MAIN GALLERY
Here & Where?
Curated by Milan Warner
Featuring: Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach
AUGUST 23 - OCTOBER 6, 2024
Here & Where?
MAIN GALLERY
Curated by Milan Warner
Featuring: Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach
AUGUST 23 - OCTOBER 6, 2024
Here and Where? is a duo exhibition featuring Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach that contrasts yet unifies topics that explore some of the internal and external environments of the human experience. Jeffery Berg in their work, explores individual character in conjunction with the external world in which we live. Berg’s drawings investigate how our unique experiences connect us with our community by investigating personal histories and internal themes such as memory, dreams, and the innate need for human connection.
In contrast, Sally Veach looks outwardly to make work about the beauty and power of the natural world and the outward-looking attempts of humans to control and domesticate it. Veach combines gestural landscapes with hard-edged symbols to depict the capitalistic human desire to control nature.
Featured Above
Jeffrey Berg
The Landscape Within (1), 2023
Paper, color pencil
27” x 38"
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Here and Where? is a duo exhibition featuring Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach that contrasts yet unifies topics that explore some of the internal and external environments of the human experience. Jeffery Berg in their work, explores individual character in conjunction with the external world in which we live. Berg’s drawings investigate how our unique experiences connect us with our community by investigating personal histories and internal themes such as memory, dreams, and the innate need for human connection.
In contrast, Sally Veach looks outwardly to make work about the beauty and power of the natural world and the outward-looking attempts of humans to control and domesticate it. Veach combines gestural landscapes with hard-edged symbols to depict the capitalistic human desire to control nature.
Featured Above
Jeffrey Berg
The Landscape Within (1), 2023
Paper, color pencil
27” x 38"
Opening Celebration
Friday, August 23, 2024
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Artist Talk
Sunday, September 8, 2024
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Closing Reception
Sunday, October 6, 2024
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
EVENTS
EVENTS
Opening Celebration
Friday, August 23, 2024
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Artist Talk
Sunday, September 8, 2024
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Closing Reception
Sunday, October 6, 2024
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Here and Where? is a duo exhibition featuring Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach that contrasts yet unifies topics exploring some of the internal and external environments of the human experience.
For thousands of years, humanity has been fixated on dreams and their possible meanings. It is even speculated that primitive societies might not have been able to distinguish the waking world from dreams, with the dream realm perhaps being a more telling extension of reality. Whatever they may be, dreams stem from somewhere in the unconscious mind, using snippets of our memories and parts of ourselves that may be hidden. Jeffrey Berg in their work, explores individual character in conjunction with the external world in which we live. Berg’s drawings investigate how our unique experiences connect us with our community by investigating personal histories and internal themes such as memory, dreams, and the innate need for human connection. As a result, Berg has created work that is vulnerable and intimate and yet universal as a window into our inner worlds.
In contrast, Sally Veach looks outwardly to make work about the beauty and power of the natural world and the outward-looking attempts of humans to control and domesticate it. At this stage of the Anthropocene, the human impact on the natural world has reached its all-time high in forms such as climate change, plastic pollution, or the eradication of native organisms with the introduction of invasive ones. The human footprint on the planet has transformed the natural world into something incredibly hostile for the living beings we share our world with because of human greed. Veach in her work, combines gestural landscapes with hard-edged symbols to depict the capitalistic human desire to control nature. Through color and form, Veach tells the story of human beings and our relationship with our home.
This dual concept between Berg and Veach is meant to prompt us to reflect upon and connect our inner and outer landscapes as one cannot thrive while the other fails. Through introspection, we can develop our empathy and with that, we can take better care of our home and the beings we coexist with. In turn, through the observation and appreciation of the natural world, we witness the beauty and take it with us wherever we go, enriching our memories, dreams, and everything else we are within.
Milan Warner
Curator, Here & Where?
FROM THE CURATOR
FROM THE CURATOR
Here and Where? is a duo exhibition featuring Jeffrey Berg and Sally Veach that contrasts yet unifies topics exploring some of the internal and external environments of the human experience.
For thousands of years, humanity has been fixated on dreams and their possible meanings. It is even speculated that primitive societies might not have been able to distinguish the waking world from dreams, with the dream realm perhaps being a more telling extension of reality. Whatever they may be, dreams stem from somewhere in the unconscious mind, using snippets of our memories and parts of ourselves that may be hidden. Jeffrey Berg in their work, explores individual character in conjunction with the external world in which we live. Berg’s drawings investigate how our unique experiences connect us with our community by investigating personal histories and internal themes such as memory, dreams, and the innate need for human connection. As a result, Berg has created work that is vulnerable and intimate and yet universal as a window into our inner worlds.
In contrast, Sally Veach looks outwardly to make work about the beauty and power of the natural world and the outward-looking attempts of humans to control and domesticate it. At this stage of the Anthropocene, the human impact on the natural world has reached its all-time high in forms such as climate change, plastic pollution, or the eradication of native organisms with the introduction of invasive ones. The human footprint on the planet has transformed the natural world into something incredibly hostile for the living beings we share our world with because of human greed. Veach in her work, combines gestural landscapes with hard-edged symbols to depict the capitalistic human desire to control nature. Through color and form, Veach tells the story of human beings and our relationship with our home.
This dual concept between Berg and Veach is meant to prompt us to reflect upon and connect our inner and outer landscapes as one cannot thrive while the other fails. Through introspection, we can develop our empathy and with that, we can take better care of our home and the beings we coexist with. In turn, through the observation and appreciation of the natural world, we witness the beauty and take it with us wherever we go, enriching our memories, dreams, and everything else we are within.
Milan Warner
Curator, Here & Where?
FROM JEFFREY BERG
My vision as an artist is to engage the viewer in an internal journey, connecting an exploration of individual character with the external world in which we live. By investigating person-centered narratives and internal themes -- such as how we carry our past with us always as the lens through which we view life, the need for human connection, dreams, and memory -- my drawings ask how who we are connects us with community. In other words, how do we define ourselves as individuals within our social context?
Drawing is everything to me. I work within a narrative. My work explores a moment in a story: there is a prologue and an epilogue. I like a drawing to be viewed with duality: an internal response of the protagonist to an external event. I like stories that have intimate yet broader implications, sometimes as revealed to me through life in Washington, DC, my former work as a counselor in a community mental health clinic, what I’m reading, current events, social justice, and contemporary humanist themes.
I usually work with medium- to large-size paper, often in multiple panels like the pages of a book, using pencil and colored pencil which can evoke writing and narration. Each panel stands on its own; together, a larger narrative may emerge.
The result, I hope, is thoughtful, intriguing, accessible, and human … and a bridge between self-exploration and how we may translate such understanding into action in our present world.
FROM SALLY VEACH
My work is about the sublime power of nature and the outward-looking attempts of humans to control and domesticate the natural world. Drawing on intense observations of natural environments, I create expressive, abstract landscapes that are often juxtaposed with symbolic, hard-edged shapes. The gestural, uncontrived strokes recall the sublime power of nature. Contrasting elements of masking and collage refer to our separation from nature and our propensity to domesticate anything that is “wild”.
The use of Latin in many titles is a reference to the Western World and its accelerated exploitation of nature. I acknowledge that this culture is my own.
Toombs Hollow Ireland Horreum combines memories of a summer landscape in West Virginia with recollections of a residency in Ireland in 2021. I introduced an empty barn shape to indicate the activity of humans that once existed. I also included the Latin word for “granary”, Horreum, in the title.
My Vestigium drawings are about the vestiges of the human race—what is left behind. The Vortex drawings refer to agriculture and how that represents the exploitation of nature and Nature’s wrath in response.
My current project, Human Nature, uses 18th-century, Indian chintz textile patterns, sourced from museums, and inspiration from 19th-century Hudson River School landscapes, to visually weave two paintings onto one surface. These layers represent successive eras of the American landscape.
I begin with a gestural abstraction that symbolizes the indigenous state of the land, then apply a mask of an Indian chintz pattern representing colonialism. Finally, I paint a landscape inspired by a 19th-century Hudson River School painting, representing romanticism. Perhaps the Anthropocene is included in my use of digital and machine technology to make the chintz masks. Once the mask is removed, the multiple eras are intertwined on one canvas.
Curator & Artist’s Biographies
Curator: Milan Warner
Artists: Jeffrey Berg & Sally Veach
MILAN WARNER
Website: www.milanwarner.com
Milan Warner (b.1998 in Rockville, MD), is a multimedia artist based in Maryland, primarily working in sculpture. She spent her most formative years in a provincial area of the Philippines which informs much of her current work. She completed her BA in studio art from the University of Maryland in the summer of 2021. In August 2021, Warner participated as an artist in residence at Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota where she completed her first public sculpture. From January to May of 2022, she was a short-term artist resident at the Arlington Art Center (now the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington) in Virginia. She is currently a long-term resident at MoCA Arlington, where she continues to expand her body of work.
JEFFREY BERG
Website: www.jeffreyberg.art
Jeffrey Berg has drawn all of his and is currently working full-time in my studio at the 52 "O" Street Studios in Washington, DC. Berg’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibits and juried group shows in the DC area, and several open studio events, and has been reviewed by The Washington Post. Their work is in private collections as well as in certain permanent public collections.
Berg has twice been awarded an Arts and Humanities Fellowship from the District of Columbia Commission of the Arts and Humanities. Berg’s work also has been published in three international collections and on the cover of a regional quarterly publication and has participated in two artist residencies.
SALLY VEACH
Website: www.sallyveach.com
Sally Veach (b. 1962, Summit, NJ, she/her), is a painter working in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the Washington, DC area. She earned a B.F.A. from Syracuse University, and in 2022 was awarded a studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA. Her work appeared in the I Like Your Work Podcast summer catalog, It’s Complicated. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, VA, and the City of Alexandria and the County of Fairfax, Virginia. She is a three-time recipient of a Marian Park Lewis Foundation grant. She was awarded a solo exhibition at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in 2019-2020. She is a two-time solo exhibitor at the Delaplaine Arts Center, Frederick, MD. Additional solo and group exhibitions include Washington Studio School, The DC Arts Center, and Latela Curatorial in Washington, DC, The Athenaeum and Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA, Anne Neilson Fine Art in Charlotte, NC, The Haen Gallery in Asheville, NC, Anne Irwin Fine Art and Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta, GA, and Cheryl McGinnis Gallery in NYC. Residencies include the Vermont Studio Center, Weir Farm National Historic Site, Lodestar School of Art in Ireland.