Reston Art Gallery and Studios will be overtaken by weeds next month — an intrusion that, in this case, will be enthusiastically welcomed.
The gallery at Lake Anne Plaza (11400 Washington Plaza West) announced today (Tuesday) that it will host a new exhibit titled “Weeds & Seeds: Observed Motifs” from local visual artist Jennifer Duncan from Sept. 6-28.
Generally working at her home studio in Reston, Duncan uses paint and collage to create art that blurs the line between representational and abstract. Her latest works evoke “the repetitive patterns and chaotic rhythms she encounters on her daily walks through the forest and along the nearby Potomac River,” Reston Art Gallery and Studios said in a press release.
Working as a painting and mixed media teacher at Yellow Barn Studios in Glen Echo, Maryland, Duncan is a resident artist at the Reston art gallery, where she most recently had the solo show “Memories of a Childhood Home” last year. She’s also a member of Great Falls Studios, McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville and Studio Gallery DC.
Duncan’s new exhibit will showcase 16 works that she has created over the past two years, all of them inspired by plants, such as the invasive Russian thistle — better known as a tumbleweed.
“I hope to capture the feeling of the place I was when I spotted these plants,” Duncan said in the press release. “Gusty winds blowing the tumbleweeds down the beach, the deep greens of the forest where the weeds were spotted as sunlight hit them from a certain angle.”
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Duncan first noticed tumbleweeds on the banks of the Potomac River in Southern Maryland in 2023 and began to draw their captivating shape. Since then, she has drawn and painted the intriguing skeletal shrub dozens of times, using a variety of techniques and materials.
Layering the silhouette of the plants and utilizing their intertwining branches to create pattern and visual texture has provided a framework for exploration and improvisation. Through the repetitive patterning of the weeds, new (and sometimes ambiguous) designs are created. The exhibit also includes some of Duncan’s small, improvisational landscape paintings that emphasize native plants through bright colors and gestural marks.
Reston Art Gallery will celebrate the arrival of Duncan’s exhibit with an artist reception on Sunday, Sept. 7 from 2-4 p.m. The gallery is open to the public on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.
A privately owned co-op founded in December 1986 by Pat Macintyre, Reston Art Gallery and Studios supports eight juried artists, including Duncan, and rotates in different exhibits showcasing its members’ work each month. Previous exhibitions this year have included “TEXTURE,” which featured live demonstrations, and an invitational show in July where members could bring guest artists.
The August 2025 exhibit — “Textile Paintings” by fiber artist Cindy Grisdela, who crafted all of the pieces freehand with a sewing machine — remains on display through Aug. 31.
