On Exhibit

Pure Art is Pure Vibrance
Creative playfulness leaps and bounds from Providence Center
by Carrie Steele

Bright and bold, Pure Art at Maryland Hall bursts with life. Some 50 artists — displaying nearly 80 works — have drawn, painted, colored and sketched with all the variation of a jumbo box of Crayola Crayons — the kind containing every hue imaginable and its own crayon sharpener.

Splicing and meshing Pure Art’s colors — including canary yellows, tropical greens, Caribbean blues and fiery oranges — are budding artists from the Providence Center’s Art Institute, which provides professional instruction in visual and performing arts for developmentally disabled adults.

Mostly abstracts, the works take on carefree shapes and expressions. A zoo of animals and forests of foliage grace a dozen works; a handful are figures and human impressions.

Ed Doben’s “Leaves in a Red Pond” highlights greenish-yellow and blue leaves on an autumn red background. In Wes Clark’s “Sunset,” a yellow, flaming disc sets behind a landscape of glacier-striped mountain, yellow and green rolling hills and a checkered blue-purple ocean.

Besides drawings and paintings, you’ll find painted sculptures and chairs; plus photographs and wall hangings — all arranged with artful precision worthy of the National Gallery along the walls and floor space of Maryland Hall’s sunny AIR Gallery and hallsways.

You can add Providence Center’s art to your own collection. At an average price of $40 to $60, this gallery art is fractions of the price you might find at a commercial gallery — and most works are already framed.