A spring drive into Kent will ultimately bring to you a group show of six major contemporary artists.

The Morrison Gallery is showing works by Warner Friedman, Jean-Claude Goldberg, Gary Komarin, Jonathan Perlowsky, Jonathan Prince and Janet Rickus. The show runs until Sunday, May 29.

New York City native Warner Friedman was an engineer early in his life, but soon dedicated his talents exclusively to art. His meticulously detailed natural scenes are framed by some architectural structure, such as a window, a door, a fence, a balcony, leading one critic to write, “one doesn’t look at Warner Friedman’s paintings, one looks through them.”

Jean-Claude Goldberg was born in Paris in 1939 and attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris where he worked as a graphic designer in the 1960’s before moving to New York. In 1968 he started a career on Madison Avenue as a creative director. He became a full-time artist after founding his own creative advertising agency.

Another New York City native, abstract painter Gary Komarin “does in his paintings what acrobats do on the high wire” says critic Hamlett Dobbins, adding that Komarin’s works “create a sense of absurdity in the painting: they are imprecise, quirky, and even romantically fanciful.”

Contemporary artist Jonathan Perlowsky has had a rich career marked by constant experimentation with color, image and surface quality that spans three-decades and evolves through several distinct styles. He had his first solo exhibit in 1981 at the age of 28 at the early breakaway Westbroadway Gallery in Manhattan.

Jonathan Prince’s sculptures explore the expansive potential for formal and expressive variety latent in stone, placing the emphasis on elegance, precision, and material qualities. Sinuous, organic volumes suggest the presence of a fluid element within solid granite, while pristinely polished surfaces and perfect geometries create a contrasting machine aesthetic. Prince’s geometric abstractions and clear awareness of both mass relationships and surface qualities demonstrate his artistic inheritance from Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, and other masters of twentieth century modernist sculpture.

Janet Rickus’s still lifes are painted actual size, at eye level, and are often arranged on a surface covered with crisply ironed or softly draped table linens. A native of Massachusetts, Rickus prefers the shapes and stability of fruits, vegetables and flowers, which she paints during the day in natural light. Her “Three Pears” was the cover illustration of Harvard professor Marjorie Garber’s book, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, and Garber used slides of Rickus’s work at a colloquium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The Morrison Gallery is a 7,000 square foot space in the historic Old Barn section of Kent and is home to an on-going schedule of exhibitions by prominent local and national artists.

A cook relies on heat to prepare a meal. And sometimes, an artist relies on heat to create.

At Sacred Heart University, a group show makes heat its central theme. Artists Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong, Austin I. Collins, C.S.C., Michael Dominick, Eve Ingalls, Richard Klein, Gina Miccinilli, Robert Modaferri and Kenneth P. Payne all used heat as a medium.

“Heat” opens with a live-jazz (by the Carol Sudhalter Duo) reception 1-3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 1. It runs until June 1.

The Bridgeport Art and Cultural Council extends a special welcome to Bridgeport police and firefighters  for a reception 5-7 p.m. Thursday April 21 for a new exhibit, “Art in Force.”

“Our first responders in Bridgeport are known for their hard work, bravery, and the dangers they face from day to day on the job,” says curator Eileen Walsh. “Many may be surprised to find that only scratches the surface. In this show our first-responders deal with the stresses of the job through art. Whether photographing the things they see on the job or expressing themselves through abstract painting and conceptual sculptures, these artists find that art can help them work through some of the issues they are constantly confronting.”

The show features the work of three Bridgeport police Officers and one Bridgeport firefighter. Among them are  abstract paintings by Vincent Verrillo, urban photos by James Meyers and firefighting images by Keith Muratori

The show runs through Thursday, May 5th 2011. The BACC Gallery is in the historic Arcade Mall on 1001-12 Main Street in downtown Bridgeport.

The Pink House Painters is a group of 31 Fairfield County artists who regularly come together to create and share, reflect and critique and find inspiration. Their paintings will be on view in “Different Strokes” at the Fairfield Art Center. Expect watercolors, acrylics, oils and multi-media pieces – representational to abstract in style.

Westport painter Arlene Skutch, who is the driving force behind the The Pink House Painters, opens her studio to the group. Near the studio, on the same property, is her bright pink Cape Cod style house built in 1876.

Most members of the group show their work individually in exhibitions and commercial galleries. “Different Strokes” opens with a reception 6-8 p.m. Friday, April 22 and runs through May 7.

The Fairfield Citizen has more details.