JINGLETOWN ARTS

Dorie Meister offers unique, hand-crafted sterling silver and copper jewelry, incorporating found objects along with antique beads and precious stones.  The pieces are wearable objects of beauty.

Dorie learned to work with metal using basic hand tools over 25 years ago. Since then, she remains committed to the simplicity of transforming precious metal, (each element hand-formed and forged) into unique, wearable works of art with movement and organic form. 

 I have 2 primary categories.

1) Photo-Based Artwork reflective of subconscious mental activity.

Two series.

‘Subliminal Processing’  artworks are reflective of vast amount of amorphous complex processes that transpire in the subconscious, multiples of which are happening simultaneously at all times. More of ‘who we are’ is within the purview of the subconscious than the conscious mind.

‘Outer Territories’ artworks are reflective of the metaphorical places our subconscious can take us to while dreaming.

2) ‘Urban Nocturnes’

B&W photos taken on film around San Francisco at night from November 1989 to Early 1996. The views of a loner out and about a city. The darkness of night gives more power and weight to everything. 

Vida Pavesich teaches philosophy and makes digital collages. She has been profoundly affected by teaching philosophy–and more recently by teaching environmental ethics for a few years at California State University East Bay and now at the University of San Francisco. She has gone back and forth between being absorbed by ideas, making art, and taking photographs—always knowing that these two preoccupations could somehow inform each other. 

Sarah focuses on ugly or distressed beauty, an aesthetic that can be harder to look at but more honest and challenging to pursue.  Most recently, she has been making sculptures in an attempt to explore and understand vulnerability and susceptibility through the metaphor of children. The pieces are often damaged or weathered to show how we spoil innocence and leave people scarred and changed.  They often have zippers. Life pours in and we absorb it. It runs through our bodies and changes us from the inside out.

Jan Watten is an analog fine art photographer with a BFA in Photography and Certificate in Gallery Management from the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCA). Her work revolves around the idea of identity and she focuses on capturing an aspect or an isolated moment of her subjects.  Using low and high tech film cameras, Watten photographs in black and white, although she does enjoy working in color occasionally.
She has lived and worked in Jingletown since 1984.

Fernando Reyes’s extensive resume of national and regional exhibitions was built from his Jingletown studio in Oakland, California, where he has worked since 1999.  Like many artists, he was a creator from an early age. After almost two decades working in San Francisco as a banker, Reyes left the Bay Area to study at the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with a BFA degree in 1997.

Malcolm is an Oakland based photographer whose cityscapes focus on the unusual, ephemeral, or disappearing in the local urban landscape. His emphasis is on seeing the creative self-expression of the city's inhabitants as the agent of change that generates an environment which is both a statement of Oaklanders' self-definition and a reflection of it. The work frequently aims to contradict both stereotyping and indifference in how Oakland and surrounding East Bay is seen. His work frequently fuses abstraction and documentary, but also freely exploits and reassigns numerous types of photographic conventions, such as postcards, cinema, and journalism, that attempt to pre-set expectations about how to interpret imagery.  He also shoots commercially.

Jill McLennan explores and observes the city of Oakland, a city she has chosen to call home. She delves into the industrial history, researching historical photographs and learning the stories of this vibrant city, built on wetlands of the bay.  She documents the rapidly changing present while assessing her own place in this chaos. 

I have always been an observer and collector of natural objects. Wherever I walk -- beaches, parks, sidewalks, woods I  look to see what's on the ground and in the trees. Then I use, and alter, my weathered findings to reveal nature's bounty and beauty in new ways.  

I am a painter and percussionist living in Oakland, California. I hold an MFA in Painting from San Francisco State University and a BFA in Drawing and Painting from UC Berkeley.  I teach Drawing and Painting at The College of San Mateo. My work has been exhibited throughout the greater Bay Area, in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Alaska, Cuba, Ghana, and Senega  

Karen makes quilts out of a variety of fabrics and recycled materials. Her imagery is abstract, based on her experience of the earth,  landscape and environment. Her quilting has a painterly quality to it. 

I work with both digital and analogue photographic techniques to craft intricate compositions that combine fragments of time and space. My practice is rooted in a fascination with photography’s unique ability to suspend the passage of time, allowing me to examine the beauty of transient moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. Each image captured is a deliberate pause; a visual meditation that invites a slower, more intentional way of seeing.

What captivates me beyond the initial capture is the transformation that occurs when moments, seen through the lens, are combined and layered together. The digital “darkroom” becomes the tool for expanding the notion of what constitutes a photograph, allowing me to recontextualize these moments and reshape them into something completely new. 

Dobee Snowber holds a BA in Intellectual History/Feminist Studies from Kirkland College and a BFA in Printmaking /Painting from the Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine. She has participated in several residencies including at the Vermont Studio School and Penland Art Center. She has shown extensively in various venues including galleries, museums, group collaborations and solo exhibits and is part of several private collections in the US and abroad. She is currently represented by SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA and Mary Praytor Gallery, Greenville, SC. ​ Dobee is currently working as a Mixed media artist, making time whenever possible to create. She has lived in the Bay area for over 20 years. Prior to that she lived in Santa Fe and various and sundry places east of the Rockies, including Maine, NY, Washington DC and New Jersey.

Born and raised in Iowa, Denia moved to California in 2007. She worked as a professional computer software and web engineer for over 20 years. She is mostly self-taught in art, and has fun taking online classes and watching endless YouTube tutorials for different techniques, and being as inventive as possible on her own.
Along with colorful paintings, drawings, and ceramics, an exciting development is her innovative ARC series of nature scenes! These works combine acrylic painting, resins, and handmade ceramic medallions into unusual 3D visual experiences that invoke feelings of peace, happiness, and wonder.

Jose is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland whose work moves fluidly across drawing, sculpture, photography, and installation. At the core of his practice is an ongoing Drawing Archive: an expansive collection of autobiographical watercolor drawings begun in 2013, now numbering in the thousands. Created through direct observation and an intuitive relationship to place, these works document lived moments while reaching toward something beyond the immediate.

Figueroa's practice explores memory, queer identity, and the layered histories embedded in everyday spaces. His drawings often act as catalysts for other forms like ceramics and installation, translating intimate moments into physical, spatial experiences. Whether working in a park, at a gathering, or in the studio, drawing remains his way of connecting: to people, to place, and to the unseen dimensions of experience.

KATIE KOROTZER