(San Anselmo, CA and Artsy.net)

Garvey|Simon Art  is pleased to announce SELECT WEST 2023, the eighth annual exhibition of work by emerging and mid-career artists chosen by directors Elizabeth K. Garvey and Catherine G. Simon through its innovative Gallery Review Program. SELECT WEST will have East coast iteration as well in their New York location.  This is the first year the annual show will have iterations on both coasts, giving opportunity to a wider demographic of artists and to include more artists from California.

This exhibition features the work of eight female artists who live in and along the West Coast including Kim Cardoso, Jen Garrido, Elizabeth Reagh, Charlotta Hauksdottir, Deborah Hamon, Sarah Helen More, Melissa Mohammadi, and Ann Holsberry.  The show will run from October 25, 2023 through January 25, 2024 at 538 San Anselmo Ave., San Anselmo, CA 94960.

Please join us for a closing reception with featured artists held on Thursday, December 14th from 5 to 8 PM. 

Garvey|Simon established the Review Program in 2016 to open a democratic dialogue between Artist and Gallery, a practice that is anathema to art world orthodoxy. Garvey|Simon believes that artists “need to have a working platform to engage with dealers who otherwise might not see their work. We want artists to think before they submit and be sure their work is appropriate for our program – the fee puts some skin in the game and detracts from artists sending generic, mass submissions.”   Finalists are given a private meeting with the gallery to consider their work for the exhibition. Garvey|Simon has cultivated successful partnerships with numerous artists since the inception of this annual event, and several have gone on to have solo and group shows with the gallery.

Kim Cardoso

Kim Cardoso is a bit of a renaissance woman who, apart from her visual art, also has experience in the fields of midwifery and mental/community health. She currently resides on an urban farm with her family in Oakland. Originally from Maryland, Cardoso moved west and never left after falling in love with the natural landscapes of the Bay Area. While she enjoys a wide array of artistic avenues of expression, including the creation of wearable sculpture and metalwork, her passion for the encaustic medium is unparalleled. Encaustic, which translates in Greek “to burn,” is also referred to as hot wax painting and essentially utilizes hot melted beeswax as a varnish to impart a unique effect.

Jen Garrido

Jen Garrido is a California born and raised artist who left her home city of Los Angelas to first earn her BFA in Fine Arts from Sonoma State University before moving on to complete her MFA from Mills College in Oakland. Now, Garrido lives and works in San Francisco as a full-time artist. Her pieces bring out the best elements of abstract art with a deft hand that paints subjects that are playful, tasteful, and full of movement with an unmistakable nod to nature — all, of course, in a palate that ranges from soothing pastels to a balanced amalgamation of stronger selections of colors. Garrido’s work is, in her words, based on an intuitive internal narrative that builds upon itself with each brush stroke, new shape, and addition to the canvas.

Charlotta María Hauksdóttir

Charlotta María Hauksdóttir is an Icelandic photographer who has been a resident of the United States for over 20 years. Though her homeland remains a large part of her artistic inspiration, Hauksdóttir also draws from her photography studies, first in a BA in Rome at the Istituto Europeo di Design, followed by her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her photography has received accolades from across the world and has been featured in books, magazines, and exhibitions (both public and private). Her landscape photography captures the breathtakingly moody, dramatic, and romantic aspects of nature and serves to remind its viewers of the oddly comforting unconquerable indomitable spirit of the world around us.

Deborah Hamon

Deborah Hamon is an Australian-born artist who works primarily in  photography and painting, though her love of writing and poetry is never far behind. She is known for having completed a residency in The Article Circle in 2013 and, in doing so, creating ‘The Polar Pom-Pom Project’ to help create an avenue of communication for children and climate change. Her adventurous lifestyle and appreciation for all things nature is reflected in her artwork as well, which can range anywhere from photos of snowy, barren and beautiful landscapes to bright paintings. Hamon ventured out to California’s west coast for school and, after running her own graphic design studio in San Francisco, went on to earn her MFA from University of California, Davis. There, she worked as a teaching assistant to Wayne Thiebaud and worked closely with David Hollowell.

Sarah Helen More

Sarah Helen More is a Seattle-based west coast artist with an eclectic history that spans from her birthplace of Hartford, Connecticut to her hometowns of Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas. She was raised with an appreciation for her parents’ passions, including her father’s rock and mineral collection and her mother’s homemade quilts. As a result, More’s own art features bright, geometric patterns reminiscent of quilts but with a more abstract, natural edge in both imagery and coloration. She enjoys the interplay between digital and handmade artistry and holds a deep interest in not only painting, but in its application to textile design as well. More earned her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in textile design from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Melissa Mohammadi

Melissa Mohammadi is a visual artist who lives in San Francisco and works in Oakland. Mohammadi attributes a large part of her artistic inspiration to her previous role as an assistant to a book conservator, which gave her a deep understanding to medieval manuscripts and tapestries. She earned her BFA with a concentration in painting and printmaking from Rhode Island College and followed it with an MFA from Southern Methodist University in Texas. Her work is natural in an abstract sense and utilizes the environment around her, such as shells or fern leaves, in conversation with the paper to create visually pleasing and deceptively deep pieces.

Ann Holsberry

Ann Holsberry is a painter of considerable acclaim who lives both in San Francisco and Paris. Her artistic work is a celebration of life and its inherent beauty on the large and small scale. Holsberry’s work is notable for its deep, sweeping blue hues and has been shown in galleries across the globe. Holsberry enjoys working outdoors and with materials sourced from nearby locations, which she believes allows the natural environment to influence her work as it develops. Both macro and micro elements of these mixed-medium installments are speaking to the environment from which they came.

Elizabeth Reagh

Produced from 2021-2023, the work is inspired by the artist's response to the Pandemic after a recent move from Brooklyn to Sacramento.  Avoiding sentimentality and pushing abstraction, her still life vehicle explores the predictability and routine of quotidian life in isolation.  Central to these paintings is a joyous exploration of California light and shadow - so different from her Brooklyn views.  Reagh received her BFA in from San Francisco State University and her MFA from the University of Oregon; she has exhibited widely on both coasts since 2002

For viewing appointments, more information, high resolution images or sales inquiries, please contact Catherine Simon at catherine@garveysimon.com, or Vanna Barcelos 415-720-9252.