Firehouse showcases its arts faculty in new Norman show

Beverly Herndon uses the Oriental brushwork genre very well in her ink and watercolor depictions of flowers, a woodpecker on a bamboo stalk, and a “Koi Dance” in water under a blossoming branch.

Fitting into the category of Western art, but fresh and deftly handled, are three oils by Carol Armstrong, including one that offers us a close-up of an American Indian “New Bride” with her groom-to-be.

Two American Indians on horseback ford a stream in the second Armstrong oil, called “Splash,” and an American Indian woman sits on a log with two children, in the third.

Making the tradition of the still life work for her through exquisite technique is Kelli Folsom in her oil panels of a blue and white “Mexican Pitcher with Lemons” and of “An Oriental Vase & Peaches.”

More flat and folk art-like is “Three's a Crowd,” a large, humorously titled acrylic painting by Jane Lawson of a man, wearing outdoor garb, standing in a doorway with two dogs.

Abstract, freely applied fabric rather than paint “Brush Strokes” stand out on a deep maroon background in a needle-felted cloth wall hanging by Bobby A. Anderson.

Abstract, and downright serendipitous, are two small, whimsically gestural, earthen-hued “Tree Bottle” pitchers by Dan Harris, while orange “drips” enliven the surface of his “Crackle Pot.”

Pot-shaped forms also work well for Karyn Gilman, who relies on paper mache rather than ceramic material, to create her collage-surfaced “Burning Bush” and “Grassland” vessels.

Chris Burnett embraces order in a diamond-shaped, kiln-formed glass work, called “The Transfiguration of Blue,” but gives fancy free rein in a glass “Polychromatic Helix,” bracketed by drill bit-like uprights.