Below are some installation shots of our new exhibitions, HOPE AND FEAR and WINTER SOLOS.

(Also: a couple of pics of the ART ENABLES show in our community gallery downstairs. Not pictured: Resident artist Edith Heins's show upstairs in Wyatt gallery.)

I'll add captions to these when I get to the office. In the meantime, you can take a look, and ponder what precisely it is that you're seeing.

The reception is tomorrow--FRIDAY, December 7th, from 6:00 to 9:00. Tasty beverages provided, of course. There will be a dance performance by Bowen McCauley dance at 6:30 and 7:30 in the Meyer gallery, and HOPE AND FEAR curator Carol Lukitsch--my predecessor in the Curator's chair at the AAC--will give her remarks at 7:00. So come by!

You knew there had to be a perfectly good reason for not going to Miami this week, right?

A snowy day at the Arlington Arts Center.

A large drawing from Rachel Waldron and three collages from Steven Williams--part of HOPE AND FEAR.

More drawings and prints from Rachel Waldron.

Installation view of the Meyer Gallery, part of HOPE AND FEAR. From left to right: Prints by Michael Platt; sculpture by M.V. Langston; painting and sculpture by Laurel Hausler.

Closeup of Laurel Hausler's work.

The Blue Door and Vortex by Michael Platt. We've got six pieces total from Michael, including one called The Weight of Waiting, which incorporates text from a poem by his wife, linking old, weathered rooms where slaves were once held in Ghana to weakened, foundering buildings in New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina.

More Hausler, Langston, and Platt.

Three more images by Platt.

Hausler's High Priestess sculpture against images by Shahla Arbabi.

Triptych by Shahla Arbabi.

The Tiffany gallery, featuring paintings by Sandra Parra--you may have seen her work in the last Academy show at Conner Contemporary--and Janis Goodman.

Detail from one of Janis's large, semi-performative paintings.

On to our WINTER SOLOS: Installation view of Jennifer Levonian's very funny video, Smells Like English Boxwood. After viewing this, you'll never look at Colonial Williamsburg the same way again.

Young Kim's installation downstairs, Salt and Earth. Young lays out these flat rectangular fields of regular table salt, then silkscreens images into them with powdered red earth. Gorgeous, fragile, and definitely temporary.

Many years ago, when I first moved ino the area and didn't know anything about anything, The Arlington Arts Center was just that building with the big ceramic hands out in front of it. The guy behind those now-absent hands? Joe Mannino. Think of his solo show downstairs as a sort of AAC history lesson.

Art Enables works with adults with mental or developmental disabilities. I'm not much of an outsider art enthusiast, so when I went to pick pieces for their show in the Community Gallery, I didn't have any expectations. But this is frankly great stuff, and way more fun than I could've imagined.