Area artists’ work on exhibit in Rockland, Bangor

Leo Osborne takes bronze and wood burl – both heavy and substantial – and turns them into something ephemeral. Though they’re anchored on solid pedestals, his sculptures are poised to take flight.

In one fluid, sensual form, Osborne turns a woman’s upstretched arms into angel’s wings. A hawk rises gracefully from a rough chunk of bronze. A gnarled twist of wood curves into a smooth female torso. His transitions are seamless, showing the elegance in nature’s constant flux.

Perhaps the most dramatic piece on display is “Seeker,” a collaboration with sculptor C.T. Whitehouse, in which a nymphlike figure arches backward while balanced in a slender dory. The woman, carved from a forked maple branch and cast in bronze, reaches skyward with unfurling wings.

Though most of his work has an otherworldly feel, it’s not all serious. Tucked away on a windowsill are three small, naked angels, one modeled after Osborne, in various poses. One sits on its head, meditating with its wings crunched on the ground.

Other tiny angels watch over other parts of the gallery, their bronze forms glazed in gold, blue and white patinas, applied and fired in Oregon at Tim Norman’s bronze finishing shop. The patinas, not the weathered green that people normally associate with the word, function more like paint. They interact with the metal, causing it to turn brilliant colors or giving it the appearance of granite or marble. Norman’s patinas are an art form in themselves.

In other words, these don’t look like most bronze sculptures. They are vibrant, full of motion, fleeting. They make the viewer reluctant to turn around, for fear that they might fly away.

A collection of paintings by Osborne is also on display at the gallery. For information, visit www.harborsquaregallery.com.

Paintings and pastels by Nancy Nichols, paintings by Dennis Pinette, mixed-media works by Patricia Wheeler, through Jan. 26, Clark House Gallery, Bangor, 942-9162.

Nancy Nichols captures that electric moment just before the sky opens up in a lashing storm. Her canvases nearly crackle in anticipation, the heavy clouds ready to drench the plains below. You can almost smell the sulfur in the air.

In this show, “A Hundred Different Kinds of Weather Plague the Landscape of the Heart,” Nichols’ landscapes are breathtakingly stark, almost abstract. The works were recently part of her master’s exhibition at the University of Indiana and they show the big skies and vast flatness of the Midwest. But they’re more than that. They are studies in color – her rich, layered violet thunderheads look luminous, while rusty-green funnel clouds evoke a sense of foreboding that has nothing to do with the looming tornado.

Her pastels echo that color play with built-up pigment that gives depth to the composition. In one, the sky touches down on a distant horizon in a wash of gray that looks more watercolor than pastel. In another, the layers of pastel cumulate in an almost surreal blue.

In the next room, Dennis Pinette’s new forest scenes are bursting with life, even in the dead of winter. In his signature painterly style, Pinette brings motion to a stand of birch with quick brushstrokes and Pollock-esque splatters of snow white.

From far away, his large-scale paintings beckon you. Up close, you can lose yourself in the brushwork, which takes on an almost abstract feel. Though most of the work focuses on tangles of trees and shrubs, his “Frozen Bog” is an intriguing diversion. A thin glaze of ice coats matted, fall-brown marsh grass, distorting the scene below, while a cough-drop-blue sky swirls with clouds above. It’s a treat.

Also a treat are the mixed-media works by Patricia Wheeler titled “In the Growing Season.” In these, she uses photo transfer to create old-fashioned-looking family scenes on coffee filters (yes, coffee filters). She then tacks, sews or glues these to richly textured handmade art paper and completes the work by embroidering or painting around them.

She focuses on the emotions and passage of time that mark the seasons of a family’s life, both as a unit and as individuals. In “Regeneration,” pictures of her children are superimposed on a bulb-planting chart and tinted with soft pastel tones.

Each of her works, while thoroughly modern in composition, has a nostalgic feel to it. Taken individually, they’re unique, visually appealing works with strong graphic components, color play and juxtaposition of materials. Taken as a body of work, they weave a touching story of the interactions and events that become a family’s history.

Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, through December, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and by appointment during the rest of the year.