| In the East Gallery, the 2025 LCA Exhibition Awards Show presents the works of Madelyn Covey and Michele Foyer. These artists, chosen by 2025 Left Coast Annual juror Carin Adams, Senior Curator of Art, Oakland Museum of California, have unique processes and approaches to their artistic practices.
Madelyn Covey currently focuses her art practice on people and how they perform aspects of their identities or inner selves. She has always loved painting portraits of her friends, community members, and pop culture obsessions, using housemates, folks dressed up at comic book conventions, celebrities, and screencaps of TV shows as subject matter. The current portraits being shown are part of a series that reflects on domesticity and intimacy as part of an evaluation of the artist's life trajectory through portraits of lovers, close friends, and my friend's children.
Creating on found wallpaper, the artist reflects how this base layer is both a reference to the domesticity of the work, as well as a way to build the paintings in relationship to what already exists on the surface. Covey notes, "Painting on found surfaces adds context and texture, and satisfies my impulse to minimize waste. The process of matching the patterns to my subjects creates another layer of association. I find the meditation on my subject's features and body language is a way for me to feel connected to them, and in that way more connected to the world."
Madelyn Covey is a Richmond, CA based artist working primarily in painting and drawing. She was born in Sacramento, CA, and has been an East Bay resident since 2005. She received her MFA in Fine Arts from Mills College in 2012 and my BA from UC Berkeley in 2008. She currently facilitates painting and drawing at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, as well as their Saturday Youth Program.
Michele Foyer merges collage, painting and sculpture in dynamic works that suspend off the wall. Through an intuitive process of folding, painting, cutting and layering paper, she creates complex compositions where color and shape emerge together. Fluorescent hues painted on the reverse side cast an immaterial glow of color on the wall that shifts with light, time, and place. Fluctuating light forms the true "ground" of each piece.
This interplay of light, color, and shape invites the viewer to peer under, behind, and through the works, while offering multiple paths for discovery within. The sculptural paintings remain open and subject to the mutation of these shifting and colliding perspectives. In a constant state of transformation, her art embodies how everything - our thoughts, sense of self, the objects and things of our environment - are perpetually being reconstituted and are full of incongruity, as well as possibility.
Michele Foyer holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, a BFA from the California College of the Arts, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has exhibited extensively across the United States in both solo and group shows.
SPECIAL EVENTS DURING THE LEFT COAST ANNUAL EXHIBITIONS.
SVOS Open Studios Coastside Weekend, during the Left Coast Annual:
Thirty Sanchez Art Center and Art Guild of Pacifica artists (site 268) will be participating in Silicon Valley Open Studios coastside weekend on Sat May 2 and Sun May 3. Extended gallery hours of 11am — 5pm, both days.
Art x Nature x Art, a celebration of art and spring:
Art x Nature x Art is Sanchez Art Center's spring fundraiser. This annual event, held in partnership with Shelldance Gardens in Pacifica, is by advance ticket purchase available now on Eventbrite for a special evening reception on Fri, May 8. Attendees will have the first opportunity to view this years natural floral creations inspired by art in the 2026 Left Coast Annual. Live music, floral mocktails, and more add to the enjoyment of this special opening reception. The spring fundraising event will continue for drop-in visitors on Sat, May 9 and Sun, May 10, for $10.00 at the door supporting the Center's exhibition program.
Funds raised will provide ongoing opportunities for the community to view outstanding exhibitions and participate in community creative engagement activities.
Sanchez Art Center is located at 1220 Linda Mar Boulevard in Pacifica, about a mile east of Highway 1. Following opening night – and on weekends when special events aren't occurring -- regular gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 1–5 pm.
Sanchez Art Center also welcomes visitors during the week by emailing info@sanchezartcenter.org or by calling in advance to set a time.
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