The Secret Show is a group exhibition curated by Astoria, Oregon artist and gallerist Jill McVarish. In recent years, McVarish brought a selection of remarkable shows to the McVarish Gallery and The Secret Gallery, a hidden, yet widely renowned venue tucked away near the riverfront in Astoria, Oregon. Like her gallery space, her brilliant curation led to a collection of art that was an unexpected find for anyone who happened upon it. This exhibition celebrates that special place and the iconoclastic artistic spirit that reigned there. Participating artists are Rachel Bess, Benz and Chang, Stephanie Brockway, casebeer, Colin Chillag, Tom Giesler, Jill McVarish, Hickory Mertsching, Kathleen Powers, and Sam Vaughan.

"For four years, I curated shows in a disheveled room at the end of a hallway at the back entrance of a failed shopping mall with the belief that the work I was finding and showing was so amazing it was worth the hunt,” notes McVarish. As a child she was enchanted with The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a tale of a hidden garden full of so much beauty and love that it held the power to heal and build friendships for the kids who found and appreciated it. The compelling message in the story inspired the name of The Secret Gallery. As McVarish muses, “It seems to me like what art is at its best.”  For this show, she has sought “artists who create powerful work in the quiet of their studio for the pure joy of giving life to a secret idea. All of them illustrate complex social or personal ideas via visual and technical mastery in a way that gives them life."