LeRoy Neiman Art Studio in East Oakland opens!

June 6, 2017

The LeRoy Neiman Art Studio at East Oakland Youth Development Center

Friday, May 19, 2017

 

The LeRoy Neiman Foundation is proud to announce the opening of the LeRoy Neiman Art Studio at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC) in Oakland, CA.

 

EOYDC is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit, seeking to develop the artistic, scholastic, recreational, and vocational support for East Oakland’s youngsters and young adults. Founded in 1978 by Robert B. Shetterly, once CEO of Clorox, the organization opened with a commitment to alleviating social inequity through fostering individual talents and cultivating community. In the near-forty years since this inauguration, the non-profit has grown, now encompassing dozens of programs dedicated to art, education, career building, and wellness for local residents between ages 5 and 24.

 

The LeRoy Neiman Art Studio at EOYDC then compliments this program: equipped with large communal tables, track lighting, storage space, and gilded with Neiman’s own artworks and ephemera, the art center is a vibrant oasis where EOYDC’s commitment to community and creative expression can be played out.

 

In addition to enhancing EOYDC’s facilities the new Neiman Art Studio furthers Neiman’s legacy of public-spiritedness. As a self-declared “product of the Great Depression,” “high school drop-out,” who foremost became an artist through what he himself termed the “expanded educational opportunities” offered by the G.I. Bill (the artist attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on government stipend), Neiman was attuned to the necessity of a helping hand.

 

Overall, this is the sixth arts center established between the LeRoy Neiman Foundation in partnership with Good Tidings (a charity, headed by Larry Harper, seeking to develop interests of underprivileged children) and the fourth in the Greater Bay Area, where Good Tidings is located.