Now about to graduate from the California College of Arts in Oakland, the two friends have dropped the name but kept the spirit that had them walking the rails for bits of treasure in the everyday environment. Their new venture, the Boontling Gallery in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood, is a receptacle for as many diverse examples of visual art as these congenial 21-year-olds can stuff into it.

The Boontling exists to show the greatest possible quantity and range of visual work by other, mostly young artists known to the two curators in the East Bay, San Francisco and beyond as far away as Kansas City, Mo., as well as Austin, Texas, and Mexico. Simpson and Weisberg say it serves budding and established artists who find few places to be seen between the extremes of warehouse spaces and formal galleries.

"We're also trying to create an atmosphere not only where you can see art but a place where you can talk art and hang out with us," said Simpson, a painter and sculptor who lives with his parents, Ronn and Marcela Simpson, in Berkeley. "It's less a serious, formal gallery than a community center. I've gone into many galleries where they won't even give you the time of day to talk if they don't consider you important. We wanted to open it up to everyone. "

They wanted their gallery to be highly visible. They found what they were looking for in a vacant storefront on fast-changing Telegraph Avenue near the MacArthur BART station, where spiffy young commuters on the way home to their sunny Temescal nests pass by the churches, fast-food outlets and contractor supply stores of the old neighborhood.

The Boontling is set up salon-style, with a room in the back for showing art and one in the front for socializing. Simpson and Weisberg, who take art seriously but not themselves, can be found there on the weekends a step inside the open door and under the Boontling's Wild West-flavored logo featuring the face of a staring, bearded miner, a real grizzled 49er, over a crossed pick and shovel.

Boontling is the name of the pidgin dialect spoken by some longtime residents of the Alexander Valley in Mendocino County. Simpson and Weisberg named their gallery after it because they were taken with the idea of a diverse but isolated community making up its own language from materials at hand, like the names of local people and places.

In a sense, a similar process goes on with an artist searching the railroad tracks for found objects to combine into something new.

"We liked the idea of this old language and culture which is almost extinct now," Weisberg said. "It was an interesting little culture in such a small region. To see something new in something old -- reviving something that's almost extinct but also holding on to some of its old qualities."

The Boontling connection came about by accident. A friend found a Boontling dictionary, and for a while Simpson and Weisberg had themselves convinced that Boontling was a language spoken by the argonauts of 1849. It was too good not to be true, considering their own crew used to be called the 49ers.

When they learned the truth, they made it part of their ongoing story as artists. A trip to Boontling-land was in order.

"We went on our Boontling pilgrimage before we started the gallery," Simpson said.

"We thought it was important to visit the homeland," Weisberg deadpanned with a glint.

Simpson and Weisberg drove through Boonville so fast that they missed it the first time. Then they discovered that they couldn't afford to buy lunch. But all was redeemed when they met a genuine Boontling speaker, Wes Smoot, author of the pamphlet "Introduction to Boontling."

Simpson returned determined to learn the strange tongue.

And it was decided that the 49er in the gallery logo would be named in Smoot's honor.

The gallery premiered in mid-January with an exhibition of works by its creators. A printmaking show opens today. The previous show, "Overhung," featured examples by more than 80 artists displayed floor-to-ceiling in the manner of a 19th century Parisian salon.

"When we started hanging this," Weisberg said, "we started looking at the walls as canvases -- becoming one giant piece."

Perched high up on one wall was Texan and one-time fellow student Ben Belknap's "Boraxo Man," a ceramic sculpture with a visual pun placed below the figure's belt. On another were anime-influenced folk figures by former Oakland resident Deth P. Sun, one of the most accomplished artists in the show.

In contrast was a graphic showing the confident, graffiti-like strokes of famed tattoo artist Mike Giant, who used to work at a shop in the neighborhood.

"He's really into skulls," Simpson said. "I'd say he's the best tattoo artist in the world. If I were into tattoos, I'd definitely have them all over my body."

Oakland art student Cari Morris' oil-on-canvas "Memory Map" resembled a people-less California landscape by Richard Diebenkorn at first glance. But look closer and the shadows of an industrial landscape peek through.

Two computer-generated prints made up of drawings scanned into a computer represented the Oakland artist known as Ogi, one of the best-known artists in the show.

"I love looking at art, and this is a good way to do it," Weisberg said.

Long live the 49ers and Wes Smoot.

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