Works by Conner and Nicely are featured at River Gallery

“Just Dreaming” by Calvin Nicely

This month’s exhibit at River Gallery provides “a warm array of paintings and sculpture depicting life,” according to its organizers.

The featured artists for February are James Conner and Calvin Nicely. They are scheduled to be on hand for the opening reception on Friday, Feb. 5.

For Conner, an Alabama resident who was born and raised in Mississippi, memories resonate in his acrylic paintings of people and stories.

“I paint with a passion, and that is a take from my life,” he says in his artist statement. “When I returned home from Vietnam (he’s a U.S. Army veteran), I saw things in a way I’ve never seen them before. I try to capture my emotions as quickly as they emerge. I don’t have enough days left on God’s Earth to spend weeks on one piece of work. When the passion has left, I want to move on to the next work.”

For Nicely, of Tennessee, flames and extreme heat join to shape molten glass into deeply inspired figurative sculpture. He has developed his own style of glass making, preferring an acid-etching technique. He is one of only a few black glass artists in the United States.