A small woman with clenched fists full of feathers plucked from her own legs is watched by smiling, colorful faces reminiscent of the simplistic advertising from the faux utopia of the 1950s. This is a microcosm of a room full of sculptures and paintings that present themselves with a straightforward charm that makes you smile, and then you realize there are darker themes that temper the smile with unease.

After digging through piles of water bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic forks, and take-out cartons lying near the tent, Samantha Dickey last week began to build a model for a sculpture. "Right now we are trying to come up with some ideas to make our main sculpture for the site that we have," said the soon-to-be-sophomore from North Scott High School. "My idea was to make a water fountain out of the tires."

Cold, gray foundations of concrete divide the land. A fiery red dragon with a stair-step body stands in stark opposition to a carefully delineated landscape. All of this is watched by a prickly caterpillar of light. These strange sights can be seen in a disconcerting tug-of-war that pits crisp, eloquent, and restrained paintings against mixed-media sculptures of whimsy, imprecision, and untamed emotion.

Pressed clumps of richly textured paper pulp shaped into crusty grates, inquisitive fish, and smooth vertebrae are given chromatic life with hints of vibrant blue-greens, rusty reds, and creamy whites. These colors and textures are given room to breathe with large expanses of grays and earth tones.

The Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition, now in its 32nd year, is necessarily disparate, with a wide variety of media and artists. But that doesn't mean that themes don't emerge.

As River Cities' Reader art critic Bruce Carter said in discussing the exhibit, "There's always a pattern in every show."