Seattle Art Fair accepts Gallery 408

Gallery 408 in Camas, which recently celebrated the grand opening of its new mini-gallery art installation, announced last week that it’s now celebrating a much bigger achievement: acceptance into the Seattle Art Fair, held July 23-26 at Lumen Field Event Center in Seattle.

The gallery is the only one in Southwest Washington to be included in the show, which is among the most prestigious in the country, said Kim Nickens, who co-owns the gallery with Michelle Purvis.

“We are very honored. There was a little bit of selection process, and we had to make a few phone calls to talk about what our gallery is and how serious we are about what we’re doing,” Nickens said. “They said that our enthusiasm and the quality of our work is what got us into this show.”

The fair, now in its 10th year, is the premier showcase for Pacific Northwest art, especially modern and contemporary pieces. The fair also includes artists and works from dozens of other well-known galleries from around the nation and around the world, including South Africa, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, China and Ukraine.

In addition to Nickens and Purvis, Gallery 408 artists Bianca Youngers, Bernie Weston and Janine Littrell will travel to the art fair in July. Each artist will bring between five and eight pieces of art to the show, Nickens said, where the artworks will be displayed as part of the carefully curated Gallery 408 space. All the art is for sale, and collectors from all over the world will travel to see it — as well as some big names from Seattle’s tech sector.

“That’s the prestigious nature of the show,” Nickens said. “People from Apple, Microsoft and some of the big tech corporations come in that first night and hopefully make selections for their businesses.”

Nickens said the gallery, which opened just two years ago, has worked hard to create a broad and approachable selection of art at many price points. Gallery 408 is known for its unusual and often playful contemporary works, such as the mini-Gallery 408, in which all the miniature artworks are for sale.

The dollhouse-sized gallery, which debuted June 5 with a tiny ribbon-cutting ceremony, was added to the Worldwide Sidewalk Joy Project’s map of miniature art installations all over the globe.

“We’re looking forward to having collectors find us in this little town of Camas,” Nickens said. “It puts this art community on the map, and that’s what we’re hoping to do.”