MEDICAL OFFICE BUILDING, Berkeley

Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors was honored to work with a repeat national healthcare client and architect team to help develop a comprehensive art program for a beautiful new three-story medical office building in Berkeley. The client was looking to reflect the “story” of the city of Berkeley, purchasing artworks by artists working in, or with strong ties to Berkeley and the East Bay.

Multiple artworks reflect the “feel” of the city through themes of environmentalism, higher education, and the city’s architecture. Artworks are uplifting and calming, while incorporating a full-spectrum of color. Re:Configuration by Maya Kabat, a twelve-foot high oil high painting with bright, horizontal lines and ombre blues, calls upon the calming, healing power of water at the welcome lobby. At the stairs between the welcome lobby and second floor lobby is an acrylic installation by former Bay Area artist Melissa Borrell, entitled Raining Down Color. The piece picks up light from the lobby's two-story windows, and its dynamic form invites users up the stairs to the second level of the building.

An installation of glass discs by painter Mel Prest entitled Bloom calls upon the artist’s vocabulary of minimal, linear forms whose colors are based on flowers found growing in the Bay Area. The series was created during the artist’s residency at Bullseye Glass in neighboring Emeryville, her first exploration with this new medium. Upstairs in the pharmacy, her painting Lilac Aura mirrors the linear patterns of the glass, in the artist’s more familiar medium, acrylic on panel, activating conversation between the two bodies of work.

A dynamic, dimensional wall installation by Mikey Kelly greets viewers in the an upper story wait area. Sea Memories aids patient wayfinding, creates visual interest, and demarcates public space from department interiors.

Photographic works include images of beach plastic assemblages by celebrated Bay Area artists and environmentalists Judith Selby-Lang and Richard Lang. Also, large-scale photographic composite prints by Lisa Levine pull together the architectural styles of Berkeley, and reflect the myriad of cultures and faces of local residents. Dale Kistemaker’s minimal photographs of rows of books with spines hidden honor these containers of knowledge and Berkeley’s renowned university.