Below we show just a sampling of the artwork by our juried co-op artists, to show the breadth of their talents. The work on display in the gallery is constantly changing and evolving. Please drop by the Berkeley Art Works to see the current offerings.
116 North Queen Street, Martinsburg, WV.
Wed-Fri 11-5, Sat 11-4.
Judith Becker
Judith received a BS in Design, Certificate of Education, University of Michigan and MS in Education, Monmouth University. Her professional work history includes teaching art grades K – 12, designing and teaching needlework techniques, and a long career in Human Resources with Citigroup. After she retired, she returned to her art and began painting and teaching art, mostly to adults.
Before relocating to the WV Eastern Panhandle area, she was a member of the Garrett County (MD) Art Council. She is a member of the Berkeley Arts Council, Martinsburg, a member of the West Virginia Watercolor Society and is a Tamarac, “The Best of West Virginia”, artisan where she also exhibits and sells her art through its Dirkirson Gallery.
Judith specializes in painting with colored pencils, pastels and watercolors and often mixes her media for unusual effects. Her subjects mostly are botanicals, landscapes and scenes from her travels. Her popular classes cover many art techniques targeted for both the beginner and the more experienced painter.
She is the creator of a unique art form called “Spritzilism”, which involves using botanicals as templates for sprayed watercolor paint. The results produce interesting compositions with lots of vibrant colors and textures. She also offers a class in this process, which is primarily limited to the Spring, Summer and early Fall since it has to be offered when fresh botanicals are available.
Email: beckerjsb40@gmail.com
Gary Bergel
Multi-disciplinary Artist
Web: garybergel.com
Teaching Creativity, Color & Design at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College, and assisting at the area Veterans Administration Healing Arts Center, have been a “fit” for my “multi-disciplinary” creative mode. I have worked in photography from age 16, and have utilized whatever materials are
at hand since my youth. I visually explore and capture images via digital photography on a near-daily basis = a form of “sketching” for me.
While I have chosen only recent photography for this BAW virtual galleries presentation, including a “vertical panorama,” my volunteer work with veterans prompted a “return” to acrylic painting. I am currently working with traditional acrylics, interference acrylics, gold and silver leaf, and collage on circular canvases, and am completing a mixed media “specimen box” series.
Regardless of medium, I am about contemplatively “seeing,” both inward and outward. I aim at synthesis and universals to depict personal “inscapes” and the “isness” of things – daily life, detritus, our turbulent COVID-19 times, and the majesty and mysteries of light, sky, wind, earth, water and Spirit.
Joe Bourgeois:
My relationship to the artists’ community has always been from the outside. My ability and desire to do art are sometimes uncomfortably far apart. I’m probably better considered as a woodworker. My artistic vision is impaired and my hands don’t always do what I want them to. Still I have a great enjoyment in considering and developing projects. Most of all I get growth through my encounters with the artists around me.
I can be reached at joe@bourgeoisfurniture.com, and some of my work can be seen at bourgeoisfurniture.com
Pam Curtis
A native of California, I have lived and taught in four states and two foreign countries. I began making jewelry almost 20 years ago when a jeweler wanted $300 to string some carved Chinese beads I had. Since then I have enjoyed searching for and assembling beads, stones, and other components that please me into creations that I hope will please others.
Email: pecurtis2@frontier.com
Theresa Fitzpatrick
Encaustic painting; Fibre
Email: tfitzpatt2013@gmail.com
My husband and I moved to Falling Waters/Honeywood on the Potomac, June 2021 after forty eight years living in Maryland. I retired in 2015 completing 35 years as a Registered Pediatric Nurse at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. Fiber Arts has always been a passion for me including weaving, felting and embroidery, For my Felt pieces the wool is cleaned,carded and arranged for the felting process to start.When completed, I apply embroidery stitches. Encaustic painting. Encaustic painting images show an ancient technique by applying pigmented hot honeybee wax to a wood suface.
Martha Hanley
Expressing visually that of the sacred beauty and mystery of life that words alone can’t capture is my goal. The fun, exciting creative process of putting paint to paper or collaging mixed media becomes just as important as the final product. When vibrant colors, textures, shapes come together in simple florals or abstract landscapes to express something unique then I am satisfied and hope that others will be moved by what they see.
Anna Howard
My art and laughter go hand in hand. I take great delight in taking the chaotic disorder of the creative process and transforming the disorder into a functional piece of art. By incorporating irony, humor, curiosity, remembrance, celebration, surprise, and quiet reflection; it develops into an active piece of art in daily life. And the scene is set.
A writer uses words to create their stories. I use objects. I find my inspiration in a myriad of places. My eye seizes on an object, and “out of left field” a clock concept begins to form. My fondness for re-using items is a mixture of unending curiosity, Midwest sensibility, and an appetite for “Second time ‘round” items. This combination becomes part of the palette eliciting an emotional response. And In the end answers the basic question, “Can all of this be made into a clock that tells story?”
Doug Kinnett
In my high school years, the works of the Post Impressionists—especially those of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne, fascinated me. In college my horizon broadened to include German Expressionist and American Abstract Expressionist works. Reductionism, primitivism, constructivism and symbolism are the core of all of these influences. These tools are primary in how I create art with a focus on paint application and color. My work hovers in a pause between idea and the action necessary to express that idea. Meaning is literally caught in flight from thought to marks of line and color. It’s a dynamic space that invites open interpretation of an uncharted landscape. This boundless, unfettered space is Modern Art.
In my doctoral studies I specialized in Aesthetic Education, the teaching of art appreciation. As a retired professor, I value sharing my experience with my fellow critique group members. Our conversations guide my explorations into paint that is seeking meaning. It’s elusive. It slips and slides across my canvasses, but there is a structure. In some paintings it looms above the color. In others structure watches from the shadows. Those hard lines are all but subsumed by the riot of color and brush stroke. This is the birth of meaning. Like dawn, color breathes into what would be a lifeless, stark space without it.
Dan Kennedy
Acrylic, Watercolor
Web: https://www.prospectartworks.com/
Email: dgkennedy51@gmail.com
I describe myself as a landscape artist working with acrylic and watercolor. I have sought professional instruction from artists such as, Rebecca Pearl in Thurmont, Md. Jerry Yarnell in Skiatook Oklahoma and studied with both. I recently moved to Martinsburg WV. I am really excited to also join the Berkley Art Works where I look forward to meeting and learning from other artists there. Martinsburg has a vast resource of artistic talent, I’m honored to be a part of that.
Susan Parker
After painting seriously, but briefly, during college, I returned to art in 1998. It is now my primary activity, apart from the demands of daily living. (A career in social services and court administration intervened, leaving little time for art during my “middle period.”) I work in watercolor, oil and pastel, using the medium that best suits my mood and the subject.
As an artist, my goal is to focus attention, if only briefly, on the beauty (and quirkiness) in the things around us that often escape our notice as we rush about our daily lives.
Marilyn Schoon
Fused Glass
I started making jewelry as an escape from the responsibilities of teaching English at a highly competitive science/technology high school. One weekend I took a fused glass class where I discovered the idiosyncrasies of dichroic glass, and I was hooked! Dichroic glass, originally used for the re-entry tiles on NASA’s space shuttles, transmits one color but when looked at from a different angle reflects another. Then, after we retired to WV, the Berkeley Arts Council offered a 2½-day polymer clay class with international teaching artist Christi Friesen, and yet another passion was born. I love the freedom that retirement offers, allowing me to explore different media and creative outlets; and I’m grateful to be an artist at the Berkeley Art Works.
Email: mjschoon@comcast.net
Rip Smith
Sterling “Rip” Smith is an award-winning fine art photographer who has exhibited regionally and nationally. His photographs are held in public and private collections throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and as far away as the United Kingdom.
He has been doing photography off and on for more than fifty years and currently resides near Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Web site: https://sterlingimages.com
More images: https://sterlingimageswv.myportfolio.com/
Email: sterlingimageswv@gmail.com
