40 years in any business is a long time, 40 years in the Art Gallery Business is a lifetime. To celebrate forty years of Zenith Gallery we will have hosted a series of three different exhibitions at 1111 Pennsylvania Sculpture Space that will represent the different eras of Zenith Gallery. This exhibit will highlight recent artists from our current location at 1429 Iris St. and works by two long standing Zenith artist Renée duRocher, who will simultaneously be showing at the Embassy of Canada Art Gallery, and a rare sculpture series by Anne Marchand, fresh from the works of the Katzen Art Center.

After leaving 7th St, Margery Goldberg, owner and director of Zenith Gallery, moved Zenith Gallery to her home, creating a European style art salon. Zenith Gallery has the best of all worlds, with two levels of salon style gallery and one level of a modern gallery including two sculpture gardens, one inground made from a repurposed swimming pool where many of our sculptors have their work featured.

Lisa Battle, inspired by nature’s forms and shapes, creates hand built ceramic sculptures that truly look like they have been cultivated in nature. Their ambiguous, biomorphic forms suggest rock formations found in the Southwest and gestures of modern dance, often reminding us of a detail shot of a bigger picture. The sculptures are fired in a wood kiln which leads to interesting variations of texture and color on the surface. “The result is both a visual and tactile experience in which the surface is inherently integrated with the form.”

Richard Binder a medical oncologist who spent more than 40 years caring for patients has undergone a metamorphosis from caring to creating. He has translated skills learned as an undergraduate in engineering school fabricating working models from metals into creating abstract metal sculptures. “I create vivid and dramatic metal sculptures from mild and stainless steel. My inspiration is the world and its beauty. My creative process begins with a cerebral concept. I close my eyes and visualize forms in 3-dimensions – and often in color. Then I either create a model, or I go directly to working with the steel.”

Patera Kori Studios (Darlene Davis) are a father and daughter duo who look to nature for naturally occurring spirals and incorporates those patterns in their wood sculptures. “The kinetic component introduces movements that communicate the ordered, balanced perfection of spirals in nature.” These spiral sculptures bring a sense of relaxation, calming and balance to the viewer.

Renée duRocher infuses historical aspects into the places she visits and depicts. Thus, translated onto the canvas, she maintains a contemporary artistic approach. She includes the modern-day community of Sa Pa, Vietnam and their traditional colors and historical garments to express concepts of time and history. “It is not only a question of history or remnants, but also, and primarily, a question of human nature and its relation to the ephemeral, the divine, and eternity. These are concepts that outlive ages and civilizations, and they are deeply anchored in Renée duRocher’s space-time.”

Anne Marchand long known for her expressive, other-worldly, colorful canvases continues her journey with these free-standing sculptures. Marchand relates to “the poet Garcia Lorca’s vision of duende, the soulful response to a work of art, infused with earthiness, the irrationality, and existential vulnerability” for her current body of works, but one could see duende’s influence beginning in her earlier years.

Jerome Harris Parmet owned an interior architectural design firm for 45 years before he turned to sculpting in steel. Parmet has been interested in the arts since his senior year of college. Working primarily in steel, Parmet discovered how the process of welding allows him to mold and shape while the steel stays firm. “My repeated theme is an examination of balance and stress. Each piece is original, achieved after hours of dreams, sketches, models and mock-ups, but they all seem to be an exploration into steel suspended in space.”

For four decades, Zenith Gallery has been a pillar in the D.C. art community. We attribute our success to our ability to transform with the ever-changing times. We do this by combining our longstanding commitment to inspired, unique artworks with our personalized, high quality customer service. This commitment to celebrating the creative spirit of our artists is the core value at the heart of Zenith Gallery. As the Owner, and celebrated artist in her own right, Goldberg is fond of saying, “With billions of people on the planet, for someone to come up with an original idea and execute it in an original way is what has kept me in business all these years.”