BY JENNIFFER WARDELL

Clipper Staff Writer



BOUNTIFUL -- With Utah's spring growing shorter every year, residents are coming up with new ways to hold onto the season.

"Expressions of Spring" is the focus of the exhibit currently on display at the Lamplight Gallery, 170 S. Main. Throughout the gallery, Lamplight artists have brought out pieces that celebrate some aspect of this ever more fleeting time of year.

Carma Hart Fuller, who once taught art at Viewmont High, has brought new life to dead gourds by transforming them into canvases for flowers and birds. One, "Red Roses for a Blue Lady," is covered with a gold-edged rose that manages to be both expansive and delicate at once.

That same skill is also evident in the show's window piece, a painting by Fuller titled Lily Pad Symphony. Though the subject matter confines the work to a palette of mostly blues and greens, the painting seems as rich as any complicated spring garden.

Beverly Mangum's watercolor plants are softer, each seemingly soaking in the gentlest touch of spring rain. In "A Bird's Eye View," that same touch makes feathers seem so soft and full that observers can practically feel them under their fingers.

Colleen Parker's "Early Evening" embraces the season on a much larger scale, capturing Utah mountains graced with spring's first blanket of green.

Clara Leachman offers spring blossoms of a slightly more exotic nature, vivid in a palette of deep reds and pinks. Her ocean scenes have the same rich palette -- the water alone in "Hawaiian Sunset" seems to contain all the colors of the rainbow.

For other artists, spring serves mostly as an inspiration to look ahead to summer. Nora Del Murdock's paintings capture an endless summer evening in the mountains, the sky blazing red and orange above the trees.

Rebecca Lee's work captures a variety of gentle spring blossoms, but it's her paintings of full, ripe fruits and vegetables that really draw the eye. In "Late Summer Harvest," her peppers are so crisp and bright that they almost seem to glow.

No matter how short spring gets, there's always something to look forward to.



jwardell@davisclipper.com