Meg Walsh Exhibit, and new work from other featured artists

307 Main St.
Washington, Virginia 22747

Hours: 10 am – 6 pm every day except Tuesday.

Visit R.H. Ballard Gallery to see new work by Meg Nottingham Walsh, an award-winning painter and former National Geographic editor, who offers a unique artistic vision that invites viewers into her world, capturing serene moments that often pass unnoticed. Drenched in light and color, her paintings convey the lush hues of nature with heartfelt honesty. Characterized by simplified shapes, limited values, and glowing color, her work has a strong abstract element while remaining rooted in realism. Her ability to evoke an emotional response makes her paintings more than just a visual experience; they are journeys into the heart of the landscapes she portrays.

New work at R.H. Ballard also features Barbara Heile, Giselle Gautreau, Jacque Towner, and Lynn Mehta.

Images top to bottom:

Meg Walsh paintings
Work by Barbara Heile

Joe de Feo, Shawn Ireland, and Kevin H. Adams

March 16 – May 21, 2024
Opening Reception: March 16, 2024, 4 pm – 6 pm

Gay Street Gallery
337 Gay Street
Washington VA 22747
540-227-5100

Wednesday-Monday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, or by appointment 540-522-9688

Joe de Feo paints in oils, acrylic, watercolor, and casein to create mostly representational paintings that showcase technique, materials, and process. His pieces begin with a technical challenge or question, and he devises rules that govern brushstrokes, color, depth, and detail for each painting or series. Solving the puzzle of each painting entails iteratively applying and occasionally breaking these rules. His work often juxtaposes the geometric with the organic, the hard-edged with the calligraphic, and the stylized with the realistic. He creates tension that prompts a closer look at the work and the world beyond the frame.

A native of Brooklyn, he graduated from Yale University and worked in nonprofits in New York and Washington, D.C. before co-founding a sustainability and risk management consulting firm. For fifteen years, he painted before the city woke up and after it finished its workday. He now paints full-time in Washington. He has shown his work in the U.S. and Costa Rica.

Shawn Ireland lives and works in Georgia. For more than 25 years, he has made pots with food, flowers and candles in mind. “I choose to make pots with a foundation in folk tradition,” Shawn explains, “and for me, this involves using a variety of hand processed local clays and glaze materials, single firing in a wood burning kiln, and using a kick wheel. These ingredients promote surprises and keep my craft connected to the natural world.”

Shawn creates useful, rustic pots for the home, but several trips to Italy have inspired a sculptural direction in the form of zoomorphic candlesticks, vases and bowls he calls Animalware. “My pots are eclectic,” he observes, “I work quickly and playfully with the clay while respecting the nature of my materials and tools. Whether potting or painting, I love to be lost in the moments of making – in the search.”

Shawn’s work has been exhibited in galleries and juried shows, including at the Smithsonian Craft Show and the Philadelphia Museum Show. He has been a Resident Artist at Penland School of Crafts, the University of Georgia Study Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy and at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, in Venice, Italy.

There will be a few newly discovered sketches by Kevin H. Adams.

Jim Serbent Exhibition

311 Gay Street, Lower Level,
facing Main Street & across from Ballard’s
Washington, VA 22747
(540) 227-5066

Hours: Friday – Sunday, 11 am – 5 pm

“Retinal Circus,” digital artist Jim Serbent’s second solo show at Middle Street Gallery features works that are solely from his on-going Bardo series. These works take visual art to a new level by fusing photography, CGI, digital painting and video processing. Since camera, lens, and image capture remain integral to this methodology, the resulting compositions may be described as enhanced photographic art through advanced digital techniques — without the use of AI. A fellow artist of high esteem described it as Twenty-First Century Art. The BARDO project presents positive, meditative, abstract works about transcendence. Not only do these pieces attempt to elevate the spirit of the viewer, the entire process is profoundly contemplative for the artist. These archival pigment prints are comprised of high energy fractal renderings superimposed over still-framed video feedback backgrounds, often combined with aerial photography or other natural sources. Digital brushstrokes blend it all together. Fractals are CGI visualizations of mathematical formulae that emulate repeating patterns found in nature, from river deltas to plant blossoms, to orbits: sub-atomic and astronomical. Shaping, twisting, warping and multiplying nascent geometric forms into final compositions becomes an art unto itself. If all of this seems overly complicated, all one needs to know is that this series was inspired by levels of being and states of consciousness rooted in Tibetan Buddhism. As you look deeper into each composition, your mind will hopefully transcend mundane concerns and, even if just for a moment, approach a deeper level.

Jim Serbent, whose artworks have been displayed in California, NY, Connecticut, Maryland, DC, and Virginia galleries, has also produced works of video art, including pieces that were featured at New York, Tokyo, and London film festivals. Intuition, imagination and experimentation provide the basis for his artistic efforts.

Pysanky Egg Demonstration

37 Main Street
Sperryville, VA 22740
540-547-7845

Hours: Friday – Sunday, 11 am – 5 pm

Spring is here! Time to celebrate! We are excited to host Nina Shepardson in our gallery
demonstrating the techniques she uses to create her beautifully decorated Pysanky Easter Eggs.

February 9 – March 17, 2024
Opening Event: Febuary 10, 2024, 11 am – 5 pm

311 Gay Street, Lower Level,
facing Main Street & across from Ballard’s
Washington, VA 22747
(540) 227-5066

Hours: Friday – Sunday, 11 am – 5 pm

Join the members of Middle Street Gallery and their friends for a special exhibition! Opening event is scheduled for all day on February 10, 2024; refreshments will be served throughout the day and various members and friends will be on hand to discuss their work and the exhibit.

Image: Topeng Monyet (Masked Monkey), guest-artist Brandon Eastmann

John Valenti and Lotta Helleberg

January 13 – March 12, 2024

Gay Street Gallery
337 Gay Street
Washington VA 22747
540-227-5100

Wednesday-Monday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, or by appointment 540-522-9688

John Valenti is a photographer with over 40 years of experience capturing unique perspectives on everyday life. A native central New Yorker, John now calls Northern Virginia home. His photographic art is a broad mix of nature, urban landscape, movement, expression, and scenic imagery from around the world. John sees every day as a new opportunity to capture extraordinary images from simple experiences.

Lotta Helleberg is a Swedish-born artist based in Charlottesville, Virginia. For more than a decade, Helleberg has experimented with print making and surface design, focusing on botanical contact printing, relief processes, and local plant-based dyes, to render works that both document and celebrate her immediate surroundings. Her unconventional wall and book works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States as well as abroad.

In addition, on exhibit for the first time are a number of works from the Kevin H. Adams archive — oil studies for commissioned and other paintings he created over the years.