The recently closed show at the Quad City International Airport art gallery featured nearly 50 stunning works: the serigraphy of Karen Blomme, the metal works of Tom Lytle, and the oil paintings and constructed boxes of Heidi Hernandez. I have exhibited with all three artists and have always been impressed by how their works strongly define the character of an exhibition.

While a handful of pieces are charged with exploratory energy, many of the works are more predictable progressions or refinements of previous visual explorations.

While the work of Blomme and Lytle (both established area artists) seeks to cultivate visual and conceptual territories that they have already "claimed" with previous imagery, Hernandez (a younger, up-and-coming artist) is more vigorously exploring the "unknown" to find her own territory.

Bead artist Maggie Meister found her voice in Italy.

She began beading 15 years ago and started teaching beading in 1996.

"Before I went to Italy, I was doing very basic jewelry design," said Meister, who will be teaching how to make two of her jewelry pieces at Your Design Ltd. in Bettendorf on March 8 and 9. "I didn't really feel like I had any kind of voice. I knew I wanted to do something, but it wasn't until I moved to Italy that things start to click into place."

Creepy bunny costumes rendered in charcoal on paper, elongated hands rising out of the water to scratch at the stormy sky, a long, unspooled, film-like reel of hands signing out a missive wrapped around toppled driftwood pillars, and a possible gate to the underworld are parts of two separate book-based bodies of work now at Quad City Arts. One set re-presents the familiar with superb technical eloquence, utilizing the book as an end-product receptacle. The other, more adventurous body of work requires the book to become a component of the viewer's experience of the show.

John Bloom was a master of lines. Drawing directly from everyday life, he transformed his observations with a skillful economy and nuance that can only come from long experience and total observation. Even in his lithographic printmaking, his subtle and beautifully lighted tones were created by a multitude of lines. In his paintings, his linear preparations paid off in a painting style that grew progressively lighter, almost effortless.