A program of the City of Auburn, The Vault Gallery is one of Auburn's newest art exhibition spaces. Artists are selected through an annual application process to create art installations in a small gallery within the Postmark Center for the Arts, dedicated to immersive and/or site-specific installations. The Vault Gallery provides a $1,000 artist stipend to support the creation of new work and site-specific projects for three-month exhibitions. The Vault Gallery is located at 20 Auburn Ave, in Auburn WA 98002, within the main gallery of the Postmark Center for the Arts.

For information on this art opportunity visit our Call To Artists page.

Current Exhibition

Vault Shapes

Vault Shapes
Amy Simons
July 20 - October 13, 2024

The City of Auburn is excited to present the work of Amy Simons in our newest site-specific art space, The Vault Gallery. Amy Simons is an artist based in Bellingham, Washington. She earned a BFA in ceramics from the University of Washington and an MFA in printmaking from Arizona State University. Amy’s foundational training in ceramics and textiles have shaped her approach to constructing work, but she loves printmaking for its qualities of surprise, the reversal, and the medium’s ability to open up new pathways or habits of thought.

"These are woodcut collages. Woodcut prints because from each whole comes many parts, and collages because those parts together become another whole. They are shape shifters like us, navigating roles as both individuals and parts of collectives. Each print comes from the same block, but emerges with a unique impression, every color a mark from the moment of contact and a preservation of touch. The blocks are changed with each print too, recording, accumulating and transforming. I am interested in how we organize ourselves, what patterns we generate intentionally, subconsciously, by luck or mistake. My studio practice is one of trusting and practicing emergence: working in simple, direct interactions that unfold into complex entanglements. I look at how bodies in proximity become shapes drawn together, repel one another, or hold tension in the space between. How do bodies become ecologies of mixed beings –assemblages of minerals, microbiomes and humanness, further mixed with memories of our past selves and promises of future ones?"

Simons' work will be on exhibition through October 13, 2024 and available to view during the Postmark Center for the Arts’ open hours.