Ines Kramer’s mixed media paintings are composites of several locations from throughout Alameda County with multiple points of view and perspectives.

Artist’s Statement: While exploring Alameda County to take the photographs used as collage elements for these paintings, I was struck by the way certain places expressed layers of time. Sparking my imagination, they revealed clues as to how we got here, and where we might be going.

The central image of this artwork is of an open path – a bridge over a nearly forgotten Hayward creek was once the way to church, a spiritual and social center now looked after by the faithful few. To the right, a storefront in a San Leandro neighborhood that no longer gets any retail traffic has been transformed into a home with a teapot collection that hints at wares that may once have been for sale. In Niles, a lone surviving house sits, surrounded by a lot advertising itself as ready for development. What fates await them? Perhaps they will simply be repurposed, like an unglamorous but sturdy utility building in the gardens at Lake Merritt or maybe they will be transformed into an urban bower like a Livermore alleyway on the way to a parking lot. I’ll just daydream on my quiet bench until we get there.