East Bay Yesterday

When Andre Jones (AKA Natty Rebel) does a mural in Oakland’s Hoover-Foster neighborhood, he doesn’t just paint whatever he feels like. Andre meets with longtime residents, shop owners, and other local artists to dig into the area’s rich history. He’ll study old family photos to make sure the vibrant images that cover the walls along San Pablo Ave. reflect the people who walked these streets in the decades before he got here. Explaining this collaborative process, Jones said, “As a public artist, you become an art anthropologist, because you have to do the research so that you can add a little bit of background imagery to the [mural] that adds to the overall narration.” For the second volume of this Hoover-Foster Stories mini-series, I wanted to interview Jones because one of the most striking things that participants of the Black Liberation Walking Tour will notice in this neighborhood is the proliferation of street art. The organization that Jones founded, Bay Area Mural Program, has collaborated with crews