Emerging artists

Oakland Art Murmur’s Emerging Artist Program supports early-career visual artists at a pivotal moment in their practice. Through networking opportunities, professional development, and public exhibition during East Bay Open Studios, the program provides access, visibility, and community—helping artists grow sustainable creative lives and shape the future of East Bay visual culture. Designed for artists at the beginning of their careers with limited experience exhibiting and selling their work, the program reduces barriers to participation and opens pathways into the local arts ecosystem.

winter 2026 cohort

ALEXIS FLOYD

Alexis Floyd is a Bay Area-based photographer whose work explores the relationship between style, intimacy, memory, and identity. Drawing inspiration from music, fashion, and culture, her photographs balance visual expression with the complexities of lived experience. Floyd earned her B.A. in Mass Communication from Norfolk State University in 2017 and her M.A. from the Academy of Art University in 2023.

Viewing photography as a means of freedom and individuality, Floyd creates images that invite emotional connection and reflection. Her practice bridges past, present, and future, drawing from ancestral lineage, family history, personal experiences, and the stories of others. Through an exploration of the body, memory, vulnerability, and human connection, she seeks to capture moments of honesty in a world increasingly shaped by performance and distance. Rooted in originality, style, and grace, Floyd's work invites viewers to pause, reflect, and find meaning in the complexities of the human experience.

Zoe huey

Zoe Huey (they/them) was born and raised in Oakland. Their relationship to art began at a young age, with their mom handing them colored pencils and paper. Drawing was their first language. Zoe is a mark maker, oil painter, movement improviser, choreographer, and dance educator. These different practices weave together in Zoe's work - in process and final form- unfolding and deepening in relationship with one another. Zoe's visual imagery is inspired by movement they witness in nature - trees spiraling, leaves curling, grass swaying, shadows changing over time.

Zoe's artistic practice is rooted in their desire to slow down and experience the act of seeing and looking closely. How is sustaining attention a labor of love?

Zoe received their BA from Bennington College in 2018 and has been living and working as an artist in the Bay Area since. Over the past few years they have been working as a dance teacher. Zoe learns a lot about creativity, play, and improvisation from the kids they teach.

isaiah williams

Isaiah Williams is a non-binary African American artist based in the Bay Area. After relocating to Oakland with his family following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Williams discovered a love for art through childhood drawing sessions with his mother. What began as a personal connection grew into a lifelong passion. Williams received multiple first-place art awards throughout middle and high school, organized a student government initiative to raise funds for the arts, and earned a scholarship to the Academy of Art University. His professional experience includes working with Netflix and presenting a solo exhibition at the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco.

Through large-scale acrylic paintings, Williams tells stories rooted in his community while advocating for greater visibility and representation of artists of color. Often working with life-size human subjects, he creates his canvases by hand and uses vibrant colors and grayscale palettes to explore identity and lived experience. His monumental approach to painting is intentional, claiming space within galleries for artists and communities whose perspectives have historically been underrepresented.

Aleksei Akhachev

Aleksei Akhachev is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist.He allows materials and instinct to guide the process, often combining natural and industrial elements. Influenced by experiences of uncertainty and chronic pain, his sculptures frequently take on sharp, defensive, or unsettling forms. Spikes, rough surfaces, and unexpected combinations of materials give physical form to feelings that are otherwise difficult to express.

More recently, his interest in nature and artistic control has led him to incorporate living organisms into his practice. In an ongoing project, he creates sculptures inhabited by Monocentropus balfouri, a unique communal species of tarantula. He allows the spiders to transform his structures with their silk, guided by their own instincts and needs. In this process, they become collaborators, and the sculptures continue to evolve beyond his direct control. This willingness to surrender control runs throughout Aleksei’s practice. Rather than assigning fixed meanings to his sculptures, he creates objects that invite emotional responses and leave room for viewers to bring their own experiences and interpretations.

mariana Moreno-Gonzalez

Mariana Moreno-Gonzalez is a self-taught painter whose modern surrealist style explores emotional expression, spirituality, and the connection between humans, animals, and the natural world. Describing her paintings as "visual diaries," she creates intuitive compositions that blur the boundaries between the physical and spiritual realms.

Her artistic practice began in 2021 following the loss of her beloved dog, Lobo, when painting became a way to process grief and honor their bond. This experience shaped her heart-centered approach to artmaking, grounded in love, patience, and emotional openness.

Through detailed pet portraits and surrealist paintings, Moreno-Gonzalez seeks to capture the unique spirit of her subjects and the relationships they share with others. Working from personal photographs and careful observation, she approaches each canvas as a meditative process, allowing intuition and emotion to guide her work. Her paintings celebrate the healing power of art, the unconditional love of animal companions, and the connections that extend beyond the physical world.

Jennifer Dowland

Jennifer is a Bay Area-based textile artist whose quilt-based practice explores memory, domestic space, and the histories embedded in everyday fabrics.

Working with repurposed cloth, found imagery, and layered collage, she creates compositions that honor the often-unseen labor of women and the resourceful traditions passed down through generations.

Drawing from her upbringing in an immigrant household, Jennifer's work reflects a tradition of mending, saving, and transforming materials. Her background in architecture informs her approach to structure, pattern, and spatial relationships, while hand-sewing, quilting, and piecing bring a tactile quality to her compositions. Through slow, intentional processes of repetition and repair, she explores the connections between personal history, place, and belonging. Her practice bridges traditional craft and contemporary art, transforming familiar domestic materials into layered expressions of memory and lived experience.

Nicole lahy

Nicole Lahy is a Berkeley-based painter who is fascinated by the emotional power of light.

Nicole earned a BFA in Communication Design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and her paintings are heavily influenced by her experience studying cinematography recently at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Cities, particularly Californian cities, have been an endless source of inspiration for Nicole with the variety and density of architecture and plant life, and of course, the golden light. 

former Emerging Artists

Learn more about our inaugural Summer 2025 Emerging Artist Cohort.

  • Mark Romero

    Mark Romero

  • HANAH GOLDOV

  • Pam Jue

  • QI HAN

  • Niko Alexander

    Niko Alexander

  • Donny phan

  • Laura Wasserman

  • finn jordan

  • Shreya Sankar

  • Nadir Wright

  • ren chanel patrick

  • Ngoc nguyen

  • Laurie caird

  • Guillermo Navarrete Davis

  • Sheilby Macena

  • Derick Davies

    Emerging Artist & Spotlight Artist Summer 2025

  • Roland martin

  • Noah Johnson

  • Cameron Redd

  • Trisha Mah

  • Chloe Wanaselja

  • Melanie Tiongson

  • Michela Colognese