art show

Pensacola Junior College's annual Faculty Art Show runs through the holidays and into next year, closing Jan. 4. Its 19-member art department isn't short on ideas, and a few surprises accompany this year's edition.Photography has usually been the department's stronghold, even as video and digital media flood academia. David Hines, Warren Thompson and Mark Francis have an implicit competition, but their approaches are night and day.Hines is a traditionalist, shunning computer manipulation with his darkroom aesthetic. His 35mm "guerilla shots" are spontaneous urban takes of Amsterdam. People go by without noticing his surveil-lance, a tactic whose quality seems purely accidental.Francis is more interested here with landscape and architecture that ranges from the stillness of the desert to the regal lion-statued entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago.Thompson is more photojournalistic, a sense that hits home with a grid of 40 black-and-white shots of Mardi Gras partygoers taking a break from poverty or the banality of modern life.Cynthia App fills the gallery's video space with her documentary film, "The Lost Island." This gentle but affirming presentation of Perdido Key struggling to preserve its native animals is as highly polished as it is convincing.Spiros Zachos, known for his 2-D figurative work, has taken up ceramic sculpture as if he's found a new calling.

Art exhibits: Dec.9, 2007

ONGOING

ALLENTOWN ART MUSEUM, 31 N. Fifth St., Allentown. 610-432-4333. Arts Community of Easton Members Group Juried Art Show: Through Dec. 30. Tiffany by Design: Forty objects including lamps, a stained glass window, metalwork and related materials made by Tiffany Studios and Tiffany Furnaces, under the direcion of Louis Comfort Tiffany, between 1900 and 1925. Saturday guided tours. Through Jan. 6. Alphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau Extraordinaire: Posters and textile designs on loan and including works from the museum collection, of female and floral forms created by the Moravia-born artist. Accompanies the ''Tiffany by Design'' exhibit (included with special exhibit admission). Saturday guided tours. Through Jan. 6. Picasso and Delaunay: The Book as Inspiration: A rare portfolio of 13 prints by Pablo Picasso, which were the result of a collaboration with Parisian fine art publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce an illustrated edition of Honore de Balzac's novel ''Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu,'' accompanied by an unusual and compelling work, a ''simultaneous book'' created by modernist designer Sonia Delaunay-Terk and poet Blaise Cendrars.

Exhibit provides outlet for faith-inspired art

NORMAL -- After nearly three decades of struggling to figure out where he fit into the art world, Mike Connelly has finally found his place. And he doesn't think it was an accident. Connelly, an artist since the age of 12, also is a Christian who believes the events of his life are carefully orchestrated by God."It's been hard because I've never felt part of the mainstream community, and the church never really embraced my art either," he said. "It was like being in two worlds and I've had to bite my tongue in each of them."But then Connelly heard about the Van Leer Arts Society, and something resonated within him.The group was formed this summer when Natalie Wetzel, a stay-at-home mother of four, and Bekah McLean, a senior sculpture major at Illinois State University, met with Immanuel Bible Foundation's executive director, Marc Boon.Their goal going into that meeting was to host an art show at the facility this fall.

Local News Catch Aboriginal Fine Crafts and Arts show at Victoriaville

Aboriginal artisans from across the region have descended on the city for their 4th Annual Aboriginal Fine Crafts and Arts Christmas Gift Show.

Japanese bakery's origami figures welcome season

Paper cranes, reindeers and frogs are among the hundreds of ways a local Japanese bakery is counting its blessings.

Folding 1,000 paper cranes has been a long-standing tradition that has been used to express well-wishing or wishing for one to recover from an illness, Kimura said.