Just east of the West Grand freeway entrance lies a tantalizing plot
of land: acres of dirt, pavement, and shrubbery waiting to be put to
use. The Port of Oakland once used it as a parking lot for Subaru
vehicles that were offloaded from container ships (hence its nickname,
“the Subaru lot”). When the cars left, it was desolate. A few months
ago it caught the eye of Crucible founder Michael Sturtz, who was
looking for a new place to put his annual Fire Arts Festival
— a huge, dazzling celebration of all things pyrotechnic. Sturz
and company normally use the BART lot across the street from their
foundry, but this year BART displaced them in order to do some
construction staging. Sturtz had to lobby several different entities to
rent the new lot (it’s owned by East Bay MUD, the Port of Oakland, and
the Army Base), but he emerged with a prime piece of real estate: ten
acres of paved land, big enough to fit a giant stage, 35 installations,
and a huge outdoor “skill-building” area. Crucible artists rechristened
it “the Fire Arts Arena.” They hope the name sticks.
When patrons first enter this year’s festival, they’ll walk into
“Crucible Main Street,” a nexus of industrial arts workshops (welding,
glass-melting, jewelry-making, ceramics, wood-working, and
blacksmithing among them) plus food and merchandise vendors. This leads
to a neverland of sculptures and installations. A huge mousetrap by
Mark Perez looks like a Rube Goldberg machine, said Crucible
spokeswoman Jan Schlesinger. In other words, it’s a series of gears and
levers that create a complex chain reaction. (A lever trips a hammer,
so the hammer falls down on something, causing a ball to go through a
zigzag thing so that it creates another action, eventually causing a
cage to drop down and catch something — “something,” in this
case, might be a stick of dynamite). Another piece by Oakland artist
Michael Christian looks like the Eiffel Tower (and will probably have
flame at the top). Such eye candy isn’t even the main draw, said
Schlesinger.
In fact, this year’s highlight is Dan Cantrell’s The Rootabaga
Opera, a gypsy-jazz musical based on folk tales by Carl Sandburg.
Combining a score and libretto by Cantrell with puppetry by the
Balinese theater group, Shadow Light Productions, Rootabaga
Opera will center on Depression-era stories about people leaving
the Great Plains to settle out West. Cantrell’s band will join forces
with the women’s vocal group Kitka to create a sonic backdrop.
Afterward, another music group will get onstage to wrench everyone back
into the present (the big draw is Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls,
who performs on Saturday). This year’s Fire Arts Festival will dwarf
all its predecessors, with higher production values and more things
aflame. Naturally, the Crucible artists are stoked. The Crucible’s 9th
Annual Fire Arts Festival runs Wednesday through Saturday, July 15-18,
at the Fire Arts Arena (Wake Ave. at Engineer Rd., Oakland). 8
p.m., $35-$95. TheCrucible.org
