In “Minerva’s Web,” Sarah Ann Weber’s 18 colored-pencil and watercolor works are hung in a single row that wraps around three of the room’s four walls at Gallery 12.26, windows into a lush world that pulses with life.
A floral profusion (peonies, daffodils, tulips, amaryllis, sunflowers and more) covers the surface of each panel, while a few female figures delicately emerge from among the flowers, visible only upon a closer look. The whole series is tied together by a web of pale white vines that crisscross in front of the garden-like scenes in the background.
Minerva is both the Roman goddess of weaving (who, in the poet Ovid’s telling, turned the girl Arachne into a spider in a fit of anger) and the name of Weber’s young daughter; the show’s title hints at a specifically female experience of intimate, web-like interconnectedness to other people that can be either life-giving (toward daughters) or deadly (toward rivals).
The series is introduced by two new oil paintings in the front gallery on the same theme, but these are more fluid, even oceanic, offering an interesting contrast of mediums.
Also on view is Rachel Marisa LaBine’s “Lockets,” a show of 13 collage and stained-glass works, whose title suggests the sentimental charge of special pictures kept safe inside small ornamental cases. LaBine’s reference to her teenage years as a source of inspiration, combined with the collages’ coy ambiguity, reminded me of the human urge to keep one’s most important secrets hidden from the wider world.
Feeling left somewhat on the outside of the collages’ full meaning, I engaged most easily with the gorgeous stained-glass pieces, which brought me back to the era of Louis Comfort Tiffany, one of the high points of American art. The two shows together also reminded me how much 12.26 has done to bring members of a younger generation of women artists to Dallas (Weber and LaBine are both Midwest-born millennials), helping to nurture our local connections to the national art scene. And, as a male viewer, I admired and somewhat envied the emotional openness and fluency with which these two artists constructed their artistic worlds.
Details
Sarah Ann Weber’s “Minerva’s Web” and Rachel Marisa LaBine’s “Lockets” continue through Feb. 1 at 12.26, 150 Manufacturing St. No. 205, Dallas. Free. Open Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. 469-502-1710, gallery1226.com.
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