OLD TOWN – The work of Orono artist Kris Sader will be on display at the Old Town Public Library through Jan. 14 in a show titled “Pencil to the Paper.”

According to Sader, drawing can be one of the most meditative and rewarding of the expressive media in visual art.

“I really enjoy working in mixed media because of the different textures that come to a piece by using different materials,” Sader said. “Mixed media also can teach a person a lot about different ways to approach line, shape and form. Mixed media also helps me to work on a piece in an abstract way.”

For her exhibit she chose to show drawings that are different, yet all very much drawings. Some use traditional drawing material, and one not so traditional. These drawings also show different subject matter.

The “Garden Artifacts” series uses china marker, a pigmented wax drawing stick, graphite and ink, and a multimedia collage.

The series was done in response to all the “stuff” she has dug out of her garden over the past 15 years,” Sader said. It also illustrates in a humorous way how dynamic the soil is. A lot goes on below the surface.

The colored pencil drawing of “The Ladies of the House” was done in response to two visits to the Victoria Mansion in Portland when the mansion was opened up to artists to explore and respond to the house.

She chose to contrast the statuary of generic female images with the books in the library that were written by, or were about, women.

The two graphic drawings, “Portal” and “Guardian,” belong to a group of six drawings. Three are completed – these two and a third titled “Keeper of Identity” that is hanging in Stevens Hall at the University of Maine.

These drawings came from deep within the artist’s imagination and were first expressed as a line of six doodles in 1997. Later they became six bronze sculptures and hundreds of prints, and were combined in an installation art piece in the Roger Clapp Greenhouses at UMaine.

They seem to be important to how she processes and perceives, Sader said. She has explored them in many media and still has three drawings to complete. The artist sees these works as her most personal.

Sader grew up in Tucson, Ariz., in the heart of the Sonora Desert and at the base of three mountain ranges.

In 1969 she got her driver’s license and a vehicle and became known as a “desert rat,” she said. In 1974 she married and started a family.

After living in Arizona, Mississippi, Idaho, Colorado, she, her husband and two daughters moved to Orono 15 years ago.