“Courting Spring,” visual art in multimedia by Annaliese Hood, sculpture by Christina Rioux, and photographs by Aquelidio Rodrigues; By Design, 20 Harlow St., Bangor.

Offer truth with every gesture …” begins a words-and-watercolor piece by Annaliese Hood. So she does, in a varied exhibit in the rear room of By Design, a fairly new gallery in downtown Bangor.

A writer who spent 25 years in Boston, and then 25 years on 40 acres “on a dirt road in northern Maine,” Hood now makes her art in Bangor.

Each piece is unique, from a frame of pressed flowers to “Dancerwoman,” a pair of free-spirited females crafted from coppery wire.

A tree is made from small ferns and handmade papers, but how’d she get the trunk to look like that? The wonderful rusty color is, well, rust.

Hood says her work originates in relationships, and that’s clear in her images of growth and life, in her writings about her children.

In the next room, big birds hold court. “Curiosite” is 8 feet tall, while “Fache” – Anger – stands 6 feet.

It’s quite all right to stand nose-to-nose and look up their spoonbill noses to topknots based on the African secretary bird.

The nubbly legs are modeled on the blue heron, parts of the imaginary creatures that spring from the mind of sculptor Christina Rioux, the Bangor woman who crafts them by welding half-inch steel rods.

Rounding out the exhibit are “Shadows and Reflections,” a series of photographs by Aquelidio Rodrigues.

Quotes from Manuel Fortuna accompany the display, including the apt phrase “lake of illusions.”

Indeed, greens and golds shimmer and ripple across the blue water. In the black-and-white images, framed in a variety of media, the ripples resemble pummeled metal.

The exhibit will run through May 8. By Design is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and by appointment Saturday. 947-0077

“Related and Unrelated Figurative Sculpture,” sculpture by Rick Beckjord, Robert H. White Gallery, Peabody Hall, Husson College, Bangor.

The small gallery on the bottom level of Peabody Hall would seem to contain pieces by several sculptors.

The photographic prints of jellyfish seem far removed from the abstract terra cotta piece based on the same marine animal. Is the black mouse made of plaster really by the same artist as the squirrel in bronze? And what is that owl looking at?

Follow the owl’s eye, and find out for yourself that it is the works based on people that come amazingly to life in Rick Beckjord’s hands. The owl gazes at a wonderful nude sculpture in aquaresin of a woman with a most expressive face.

A very different sculpture is of a grandfather in cherry wood, one foot forward and head flung back, arms full of baby.

“Genre Scene” is another terra cotta piece, this one of a woman holding a bowl full of plucked chicken as she twists away from the dog trying to get at the food.

The most compelling pieces may be the three versions of a mother and her two little boys.

In one corner of the room is the bronze “Study for Mother,” about a foot in height. The baby in her arms looks forward, one hand flung into the air, while big brother stands behind the pair with his legs tangled among his mother’s and one hand on the baby’s foot.

In the opposite corner is “Pioneer Mother” in plaster, 3 feet high. This time the baby looks over his mother’s shoulder at his brother.

In the center of the room, standing more than 6 feet tall, is the piece sculpted in sycamore wood. This mother is Asian, and the older boy leans on her.

Visitors to the gallery will find themselves studying the sculptures from different angles, the better to ponder Beckjord’s intentions.

The exhibit will run through April 15 at Peabody Hall.

– Roxanne Moore Saucier