Beth Davila Waldman was born in Princeton, NJ in 1975 to a Peruvian mother and a New York architect father. As a child, she quickly learned to define site as home as her parents moved her from Princeton to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Houston, Houston to Florence, then back to Houston again. Deeply influenced by childhood memories to construction sites and museums, Beth pursued a career in the arts starting at the age of 15. She earned her 1st degree in art history and studio art with a concentration in cast bronze figurative works at Wellesley College in the Boston area. From east to west, Beth established her new and current home in San Francisco Bay Area 17 years ago. She continued her education at the San Francisco Art Institute with a focus on site-specific public art and installation. During those years, her many travels to international urban sites as well as explorations of San Francisco alleys served as inspirations to her site work. She is currently working on a series of large-scale constructed mixed media paintings combining digital media with traditional paint inspired by her international travels.
Beth plays an active role in the Bay Area artist community with her consulting business WaldmanArts. WaldmanArts offers consulting services to visual artists, collectors and arts organizations. She also played a key- role as one of the founding members of the San Francisco Mission-based artist collective SpaceCraft; for three years, she curated, marketed and launched monthly art shows with SpaceCraft at the CELLspace Art Gallery.
Beth has exhibited her work throughout San Francisco including Arc Studios & Gallery, The Design Museum, 111 Minna Gallery, The Roll Up Gallery, Arc Gallery and many other gallery and alternative spaces including the renown CELLSpace Art & Community Center. In 2004, Beth was awarded the Harold E. Weiner Memorial Sculpture Award for the best sculptural work amongst all current sculpture students by the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2005, she was selected by Shelly Willis to complete a 2007 temporary site-specific installation entitled “Alternate Visitors Center of Sonoma” comprised of six 6’wx8’hx6’d gates installed on the sidewalks. Each gate was an assemblage of two years of photographing, scavenging, and interviewing local families; this project was funded by the Sonoma Community Center. Simultaneously, Beth was selected by architect Daniel Altman to complete a permanent sculpture at the private east bay residential community International Lofts in Oakland in 2006.
Since, her current body of work has been recognized by James Bacchi of ArtHaus for a 2013 national juried show “Structure”, selected for the juried Art4AIDS 2014 Fundraiser by jurors such as DeWitt Cheng, James Bacchi and Tom O’Conner, as well as designated as one of the top ten ArtSpan Open Studios Artists by Vango’s CEO Nathan Appleby in 2014. In 2015, her work was selected for an annual international juried exhibition at the New Orlean’s based Jonathan Ferrara Gallery by jurors Max Fisko of ARTMarket Productions and Valerie Cassell Oliver-Senior Curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston as well as by Gallery16’s Griff Williams for an annual exhibition at The San Francisco Art Institute’s Diego Rivera Gallery.
In 2016, three of Beth’s paintings were nominated for an exhibition “Selections” at San Francisco’s Midway Gallery by jurors Jack Fischer of the Jack Fischer Gallery SF/NY, Noah Antieau of Red Truck Gallery and Heron Arts, Jilian Monribot of The Dryansky Gallery and Maria Naula of SFMOMA. This summer, jJack Fischer selected two paintings for the juried exhibition “Our Town” at the Richmond Art Center. In addition, Liz Key Strelka, Manager of Exhibitions at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., selected her painting “City of Sillar No. 7” with an honorable mention for a nationally juried exhibition at the Maryland Federation of Art’s Circle Gallery entitled “American Landscapes” in Annapolis, MD. Most recently, Jurors Franklin Sirmans, Director of Perez Art Museum, Miami and Artistic Director of Prospect.3 Biennial, New Orleans, Anastasia James, Associate Curator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum & Lester Marks, Named Among Top 200 Collectors World Wide by artnet.com selected two paintings for the 20th annual NO DEAD ARTISTS Exhibition at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. Beth lives and maintains her studio in the San Francisco Bay Area.