Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Angelo Arnold & Peter Fried

Come to Stowe's Helen Day Art Center this week for Mikey Welsh's exuberant abstract and representational paintings; stay for Peter Fried's tender oil paintings of highway signs and Angelo Arnold's upholstered loveseat, which threatens to swallow all those who sit there. Fried finds beauty in the geometry of the manmade world thrust into the natural one. Arnold creates a whole new world, in which familiar living room furniture is distorted, as if to say, "You are not welcome here." Don't say we didn't warn you. Fried and Arnold's show, in the East Gallery, is up through February 27; Welsh's, through April 17. Pictured: "Loved Seat 2" by Angelo Arnold.