Sarah Ann Weber, “Minerva’s Web”
by John Zotos
Gallery 12.26, Dallas, Texas
Exhibition continues through February 1, 2025
January 11, 2025
Sarah Ann Weber, “As a spider, weaves,” 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”. All images courtesy of 12.26 Gallery, Dallas.
In “Minerva’s Web” Sarah Ann Weber presents the fruits of her labor during 2024 with two formidable oils on canvas and a series of eighteen panels of bright, lively, and verdant images done in colored pencil and watercolor. The stage is set in the entrance gallery, where the entire space is dedicated to the two oil paintings; they in turn bookend the entrance to a second gallery that houses the works on paper, all carefully mounted to individual panels.
Sarah Ann Weber, “She still spins,” 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”.
These paintings are a departure for the artist, whose work is line-driven with a careful use of watercolor that creates volume and depth. “As a spider, weaves” is countered with “She still spins” (each 36 by 48 inches). The titles present Weber’s mythological theme as a thread running throughout the exhibition in reference to the threads woven by Arachne, in competition with the Goddess Minerva, in a story from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.” The titles here refers specifically to how Arachne was turned into a spider after besting the goddess and, in a fit of pride, insulting her. This warning about hubris suggests we remain free from that tragic flaw in a world now saturated with rampant greed.
Sarah Ann Weber, “In their own clear colors,” 2024, colored pencil and watercolor on paper mounted to panel, 30 x 22”.
A string of ivy vines flow throughout the entire surface of each painting; they compete to remain close to the surface among a frenzy of color and abstract phrases that bathe images primarily in dark purples on the left and bright greens and yellows on the right, suggesting dusk and dawn respectively. These sedate abstractions offer a tone of calm compared to what awaits the viewer in the next room.
The panel drawings in watercolor writhe with energy, color, and motion. Filled with flora from the natural world such as peonies, daffodils, and tulips, these elements are drawn from Ovid’s text. Uniting the group are bright white ivy vines that make their way across each picture plane. In fact, they perform a unifying, one might say democratizing, function in that these eighteen panels present a continuous image intended to read from left to right. The curators decided to bookend the central ten together on one wall, flanked by the first four on the left and the final four on the right-hand side. Each image flows into the succeeding panel, adding meaning as the eye discovers new elements. Sometimes, upon closer inspection, elements of the human figure appear, such as a hand in “In their own clear colors.”
Sarah Ann Weber, “Victory crown the work,” 2024, colored pencil and watercolor on paper mounted to panel, 30 x 22”.
As the visual narrative progresses this becomes more pronounced in “Victory crowns the work” and “She still spins a thread,” each with a nude female figure hidden among the natural elements. The human figures do not seek to compete with the natural world, but persist in harmony with it. This is where Weber’s personal narrative plays a part in the series, as in the time between completing these two specific pieces she gave birth to a daughter who was named Minerva Web.
Sarah Ann Weber, “She still spins a thread,” 2024, colored pencil and watercolor on paper mounted to panel, 30 x 22”.
Metaphors that underscore nature, regeneration, and beauty, all themes from Ovid’s mythos, are in play here. Minerva represents a precise Roman moral compass that embodies justice, law and victory, while also acting as a sponsor of the arts. Since the series reads horizontally through time, it eliminates top/down hierarchies. By privileging nature over all things, Weber rejects injustice, which usually comes about through attempts to alter the natural order of things in favor of a distorted reality. Weber’s world revels in the recurring flow and perseverance of the natural world and our rightful place in it.
