The Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative mounts an exciting mixed media and installation exhibit, THIS & THAT, at the gallery from January 11 through February, 2012 with a reception on Jan. 21, from 3 6 p.m. at 235 W. Washington St., Charles Town.

This collection of “neo post-modern” works created during the last five years by Co-op members Malcolm Hally and Gary Bergel challenges the customary way of seeing, making and engaging with art.

Born and raised in the lake shore area of Wisconsin, Charles Town artist Gary Bergel has long been drawn to nature, landscape, skies, solitude and observing the “is-ness” of things. He finds delight and meaning in viewing and recording commonplace objects from fresh angles and in detecting the extraordinary in the ordinary. His work is about seeing and noticing reflections, nuances, transparencies, levels, dimensions, layered meanings and refracted realities.

Bergel earned a B.S. degree in Biology and Secondary Education with minors in Natural Science and Art and an M.A. degree in Fine Art/Mixed Media from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has exhibited widely in regional and national competitive exhibitions, mounted solo exhibitions, the most recent being a “Shaping Room” mixed-media installation in December, 2010 at Touchstone Gallery, Washington, D.C. He is also represented at The Bridge Gallery in Shepherdstown.

Shepherdstown artist Malcolm Hally studied at the world-renowned Glasgow School of Art and at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland. Hally’s work used to be concerned with kinetic sculpture but he is now concerned with molten wax and plastic pictures and the intricacies of pop- up book mechanisms.

Hally has a teaching certificate from the Maryland School of Art in Baltimore and substitutes as an art teacher in Montgomery and Washington counties. A resident of Rockville, Md., for more than 10 years before moving to Shepherdstown in 2009, Hally exhibited in Washington, D.C. with the Washington Sculptors Group and was a member of their board of directors.

The Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative gallery, showing juried work by 28 member artists and artisans, is located at 235 West Washington Street in the heart of historic Charles Town. The Co-op’s mission is to provide a space where artists and artisans in the West Virginia Panhandle region can create, teach and exhibit and to nurture and grow the appreciation and presence of art in the community.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 125 p.m. For information, call 304-294-2090 or visit wvstreetgallery.com/.