(San Anselmo, CA) - Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce the opening of their newest exhibition, "Assembly Required" in San Anselmo, California. This collage show features eight artists who transform quotidian artifacts into assemblages. The works feature materials from safety pins and guitar strings to delicate textiles and tarot cards. Armed with various materials, each artist transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Showcasing artists Ray Beldner, Joe Brainard, Joan Grubin, Tamiko Kawata, Linda Schmidt, Sharon Shapiro, Donna Sharrett and William Wegman. Assembly Required is on view from January 14th - April 7th, 2023. Gallery Open: Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 5 pm.

A closing reception will be held April 7th, 5 - 7 pm at Garvey|Simon Art with artist Ray Beldner. 

Visit us at Garvey|Simon Art, 538 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, CA. 94960.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ray Beldner, American (b.1961)

Born in San Francisco, Ray Beldner is a mixed media artist and sculptor whose work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC, 21c Museum, Louisville; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Oakland Museum and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. His collage rocks adopt a surface of kaleidoscope mosaic patterns that create landscapes for nature and art to coexist. Ray Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MFA from Mills College, and has received awards including a California Arts Council Fellowship in New Genres, a Creative Work Fund Grant from the Haas Foundations, and a Potrero Nuevo Environmental Art Grant.  

Joe Brainard, American (1942 - 1994) 

Artist, poet, and writer, Joe Brainard is associated with the New York School, an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. His significant and inventive body of work includes assemblage, collage, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes. Brainard moved to New York from Tulsa in 1960 and gained early recognition with his first solo exhibition in 1965. Over the next decade he exhibited regularly and his work was included in numerous museum exhibitions in the United States and abroad. His works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Berkeley Art Museum among many others. Brainard gradually stopped making and exhibiting art in his mid-30s and devoted much of his time to reading thereafter.

Joan Grubin, American (b. 1945)

The sculptures in Joan Grubin’s Detritus series are formed from paint-covered pressed wood amassed from her studio practice over thirteen years. She approaches painting and assemblage through found mark-making. Grubin received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been included in numerous exhibitions including at the New York Institute of Technology, The Kentler International Drawing Space, New York; and ARTspace NYC. She received a Fellowship in Painting from the New York State Foundation of the Arts. Residencies include MASSMoCA Studio residency, Virginia Center for Creative Arts Auvillar, France; MacDowell Colony Fellowship Peterborough, NH; and Virginia Center for Creative Arts Amherst, VA.

Tamiko Kawata, American (b. 1936, Japan)

Born in Japan in 1936, Tamiko Kawata grew up in Tokyo during the climate of the World War II Era. She received her BA in Sculpture from Tsukuba University in Japan. After moving to New York in the 1960s, Kawata was inspired by using safety pins to pin up the American clothing that was much too large for her small frame. The physical practice of joining complex yet diminutive elements continues to provide a meditative and diaristic process for the artist. Tamiko Kawata has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; LongHouse Sculpture Gardens, Kentler International Drawing Space, Heckscher Museum of Art, Dorsky Projects, and Takano Art Gallery in Tokyo, to name a few. Her work is in the permanent collection of museums such as the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii; Lafcadio Hearn/Yakumo Koizumi Art Museum, Matsue, Japan; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada; Museum of Arts & Design, New York and LongHouse Reserve Permanent Collection, East Hampton, NY.

Linda Kamille Schmidt, American (b. 1962) 

Linda Kamille Schmidt, originally from Kansas, received an MA in drawing and an MFA in painting from the University of Iowa and now works and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Linda Schmidt’s fabric collages, which stem from her painting practice, intertwine public and private, luxury and common. There is a sense of egalitarianism present in both the way she sources and arranges her fabrics; thrifted fabrics and high-quality pieces are viewed with an impartial eye, looking purely at color, texture, and play. Linda Schmidt has had multiple solo shows throughout the New York metropolitan area and has received commissions from NYU Hospitals and Hilton locations throughout Japan. Linda Schmidt is one of four artists featured at The Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, CT in their newest show, "Glow," an exhibition of works showcasing a diverse array of two and three-dimensional abstraction that explores the interplay between color, transparency, process, and materiality; running from February 9th to March 22nd, 2023.

Sharon Shapiro, American (b. 1968) 

Sharon works with diverse media assemblages to convey authentic, humorous, and poetic experiences of femininity via a backdrop of American suburban idealism. Her paintings and works on paper have been exhibited in many venues including solo shows in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles. Her artist residencies include Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, WY; Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL; the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA), Amherst, VA; Ucross Foundation, Sheridan, WY; Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences, Atelier Focus Fellowship at AIR Serenbe Institute in Georgia. Sharon Shapiro is a 2002 and 2018 recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. Shapiro’s work is included in several prominent collections throughout the United States, such as The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, and the Tullman Collection, Chicago. Shapiro holds an MFA from the Maine College of Art (MECA) and a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art. She currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA. 

Donna Sharrett, American (b. 1958) 

Donna Sharrett’s mandala-like works stand as placeholders of memory. Through the assemblage of personal memorabilia, she unites past legacies to the present. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as notable residencies and grants from Smack Mellon, the Bronx Museum and the Millay Colony. Donna Sharrett’s work has been widely exhibited, including solo shows at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, and Pavel Zoubok Gallery, in New York, among others. Group exhibitions include the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Bellevue Arts Museum, WA; the University of Rochester, NY; and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. Sharrett’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ; the US Embassy, Valletta, Malta; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, MO; Hebrew Home for the Aged, New York; JP Morgan Chase, New York, and Pfizer, New York.

William Wegman, American (b. 1943)

Best known for his famous photographs of Weimaraners in unexpected poses, William Wegman was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He received a BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana. Since the early 1970s Wegman has exhibited internationally in prestigious museums and galleries, including several retrospective exhibitions. His work, which includes photography, video, painting and drawing, is held in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. The painting in this exhibition is from Wegman’s Postcard Paintings series, in which vintage postcards are inserted into his oil paintings and form the basis of the surrounding composition.