Maine-based husband-and-wife artists Adriane Herman and Brian Reeves did an admirable job as jurors of this year’s South End Art Hop. Not only did they put together an interesting “Jurors’ Selections” exhibit within the Juried Show (about 15 percent of entrants made the cut), but their picks as prize-winners were, for the most part, reasonable. The couple laid an egg in the outdoor sculpture category, but other than that did pretty well.... Read more

“Sculpture is an art of the open air,” Henry Moore once said. “I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in or on the most beautiful building I know.” The Helen Day Art Center’s annual “Exposed!” exhibition seems to validate the 20th-century English sculptor’s thesis. Each year, the group sculpture exhibit in the open air turns the village of Stowe into a gallery without walls. A wide array of 27 sculptors was selected for 2008.... Read more

Artists’ statements often obfuscate rather than enlighten, but the current four exhibitions at Burlington’s Artpath Gallery are accompanied by fairly descriptive ones. Aside from occasional technical references, the three painters and one photographer reveal a spiritual subtext to their work.... Read more

Rosie Prevost combines figurative imagery with titles that evoke archetypal identities in her solo photographic exhibition, “Portraits: Exploring the Universal,” at 215 College Street Artists’ Cooperative in Burlington. The 28 black-and-white images are beautifully composed, but Prevost’s references to the ideas of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) add a conceptual dimension and deeper meaning to her imagery.... Read more

Photographer David Johansen takes a new look at two subjects with one overarching theme in “Light Forms and Icescapes,” his current exhibit at Grannis Gallery in Burlington. Germane to both ice and light is the artist’s notion of transience. The show’s subtitle is “Images of Ephemeral Objects and Events,” and the delicacy of Johansen’s pictures is mysterious and intriguing.... Read more

While motorists fume over the cost of running their oil-thirsty automobiles, oil paint is powering a different sort of internal combustion at West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park in Stowe. The current exhibition is called “Internal Combustion,” in fact, and it comprises new, highly refined abstract paintings by Middlesex artist Galen Cheney. Her explosive canvasses get their drive from sensuous textures and vibrant, harmonious hues.... Read more

The American artist most closely identified with Impressionism is undoubtedly Mary Cassatt. She joined the avant-garde group for its exhibition of 1879, and was also instrumental in the development of the Impressionist movement on this side of the Atlantic. “Mary Cassatt: Friends and Family,” on view now at the Shelburne Museum, assembles 58 Cassatt prints and paintings into a dynamic show that places her work in the context of her life and times.... Read more

Rick Hayes paraphrases Charles Dickens for the title of his exhibition “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times.” Dickens’ brilliant opening line from A Tale of Two Cities is the first link in a chain of dichotomies describing the precariously imbalanced worlds of 18th-century France and England. Hayes’ solo exhibition of computer-manipulated digital photos at the SEABA office gallery is a gathering of images on two themes that evoke an early 21st-century America seemingly on the verge of chaos.... Read more

Characteristically, the newest works by Essex Junction artist John Brickels are playful and innovative. His “Bolts and Bots” exhibition of clay sculptures at Montpelier’s Lazy Pear Gallery is a complete departure from his signature dilapidated buildings constructed from extruded stoneware. Here Brickels’ masterpieces incorporate found metal components, electrical tidbits and glass eyes into hundreds of pounds of malleable mud. He has expertly crafted humble clay into robots, vehicles and surreal mechanical objects. The pieces are mystifyingly detailed and flawlessly built by hand.... Read more

It’s a daunting task to describe the essence of a spiritual space in pictures, yet South Burlington photographer Kristen M. Watson’s black-and-white series “We Wish to See God: Places of Worship” strives to make faith tangible. Her exhibition at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Burlington gathers images taken at Vermont churches and temples to reflect on how their architectural attributes and visual rhythms express holiness. In the process, Watson takes to heart the famous quote from Mies van der Rohe: “God is in the details.”... Read more