Artemis Herber's hope amid bleakness and instability

Don't miss seeing Artemis Herber's evocative pieces in Artisphere's Works in Progress Gallery through Oct. 5.  Herber's works are three-dimensional, continually transforming structures built with acrylic paint on corrugated cardboard.  The above piece evokes the elevated loop road and skywalks once central to Rosslyn's urban plan. At one point in making the work, Herber left it out in the rain for a day to get a more organic response from the cardboard.  The ladder structure that appears within the swirling sightlines suggests the transformative ascending and descending of the Rosslyn built environment.  But there's no question that the ultimate destiny is the promised land of a revitalized Rosslyn.

Another of Herber's work highlights Rosslyn's tectonic change. The cardboard folds and pushes upward in response to cosmic forces.  In some places the surface of the cardboard has been removed to reveal individual corrugations.  Yet the overall sense is of world remaking. That's what's going on right here in Rosslyn.