Artists Make Light At Gateway

For a split second, the kid is in the hands of gravity, but you just know he’s going to be all right. Maybe it’s the matching pajamas that give it away. It’s Christmas morning, perhaps, and the kids want to play with a father, or an uncle. But what really seals the deal on the tone of the piece is the quality of the sunlight, streaming through the window behind them. It lets us see the care the adult is putting into it, lets us see the way the kid is enjoying the ride. He may be falling, but the landing will be safe.

Liah Sinq’s photo is part of ​“Sunlight and Candlelight,” running now at the NewAlliance Foundation Art Gallery at Gateway Community College through Oct. 4. The mixed-media show, curated by Noe Jimenez, ​“combines three artists’ individual practices to create a colorful and quiet examination of light and instance,” an accompanying statement reads. ​“A sense of heat is created in Grace Hager’s ceramic campfire sculptures through color and immobilized flame. This same motionless flicker of the flames can be felt in the intense colorful arrangements of Liah Sinq’s photographs.” Sophia DeJesus’s work has ​“a similar, but more distant warmth.” 

Bringing all the pieces together is a keen sense of playfulness. Sinq achieves that mood through light and subject matter, whether it’s a couple snuggling on a bleacher or people lounging on a beach. Sinq captures a world where trouble seems far away.

Similarly, Grace Hager’s sculptures seem on one level like cartoons made real, whether it’s a fire of impossibly pastel colors on an exquisitely mounded dune or wizened trees. On another level, they partake of fairy tales, the sense of a spell being cast. If they were illustrations, they might be accompanied by the appearance of fantastical creatures. Because they’re rendered as real objects, it’s possible to visualize them bringing those creatures into our world with them.

Sophia DeJesus’s textiles add a further tactile element to the exhibition, but the spirit of play reaches a certain height with ​“It Takes Two,” which portrays a scene of comic collapse. If the object in the gallery started life as a regular ping pong table, it’s fun to imagine the scenario in which, mid-game, it turned suddenly to rubber. Did the players try one more half-hearted volley before they gave up? Or is it just a new type of game, waiting to be tried? Either way, it invites us to engage in a carefree way. Together, all three artists show that one can make serious art, but still keep it light.

“Sunlight and Candlelight” runs at NewAlliance Foundation Art Gallery, Gateway Community College, 20 Church St., through Oct. 4. Admission is free.