Art

Leigh Merrill’s unpopulated images of North Texas buildings and sites in her current exhibition, “Manifest Destiny,” at the Hotchkiss Tremaine Gallery, are about the frontier as it pushed west through the vast expanse of the Plains. This movement into new territory freed settlers from European customs and prior mindsets, and from older notions of art and architecture. These pioneers were innovative, individualistic, democratic yet lawless. And in Texas they combined with Spanish and Mexican influences.

The Housatonic Camera Club both meets at Noble Horizons and organizes exhibitions there of members’ work. The latest includes some fascinating images, many of professional quality, of people and places across the globe.
I am a pushover for animals, so Laszlo Gyorsok’s “Billy the Goat” and “The White Owl” grabbed me at once. Billy, with his beautifully bearded head turned to the left, is stately and a bit bemused. The owl with his bright eyes and eager body language is a ball of gorgeous feathers.

I imagine that Janet Block paints quickly: brushing, scraping, altering until she is satisfied. And I suspect she is a tough judge of her own art, one who discards work that does not meet her standards, the same rigorous standards she brought to positions on Wall Street and as a management consultant.
Most often she succeeds, at least in work now on exhibit at Sharon’s Hotchkiss Library.

There are some pleasures in “Enjoying Small Things,” the juried exhibition of 59 works now at The Sharon Historical Society. Pieter Lefferts, the single judge, gave prizes to three artists and honorable mentions to three others.
Why he singled out the winning works is not clear, but that is the nature of art and individual reactions to it.