Gearbox Gallery is proud to present Primal Alchemy, an exhibition of new work by member artists Linda Ellinwood and Jamie Treacy. In their first feature exhibition together, Ellinwood and Treacy explore the primal in its connotation to early humanity, but also the psychological idea of primality as the origin of our emotional lives. The exhibition consists of Ellinwood’s sculptures made of materials like bull kelp, driftwood and palm pods; and Treacy’s works in acrylic and oil on panel.
Ellinwood’s materials are sourced from the plants and trees that populate her Bay Area landscape; friends and gardeners sometimes contribute to her organic material inventory. She then melds them in such a way that one might question if they occurred naturally or were finessed. The resulting sculptures are at once intimate, haunting and/or humorous.
Treacy’s latest series of paintings and drawings (all created in the eleven months since his show Creatures of Duality) examine the ancient human practice of watching fire rage and diminish. In his new series he includes acrylic paintings that are a study of the awesome and terrifying qualities of flames as well as drawings in oil stick that are further abstractions of raw energy and the stories that dancing flames inspire.
Linda Ellinwood; Equanimity; Bull kelp, stems, driftwood; 9.24” x 11” x 7” | 2024
Found natural objects – pods, kelp, driftwood, seeds, stems, branches, leaves–are a decades long fascination and the source of my work for over 40 years. I am drawn by their shapes, texture, colors, and the stories they tell me. Taking cues from those stories and the materials themselves, I meld them in such a way that one might question if they occurred naturally or were finessed. The right fusion of driftwood, pods and stems merge to create a presence; intrinsically intimate, haunting, beautiful or humorous.
This show includes several groupings: one a series of three utilizing bull kelp and driftwood that contrasts the strength and toughness of the material of the kelp with it’s delicate form.
The three pods that make up Kindred were collected directly from their palm tree assisted by the weekly gardeners at the Emeryville Marina. As was the palm pod that creates Onlooker. I am so grateful and delighted by the interest and assistance given by others in helping me collect the materials for my sculptures.
-Linda Ellinwood, 2025
Jamie Treacy, The Final Hour of Pain, Acrylic on panel, 36” x 24” | 2024
This body of work encompasses my studio practice in the 11 months since my last show and series Creatures of Duality. The quick turn-around between major shows was both daunting and galvanizing; a timeline that encouraged bold action. I began this series with a nagging desire to teach myself to paint fire. As Californians, our fear of fire is ever-present, and for many of us, a force that alters the course of our lives. The recent scope of destruction and loss that our friends and family in LA have experienced brings a rawness and tenderness to approaching this elemental force. Following years of paintings about the dusty drought-stricken forests, I painted flames as a form of deep visual research into how to represent something that is at once awesome, terrifying, transparent, and a source of light. Created from my own photographs using our backyard fire pit, the nearly abstract compositions present the mesmerizing practice of watching a fire slowly diminish into embers and ash. Perhaps one of humanity’s oldest shared spaces for reflection.
Building on the idea of watching flames as research, the series grew to include compositions further removed from reality. I work from the premise that the most fascinating shapes already exist around me; in this case moments of waning flames, and the collapse of charred forms into ash. As a practitioner of abstraction and author of visual language; my job is to take that realia and deconstruct, dissolve, isolate and rearrange. If boldness was my guide in this work, then it brought me beyond acrylic painting to experiment with the crude and opulent oil stick. As if drawing with a cylinder of butter, I combined its brashness with delicate colored pencil, graphite and sgraffito techniques. The square “slide-like” format of the oil stick pieces references my fascination with the microscopic and unseen world. I seek to iterate upon our hypnosis as we share a silence by the fire.
-Jamie Treacy, 2025
Linda Ellinwood; Imbroglio; Date palm stems, driftwood; 10” x 11” x 11.5” | 2024
Linda Ellinwood received her BFA in Painting in 1969 from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, moved to California and spent the next ten years experimenting and exploring–including hitch-hiking through Europe for a year planning to work in Florence helping to clean up after the floods but getting in a car accident in Spain on the way and having to come home after 3 months to get put back together. Ended up in New York making macrame neckpieces and selling them on the street in Greenwich Village and to 5th Avenue boutiques; winning First Place in Macrame in the juried Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit in 1970. Returned to California the following year or so and began making stuffed sculpture. She received her MFA in Textiles in 1981 from California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.
Since the late 70’s, Linda has been working with found, natural materials–driftwood, branches, palm pods, seed pods, leaves, seaweed, kelp, pine needles, pine cones seeds, palm bark. These items are often invisible, ignored, tossed aside, mulched. If left in the wild these ephemeral items eventually disintegrate, but without exposure to the elements they last many years. She finds them intrinsically beautiful, haunting and often, humorous. She collects them wherever she happens upon them; in her neighborhood, walking her dog along the bayshore, camping, once even in the grocery store (gauge beans)! She is drawn to their shapes, color, surface texture and sculptural nature. She keeps the smaller pieces in an antique seed cabinet (from the UC Berkeley Botanical Labs).
Linda has been a member of GearBox Gallery in Oakland for five years; she is the Treasurer and a member of the Exhibitions Committee.
Jamie Treacy, When Did You First Know You Had a Body? Oil stick and colored pencil on panel 24” x 24” | 2025
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, 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 and is a managing artist with Gearbox Gallery in Oakland.
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