Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce Select East 2023, the eighth annual exhibition of work by emerging and mid-career artists chosen by director Elizabeth K. Garvey through its innovative Gallery Review Program. Select 2023 will have East and West iterations this year, encompassing and giving opportunity to a wider demographic of artists. This year’s Select East artists are Kathleen Beausoleil, Martin Benson, Sarah Brenneman, Jaynie Crimmins, Beth Dary, Leslie Fry, Julie Peppito, Christine Romanell, and Lynnette Sauer.

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, including Margot Glass, Eileen Murphy, Karl Hartman, Linda Schmidt, Claire McConaughy, Lori Larusso, Jenifer Kent, Lily Prince, and many others through the Select exhibitions. Several have gone on to have solo and group shows with the gallery.

Select East 2023 will continue to be produced as a hybrid exhibition, on view by appointment in our Viewing Room on the Upper West Side and online exclusively with Artsy.net. By using this vetted online marketplace, the exhibition will have an extended duration, and the opportunity to reach an increasingly global audience. The artworks will also be shown in person in an intimate environment, providing a bespoke viewing experience. This year’s artists share an interest in materiality, precision, surreal use of color and space, enigma, and spirituality.

About the artists

Kathleen Beusoleil's view from the mountain tops transforms her pen and ink landscapes into delicate, drifting islands. Activated by the loose spontaneity of her line, Beausoleil’s sketches capture the variability of working en plein air. Her minimalist palette emphasizes the grandeur of her subject while adding to its otherworldliness. Beausoleil is a 2023 CFEVA Finalist and received a 2022 Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts.

She was a member of The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program and has attended the Cuttyhunk Island Artist Residency, Chalk Hill Artist Residency, Da Vinci Art Alliance Residency, and the Artist Forests Community Residency Program sponsored by the Holter Museum of Art and Helena National Forest. Beausoleil's work is in the permanent collection of The Art Museum of Missoula and private collections throughout the United States. She received her BFA Cum Laude at Syracuse University. Beausoleil is a resident of Fair Haven, New Jersey.

Inspired by meditative practices and sacred geometry, Martin Benson's paintings occupy a space between reality and the sublime. Though vibrant, the ease of Benson’s transitions from one color field to the next silently directs the eye across the canvas; a stark contrast from the precision of his geometric icons. It is this latent tension that cultivates contemplation. Benson’s work has been exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Contemporary Arts Center (LA), and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others. He is represented in many private collections as well as in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Hillel Center, New Orleans Children’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University Medical Center, New Orleans. Benson received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his BA at the University of Southern California. He lives in New Orleans, LA.

Sarah Brenneman's intimate abstractions are layers of referents of play. Beginning with a central form, her compositions topple out sequentially, each shape building on the impression of the last. Brenneman sources her forms from objects in her periphery, often in her home, rendering her paintings almost autobiographical, and forging a sense of familiarity.

Brenneman received her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH, and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Tristate area, as well as internationally in Busan, South Korea, Reims, France, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Brenneman’s work is included in the permanent collections at the Aspen Contemporary Art Collection, the Cleveland Clinic, the Sprint Collection, and The Progressive Corporation. The artist is based in West Orange, New Jersey.

Jaynie Crimmins’s abstract, wall-mounted sculptures embody transfiguration. Constructed of meticulously handled shreds of magazines, catalogs, and security envelopes, her materials facet into intricate explorations of craft and design. Though maximalist, there is a latent sense of frugality and purpose in Crimmins’s works, their meaning transcending the hints of text and array of colors.

Her work has been shown at ART on PAPER NYC; and exhibited at the Sharjah Museum of Art during the Islamic Arts Festival in the United Arab Emirates; Spring/Break Art Show, NYC; Governors Island Art Fair, NYC; the National Museum of Romanian Literature in addition to museums throughout the United States including the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, VA; The Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art [HVMOCA], Peekskill, NY; Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, GA; Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA.

Beth Dary’s biomorphic glass and woven steel sculptures are elemental in their form and presence. Evocative of water molecules, bubbles, and fractal patterns formed by the liquid contaminants in urban runoff, Dary’s enigmatic forms gesture toward the impact of human interference on water supplies. Woven steel threatens to overtake its fragile, glass neighbors, creating a sense of danger in these otherwise elegant, reticent sculptures. Dary holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Arts from Memphis College of Art.

She has participated in several artist residency programs including Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been curated into exhibits at the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Russia, Satellite, and Miami Project Art Fairs in Miami, FL. Dary’s work has been commissioned by Battery Park City in Manhattan and she has received grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Manhattan Community Arts Fund. Her work is included in private, corporate, and museum collections in the USA and Europe.

A 2023 recipient of the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, Leslie Fry is represented in this show with fantastical sculptures of female hands, titled the “Cuffed” series. Tensely poised and mannered gestures, inspired by Parmigianino and Caravaggio, cascade into blooms and barnacles, creating a mesmerizing visual dissonance. This elision of romance and rigidity both draws attention to the limitations of the female form and liberates it from the constraints of reality. Leslie Fry’s works have been exhibited internationally at such venues as Kunsthaus in Hamburg, Zwitscher Machine Gallery in Berlin, Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, Windspiel Galerie in Vienna, Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris, Artists Space and Wave Hill in New York, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum near Boston, and Centre des Arts Visuels in Montreal.

Her public sculptures have been commissioned in New York, South Korea, Montreal, Florida, Wisconsin, and Vermont; public collections include Tufts University, Songchu International Sculpture Park, Freehand New York, Kohler Arts Center, Tampa Museum of Art, Fleming Museum of Art, Musée d’art de Joliette, and St. Petersburg, Florida’s Museum of Fine Arts. Fry’s M.F.A. is from Bard College, and her B.A. is from the University of Vermont, with a Foundation year at the Central School of Art in London. She currently lives and works in Winooski, VT.

Julie Peppito’s works are an amalgam of materials and perspectives. She allows errant elements, forms, and raised patterning to accumulate across the surface of her mixed media works, challenging the notion of depth and focal point. Populated by sketched lines and images of childhood and innocence, Peppito’s works represent the shape of memory while also nodding to human impact on the Earth. Peppito holds an MFA with a concentration in sculpture from Alfred University in Alfred, NY (2004) and she received her BFA from The Cooper Union in New York, NY (1992). She has exhibited at such venues as Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Long Island Children’s Museum, Heskin Contemporary, Art in General, PS122, Momenta, and Ethan Cohen Gallery, among others. Peppito received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (2001). The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Christine Romanell’s three-dimensional paintings explore physics, relativity, and design principles. Her fractals build upon one another in endless tessellations and permutations, building off the pictorial, illusionary space of the panel and entering into the three-dimensional world. Colorful and prismatic, Romanell’s paintings seek to span time, material, and culture. Her work has been featured on the Smithsonian Channel and she is a recipient of an NEA grant for her work through Chashama in NYC.

The artist received a 2022 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work is held in the private collection of Pat Bell alongside Tom Nussbaum and Willie Cole and in the collection of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. She has lectured at Pratt University and taught at the College of St. Elizabeth and Bergen County Community College. Her BFA is from the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and her MFA is from Montclair State University, NJ.

Lynnette Therese Sauercreates mirages from mere ink on paper. She carefully draws layer on top of a layer of curlicued marks, creating a yarn-like tactility on her two-dimensional ground. Sauer’s threads of color mingle with subtle precision; there is a clear sense of her hand in the work. Though inherently abstract, these drawings exude a sense of warmth and comfort. Sauer’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States. She studied painting at the Herron School of Art + Design in Indianapolis, IN, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to her studio practice, Lynnette co-writes Circling — an email newsletter and online archive charting the rhythms of artists’ lives.