Walking into the Oakland studio of Joshua Mays feels like entering another world. Colorful, fantastical portraits of characters cover almost every inch of the space, hanging from clothes lines or leaning against walls. Two door-length, painted masks are sculpted from cardboard and brown Kraft paper. Life-size green and purple paper vines hang from the ceiling.
And Mays is indeed building a new world — specifically, a fictional city filled with technological innovations known for its talented visionaries. It’s called Olgaruth.
“The city of Olgaruth is me defining and refining all the ways that I think being alive is cool and awesome and colorful and delicious and truly inspiring,” says Mays, who combined his grandmothers’ names, Olgar and Ruth, to create the city’s moniker.
The public is invited to get to know parts of Olgaruth and its main characters at a free pop-up exhibit titled Portal 002 at the Oakland nonprofit Beats, Rhymes and Life, starting June 7. It’s the second in a series of traveling, limited-run shows about Olgaruth that Mays has planned for the Bay Area and beyond. (The first installment popped up at Oakland’s Aman Cafe in April.)
You’ve perhaps seen some of Mays’ art nouveau-style, anime-inspired work when walking around Oakland, where he’s lived for the past 15 years and has painted a number of public murals. The most prominent one, called Beacon Frequency Reader, adorns the side of 1700 Broadway in downtown Oakland and features a character from his growing Olgaruth world. He has also painted murals in Denver (his hometown); Philadelphia; Portland; Washington, D.C.; Johannesburg; London; Mexico City; and Jakarta.
Mays was drawn to the Bay Area because of its vibrant artist community and proximity to the tech industry. “The idea of meeting up with other weirdos who are doing things that haven’t been done before was super exciting,” Mays says.
He first dove into the idea of Olgaruth during the pandemic, when many of his client-based projects shut down. With his time freed up, he began to explore certain characters and motifs in his work more deeply. Existing paintings beckoned him to take things further and “get really weird with the possibilities,” he says.
“I literally looked at one of my pieces where there was a landscape unfolding, and I sat down and drew that section of that painting onto a map and then expanded it,” Mays explains. “There was a river and I just flowed further up the river and then broke that down into a topographical landscape, and then broke it down into 31 districts and named it Olgaruth.”
Now entering Olgaruth
Since unlocking the door to Olgaruth in his imagination, Mays has been avidly designing its sci-fi cityscapes, producing its soundscapes and plotting numerous storylines.
“I’ve been watching a lot of video game play on YouTube,” Mays says. “And that made me look at my paintings and decide that they are storyboards for video gaming possibilities and for animated streaming.”
The first storyline he’s introducing in these early exhibits, including the upcoming Portal 002, is titled “Savants of the Spore.”
In it, an awakened spore imparts all its knowledge to a select population of children — the savants — who “grow up to be brilliantly aware, yet socially limited, visionaries,” Mays says. The spore also guides a team of researchers and engineers to access innovations from the future, which come to define Olgaruth’s economy and culture.
The three main characters are Montrose Calcot, a bio-engineer and restaurateur with restaurant locations in three districts; Cresta Canon, a professional athlete and competitive video gamer who invented Takal, Olgaruth’s top sport; and Ines Ardley, a recording artist, AI programmer and hacker who went missing while hacking Olgaruth media and communications.
They are all Black women, who are recurring subjects in Mays’ work.
Olgaruth’s 31 ground-level districts include names like Xanadu, Deephaven, Kalamath and Argonne — all inspired by the names of actual streets from neighborhoods in Denver, Philadelphia and Oakland. An additional seven districts (yet to be revealed) float in the air.
For the city’s soundtrack, Mays collaborated with an old high school friend, music producer Troy Tolbert as the duo Color Codes. In the Olgaruth storyline, they were commissioned by the Olgaruthian Provincial Transit Authority (OPTA) to produce audio tours and music mixes for the transit system.
In “ROUGE 168,” you hear the sounds of a bustling urban intersection; a voice announces “you are at Xanadu Station” before various, mostly hip hop-driven beats take over on the way to other stops.
‘I love that I’m facing in this direction’
Building the city of Olgaruth and creating its folklore has been extremely fulfilling for Mays, who says he’s been leaning into his creative flow and trusting his instincts during studio time.
“I love tuning in to what comes up next and [thinking about] how I add to the last session’s possibilities,” Mays says. “Like, I have no idea what’s going to happen and that feels great.”
In addition to the Portals exhibits, he plans to eventually pitch Olgaruth to animation studios and video game developers. He also envisions collaborations and brand sponsorships in fashion and music.
“This can go in 150 different directions. And this is going to go in 150 different directions,” Mays says.
If his vision sounds grand, that’s the point. Decades into his career, Mays feels like he’s found his magnum opus, and he’s not shying away from his ambitions.
“It is the culmination of many [of my] inner children that have just been given permission to be themselves and to realize that there’s tremendous value in that,” he says.
Mays, who’s known to sprinkle motivational musings on his Instagram account from time to time, also hopes Olgaruth and his Portals shows will inspire others to feel less afraid to pursue their boldest ideas. He wants everyone to experience the kind of gratitude he’s feeling on this passion-filled, purposeful journey.
“If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I love that I’m facing in this direction — towards my highest, happiest, most joyful, empowered self.”
Where all signs point to Olgaruth.
‘Portal 002’ is on view June 7–11, 2024 at Beats, Rhymes and Life (450 Santa Clara Ave., Oakland). The opening reception takes place at 6 p.m. on June 7. More information here.
