150 25th St., San Francisco. 707.933.7797. dirosaart.org
[Ed. note: This online story has been revised to include clarifications about Bella Feldman and Marilyn Levine, per JP Long.]
