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The Classic Center Cultural Foundation is pleased to announce the opening of The Classic Center’s latest art exhibits on Thursday, May 21 at 6:00p.m. coinciding with the 3Thurs festivities. The opening exhibits, Peaceable Kingdom and Flight, will highlight the works of Cheryl Washburn, Margaret Agner, Lawson Grice, Will Eskridge, Jená A. Johnson, Maria Mueller and Susan Pelham. These artists will be in attendance to discuss their works.

Peaceable Kingdom pictures an array of animals, those great and small, in Classic Gallery I. The five artists featured in Peaceable Kingdom work in different styles and materials to create a colorful menagerie of paintings, prints, and photography. Cheryl Washburn’s highly rendered paintings of the local farmland with grazing horses and cattle are like looking through a little window into the pasture, where Jená A. Johnson shines a magnifying glass on her tiny subjects presenting them in bold, detailed, large photographs. Lawson Grice explores landscape with a video game aesthetic in his candy-colored digital prints, populated by koala bears and narwhals. Susan Pelham creates collages that are a cacophony of animals and activity whereas Will Eskridge does the complete opposite, isolating his majestic figures of animals in a geometrically painted world, letting their forms stand in sharp contrast to one another.

The artists featured in Flight in Classic Gallery II all inventively picture insects and birds with unique approaches creating an exhibition filled with quite a diverse brood. Margaret Agner’s kaleidoscope of silk butterflies delicately flutters in the breeze while entomologist and photographer Jená A. Johnson captures close-up real-life images of insects that shimmer like polished gems. On the ornithological end, Maria Mueller’s Pennsylvania Dutch inspired birds fly in happy flocks of greens and blues while Will Eskridge paints delicately rendered birds of prey. Susan Pelham’s storybook collages illustrate roosters crowing, waddling geese and skillfully balanced cranes.

These exhibits will be on display until October 2015. The Classic Center Cultural Foundation’s mission is to provide resources to entertain and educate our community by providing and supporting diverse performing, visual, and culinary arts programs.