Sarah Ann Weber: Minerva’s Web
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12.14.24 - 02.01.25
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12.26 is pleased to present Minerva’s Web, a solo exhibition mounting a new body of work by Sarah Ann Weber. The works presented highlight Weber’s characteristic biomorphic painting style but nestled within a new narrative personal to the artist and recent developments in her life.
Across eighteen panels, Weber uses her trademark colored pencils and watercolor to compose a panorama of another world: primeval, overgrown and lush with chromatic saturation. While individually unique in composition, each panel simultaneously bleeds into the next, its borders amorphous as the ever-shifting landscape gives way to new vistas and worlds within worlds. In addition to faint visages of the feminine human form, Weber introduces another spectral element in the enrapturing presence of ghostly-white vines that weave throughout the panels, further linking them through time and space. In this continuity the work presents a meditation on time, gestation, and connectivity, as well as an approach to art making that is indicative of her practice writ large.
Pulling thematically from the story of Arachne and Minerva in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” Weber’s woven vines echo the weaving in the ancient tale, in which the mortal Arachne spends her days proudly working the loom before rapt crowds. Boastful of her talents but defiant that the gods granted her such a gift, Arachne attracts the attention of an indignant Minerva, goddess of, among other things, wisdom, war, the arts. A contest between the two is held, and upon being bested, a vengeful Minerva condemns Arachne by transforming her into a spider, fated to weave webs for eternity.
The images in Weber’s eighteen panels rhyme with Ovid’s descriptions of those made by both Arachne and Minerva. Peonies, daffodils, tulips, amaryllis, sunflowers, driftwood, wasps nests, and cypress trees adorn the surfaces and are interwoven with entangled ivy. A figure, hidden amongst the foliage, lifts a palm to the skies while another holds her head softly in her hands. Towards the bottom of each panel, Weber’s colored pencil marks become more faint and loose, mimicking the appearance of strands of thread being undone. These lighter marks offer glimpses of the white beyond. However, rather than a blankness, another reading of Weber’s use of white is one of ultimate saturation, in which all colors combine at once into a blinding force: a visually literalized “white noise” reflecting the impenetrable mystery of the universe and the mercurial motivations of the gods.
Anchoring Weber’s eighteen paneled compositions are two oil paintings on canvas, which continue the motif of the interwoven vines. However, unlike the detailed renderings offered in the panels, the paintings focus less on form and more on light, hue and atmosphere. Slashes of color directly applied with oilstick mimic a scribble, echoing Weber’s drawing practices while adapting and evolving into a more abstract, ultimately unknowable reality.
In an interesting biographical aside, Weber recently became a mother and named her daughter Minerva Web, a combination of the Roman goddess and an abbreviation of the artist’s own last name, though it wasn’t until after her daughter was born that she read Ovid’s account of the goddess’s encounter with Arachne. The serendipity of the artist’s life and work mirroring one another is mystical, as if the gods themselves were inspiring her without her even knowing.
Sarah Ann Weber (b. 1988, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Weber received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2011) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include 12.26, Dallas, TX (2022); Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2021 & 2019). Recent group shows include Anat Ebgi, New York, NY (2023); The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL (2023); SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC (2023); Louisa Art Center, Louisa, VA (2023); Philips, Hong Kong, China (2021); Stanley’s, Los Angeles, CA (2021) among others. Weber was an artist in residence with Fountainhead Arts, Miami, FL (2023) and received the Circle Foundation’s third-place selection for the Artist of the Year Award (2020). Weber’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Whitewall Magazine, Artsy, Contemporary Art Review, Purple Magazine, and Artnet.
Across eighteen panels, Weber uses her trademark colored pencils and watercolor to compose a panorama of another world: primeval, overgrown and lush with chromatic saturation. While individually unique in composition, each panel simultaneously bleeds into the next, its borders amorphous as the ever-shifting landscape gives way to new vistas and worlds within worlds. In addition to faint visages of the feminine human form, Weber introduces another spectral element in the enrapturing presence of ghostly-white vines that weave throughout the panels, further linking them through time and space. In this continuity the work presents a meditation on time, gestation, and connectivity, as well as an approach to art making that is indicative of her practice writ large.
Pulling thematically from the story of Arachne and Minerva in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” Weber’s woven vines echo the weaving in the ancient tale, in which the mortal Arachne spends her days proudly working the loom before rapt crowds. Boastful of her talents but defiant that the gods granted her such a gift, Arachne attracts the attention of an indignant Minerva, goddess of, among other things, wisdom, war, the arts. A contest between the two is held, and upon being bested, a vengeful Minerva condemns Arachne by transforming her into a spider, fated to weave webs for eternity.
The images in Weber’s eighteen panels rhyme with Ovid’s descriptions of those made by both Arachne and Minerva. Peonies, daffodils, tulips, amaryllis, sunflowers, driftwood, wasps nests, and cypress trees adorn the surfaces and are interwoven with entangled ivy. A figure, hidden amongst the foliage, lifts a palm to the skies while another holds her head softly in her hands. Towards the bottom of each panel, Weber’s colored pencil marks become more faint and loose, mimicking the appearance of strands of thread being undone. These lighter marks offer glimpses of the white beyond. However, rather than a blankness, another reading of Weber’s use of white is one of ultimate saturation, in which all colors combine at once into a blinding force: a visually literalized “white noise” reflecting the impenetrable mystery of the universe and the mercurial motivations of the gods.
Anchoring Weber’s eighteen paneled compositions are two oil paintings on canvas, which continue the motif of the interwoven vines. However, unlike the detailed renderings offered in the panels, the paintings focus less on form and more on light, hue and atmosphere. Slashes of color directly applied with oilstick mimic a scribble, echoing Weber’s drawing practices while adapting and evolving into a more abstract, ultimately unknowable reality.
In an interesting biographical aside, Weber recently became a mother and named her daughter Minerva Web, a combination of the Roman goddess and an abbreviation of the artist’s own last name, though it wasn’t until after her daughter was born that she read Ovid’s account of the goddess’s encounter with Arachne. The serendipity of the artist’s life and work mirroring one another is mystical, as if the gods themselves were inspiring her without her even knowing.
Sarah Ann Weber (b. 1988, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Weber received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2011) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include 12.26, Dallas, TX (2022); Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2021 & 2019). Recent group shows include Anat Ebgi, New York, NY (2023); The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL (2023); SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC (2023); Louisa Art Center, Louisa, VA (2023); Philips, Hong Kong, China (2021); Stanley’s, Los Angeles, CA (2021) among others. Weber was an artist in residence with Fountainhead Arts, Miami, FL (2023) and received the Circle Foundation’s third-place selection for the Artist of the Year Award (2020). Weber’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Whitewall Magazine, Artsy, Contemporary Art Review, Purple Magazine, and Artnet.
