Click to View Pricing and Availability
Eleanor Harwood Gallery is thrilled to continue our backroom gallery program, where we hand over our small gallery space to the main gallery artist and allow them to curate an exhibition.
Holding Pattern is the 5th exhibition curated by the artist, exhibiting in the main space.
Holding Pattern is a group exhibition curated by Martin Machado, whose concurrent solo show, Fine Dine The Demons, is in the main gallery.
Holding Pattern features thirteen artists: Matthew Bajda, Blakely Dadson, Bill Daniel, Michelle Fernandez, Alex Nicholson, Josh Mitchell, Pacolli, Joshua Rampage, Rami Sharkey, Swampy, Rachel Stallings Thomander, Ben Venom, and Emilio Villalba. The artists were chosen based on their work’s aesthetic rhythms and personal connection to both each other and to the curator, to weave a sort of visual blanket to give comfort to those who need it.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Matthew Bajda
Based in San Francisco, Bajda is a photographer and artist best known of this Mace of Destruction Series of photographs. See more of his work here: https://www.matthewbajda.com/
Blakely Dadson
Dadson is an artist living and working in Santa Cruz. His series of portraits are included in Holding Pattern. See more of his work here: https://blakelythomasdadson.com/work
Bill Daniel (born 1959) is an American experimentaldocumentary film artist, photographer, film editor, and cinematographer. He is also an installation artist, curator, and former zine publisher. His full-length film, Who is Bozo Texino? about the tradition of hobo and railworker boxcar graffiti was completed in 2005 and has screened extensively throughout the United States and Europe.[1]Daniel has collaborated with several artists from the Bay Area Mission School art movement, notably Margaret Kilgallen and has worked on multiple projects with underground director Craig Baldwin. Film/video artist Rankin Renwick of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass has been a frequent touring partner, collaborator and co-curator. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for film.
Michelle Fernandez
Michelle Fernandez is a Mexican-born painter whose tactile works explore the tension between control and spontaneity. Working primarily with oil stick and sand, Fernandez embraces an experimental, process-driven approach that highlights the materiality of her medium. Her abstract compositions often emerge through instinctive gestures and layered textures, reflecting a personal dialogue with the need to let go, a challenge she faces both in art and in daily life. Influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement, Fernandez creates work that grows through unexpected outcomes and invites viewers into moments of vulnerability and discovery. She lives and paints in San Francisco.
Alex Nicholson
Alex Nicholson is a photographer and arts & culture editor who has spent over a decade crafting pictures and words for screens, feeds, and the printed page. Driven by a persistent curiosity about the shared threads of process and understanding across mediums, perspectives, and disciplines, Alex blends diverse influences with a distinct eye and an intuitive sense for talent. Over the years, Alex has carefully cultivated relationships with emerging and established artists, shepherding countless projects from concept to publication. In every project—be it a magazine feature, a documentary interview, or working behind the camera—Alex finds quiet joy in witnessing how creative energies, shaped by personal histories and environments, intertwine and evolve, shaping both his own work and the broader cultural landscape. In 2013, Alex joined Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine as Managing Editor and continues to contribute as a writer, editor, and producer alongside pursuing personal and collaborative projects. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Josh Mitchell
Mitchell paints minimal color field paintings marked by strong geometry and composition. See more of his work on IG @totallycrafted_jmitchell
Pacolli
Pacolli is a Brazilian-born, San Francisco-based artist known for creating vibrant designs for clothing stickers and original works.
Joshua Rampage
Joshua Rampage was raised in and around the foot of Lake Michigan. He has lived and worked in Chicago, Bloomington, IN, San Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne Australia, Iron River, MI, Portland, OR, and New York City. He currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
"Everyone knows what a secret is, and everyone has at least one. To want to know a secret, to have a secret, to keep a secret, to share a secret; that is something ubiquitous. In composition, color, and a sense of musicality, the paintings suggest an excitement that reminds us what it feels like to be alive. These pieces are not simply paintings, or secrets; they yearn to exist as new objects of curiosity." -Joshua Rampage
Rami Sharkey
Born in Calgary, Alberta based in New Orleans. Rami Sharkey is a self-taught artist primarily recognized for his abstract compositions on both canvas and paper which explore gesture and rhythm. He employs a process-oriented method, where he combines energetic gestures with mark-making, resulting in a record of movement. Rami’s paintings were first exhibited at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans in the juried exhibition, “And Now For Something New Vol 4”. Sharkey just recently closed his first solo exhibition “Paint Jobs” in March 2024. Rami continues to maintain a studio practice in New Orleans.
Rachel Stallings Thomander
Rachel Stallings Thomander is a Colombian American multidisciplinary artist. She lives and works in Santa Cruz with her husband and two sons. Thomander’s work activates an exchange between childhood and adulthood in objects that staddle decorative and utilitarian, opening the door to a fantastical realm of creative exploration. “One of the purposes of these [works] is to call attention to the utilitarian objects in the home. Where do my spoons come from? Who made my clock? What country was my jacket made in? Which traditions or histories are these objects tied to? I make functional and nonfunctional works that are in conversation with each other. They are partly in charge of their own creation, forming a world of their own.” Thomander has exhibited work at Tropical Contemporary, CTRL+SHFT, Nous Tous Gallery, Guerrero Gallery, Richmond Art Center, and Berkeley Art Museum.
Swampy
Swampy straddles the lines between graffiti, street art and conceptual art. His strict anonymity has kept many details of his personal life unknown, but he has developed a cult following for posting photos of his freight-hopping adventures across the country. His signature horned skull moniker is painted from coast to coast, on trains, rooftops, sidewalks, and even tattooed on a number of people. The intrigue around this mysterious character is in his ability to turn places into landmarks of both time and location, by tagging them along his journeys. Much like The Reader, Swampy is one of the best-known street artists doing work that is just out of left field and still a bit underground. Such work is inspiring street artists to reevaluate the role that they play in society as the genre gets more and more socially accepted, co-opted by capitalism, and further away from mark-making and human connections.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007 with a Master of Fine Arts degree. His work has been shown both nationally and internationally including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), National Folk Museum of Korea, HPGRP Gallery (Tokyo), Fort Wayne Museum, Charlotte Fogh Gallery (Denmark), Taubman Museum of Art, Gregg Museum of Art and Design, and the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed by NPR: All Things Considered, Playboy, Juxtapoz Magazine, KQED, Maxim, and CBS Sunday Morning. Venom has lectured at the California College of Arts, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Midlands Art Centre, Humboldt State University, Oregon College of Art and Craft, and Adidas. Recently, he was the artist in residence at MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum. Ben Venom is currently Visiting Faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Emilio Villalba
Emilio Villalba (b. 1984) is a Mexican-American artist whose vibrant paintings capture the beauty and chaos of everyday life. Represented by Dolby Chadwick Gallery, Villalba creates works that reveal his distinctive painterly approach through expressive brushwork and thoughtful impasto. His canvases feature deeply personal elements—from intimate portraits of loved ones to commonplace objects that populate his home and studio—all rendered with a loose, gestural approach that communicates emotional immediacy. Drawing inspiration from various artistic movements including the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Expressionism, and Abstraction, Villalba's unique visual language transforms the mundane into extraordinary narratives that resonate with viewers on a human level. His work is in the permanent collections of the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento) and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas). Villalba lives and paints in San Francisco and is an Associate Professor of Art at Cañada College in Redwood City.