Gearbox Gallery

Jules Campbell

Born and raised in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, Jules A. Campbell started her creative career as a graduate of The New College of Speech & Drama, London, UK in 1974 (now an affiliate of Middlesex University). Early on she taught English and established the Drama Department at Southaw Girls’ School in North London, UK.

Campbell moved to the States in the early 80’s and eventually turned her attention to the visual arts, studying at DVC where she took classes in painting, drawing, printmaking (monotype, etching, woodcut, screen printing), figure drawing/painting, watercolour, sculpture and metal arts. Throughout the last decade, she has been involved with both visual and performing arts organizations and has participated in many, many exhibitions and events. In 2015 Campbell became a founding member of GearBox Gallery in Oakland where she currently maintains a studio exploring the beauty and grit of the urban environments she embraces as an inspiration.

Harry Clewans

Harry Clewans is largely self-taught and has had his studio in Oakland since 1983.  He has exhibited extensively in California, nationally and abroad. He has been awarded the James Phalen Award for printmaking and a fellowship at the Kala Institute of Art. His art consists of unique large-scale woodblock prints made by a system of assembling hundreds of prints together to form the larger image. His artwork is in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the Mills College Art Collection and the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (Judah L. Magnes Museum).

Mittie Cuetara

Mittie Cuetara grew up drawing—creating secret worlds, circuses, laboratories, and fashion shows. After earning a BA from the Museum School in Boston, she went on to write and illustrate several children’s picture books, and create greeting cards, textile designs, and coloring books.
Since earning an MFA from Mills College in 2022, Mittie has focused on acrylic painting, delving into the deeper questions of why, what, and how she paints. Her work has been featured in juried exhibitions throughout the Bay Area, including at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center, SF Women Artists Gallery, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Falkirk Cultural Center, and various private galleries.

Image left: Leaning Out For Love, acrylic on canvas, 24”x 36” | 2024

Linda Ellinwood

“Walking through a landscape, I am constantly attracted to the remains of the germination process found on the ground: seed pods, leaves, branches. Over years I have collected and stored them in an antique seed cabinet. Taking cues from the materials themselves, I combine them in such a way that you might question if they occurred naturally or were finessed. The process is organic, elements connect with each other and become distinct in their own right, intrinsically intimate, beautiful, haunting, humorous. I hope these pieces kindle an appreciation for the exquisite natural objects that surround us.”

Christine Ferrouge

Christine Ferrouge is an American painter who paints psychological narratives based on her three daughters. Girlhood and identity are primary to the work’s content. Loosely sketched environments and cultural references wink at the careful viewer. Her strong and dignified women-to-be contemplate their world through imagination and introspective moments. The paintings portray young experiences that are poignantly familiar to us all.

Keenly aware of her predecessors, Ferrouge’s paintings comment on the history of oil painting itself in how she presents the subjects and uses the medium. The scale and command of each young figure is unlike the docile commodities that women have commonly embodied in the past. Her contemporary style and application of paint celebrates drawing and abstract rendering, with unconventionally exposed underpainting, calculated negative spaces, and bold strokes of color.

Ferrouge grew up in Minnesota and fell in love with painting at a young age. She studied art in Florence, Amsterdam, and Spain, and holds a BFA in painting from the University of Evansville, Indiana. Recent honors include the deYoung Museum Open Exhibit, solo show at Gray Loft Gallery, and featured exhibitions at GearBox Gallery. Ferrouge is a teacher, curator, and promoter of the arts, who contributes passionately to art communities such as: Oakland Art Murmur, Los Angeles Art Association, and Kipaipai Fellows. Ferrouge’s studios are in Oakland and Los Angeles.

Rachel Major

Rachel Major is a visual artist and art educator based in San Francisco, CA. Rachel’s current series involves both covering up and exposing, precarity and chance. The paintings consist of layers built up by dripping paint onto canvas. She controls the placement of the drip only to give up that control and allow the paint to move on its own, through gravity and chance, choosing its own path. Occasionally she coaxes the paint to move in a direction that exposes specific colors. Fragments of color are left trying to hide yet pushing to be seen.
Originally from Toronto, Canada, she is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Canada (OCAD), has a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art (NSCAD) in Halifax, Nova Scotia as well an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. She has exhibited in Canada, France and the U.S. Rachel has been a member of Gearbox Gallery since 2021.

Image left: Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 48"x30" | 2022

TaVee McAllister Lee

TaVee McAllister Lee works in the arena of installation, combining various paper elements into intimate collages of a free nature. Relying on “consumer” papers. i.e. those that are readily available to almost everyone in our culture, like magazines, gift-wrap, and wallpapers, she constructs poetic, non-linear commentary focusing on themes of vulnerability, loss, connection and the relationship between current consumerist demand and a future vision of the ecological consequences.

Born in South Dakota, TaVee McAllister Lee grew up mostly in Oklahoma, after a stint in Laos as a little girl. She attended Oklahoma State University as an architectural engineering student and went on to study at the Kansas City Art Institute, earning a BFA in Painting and Printmaking there. Eventually, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and now maintains an East Bay studio in Martinez. Over the years she’s been the curator, director or coordinator for many, many exhibitions, as well as a founding member of GearBox Gallery, with a long exhibition record of her own.

Joni Marie Theodorsen

Joni Marie Theodorsen was born in the East Bay, but considers the whole West Coast her home. She received BA’s in Art and Art history from the University of California, Santa Cruz, completing her MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle as well as a stint in Rome. She has been painting for over 20 years, showing in group and solo shows, receiving accolades and awards along the way. She is currently living in Oakland.

Joni’s paintings address a sensibility of the horizon and the volumes of open spaces. She has been carving out images of near and far, of atmosphere and veiled layers with a consistent group of media: oil on newspaper collage, enamel or polished gesso on wood, and watercolor on panel.

Recently, Joni has been keeping her art studio in Hayward, while taking care of her father, a stray dog, a feral kitten and a small urban wildlife sanctuary. Seasonal residents include nesting bluebirds, hundreds of monarch butterflies and other small visitors.

Eileen Starr Moderbacher

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
I love color! Light and dark, vibrant or dull, subtle or harsh – I love it all! The exuberance of working with luscious color palettes drives me wild.

My process involves merging inspiration with emotion to create original works that resonate with people. When I see a captivating artwork or even an intricate pattern on a simple piece of fabric I am flooded with fresh ideas and a new artistic vision. I use this “aha moment” to create a unique color palette, which I then take to the canvas.

The movement and composition of the painting changes and unravels dramatically as I add new elements and eliminate others. The painting and I are in deep dialogue. This intrinsic dialogue allows me to decipher the essence of each piece and create works that pull the viewer into the world of color that I love so much, and makes life so much more vibrant for us all.

BIO:
Eileen Starr Moderbacher is a graduate of California College of the Arts in San Francisco with a MFA in Painting. She is based in Berkeley, California. Recently she has published a book of her work titled HOW MUCH FURTHER. It can be purchased on Blurb. Here is the link to order.

Image left: SYNCOPATION, acrylic on paper/panel, 48” x 36” | 2024

Jamie Treacy

Jamie Treacy is an Oakland, California-based visual artist, masters swimmer and art educator. He received his BFA at the University of Michigan and his MFA from CCA (both degrees in painting and drawing). He also holds a Single Subject Visual Art credential and a Career Technical Education credential in Arts, Media and Entertainment.

Jamie’s artwork is imbued with themes of eco-justice, speculative fiction and exo-biology. He creates bodies of work in painting, drawing and mixed media that draw imagery from underwater worlds, the forest and his internal landscape.

His philosophy as an art educator is that all youth deserve access to a high-quality arts education, and that creative inquiry is fundamental to solving the most pressing problems of our future.

Jamie is the recipient of the William H. Lewis Watercolor award and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation fellowship. Jamie’s work has been exhibited in the California Bay Area, Canada, Mexico and Japan. He currently works for the Oakland Unified School District as an arts instructional coach.

Image left: Every Time I Search for Pain, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48" | 2024