At her house, Katie Kiley is drawing in India ink on a wooden vase created by Steve Sinner. Using magnifying-glass headgear and two of the finest-point pens she could find, she's creating eight panels around the vase, depicting scenes from a California town. The naked eye can't appreciate the level of detail, and each panel takes two weeks to complete, she said.

Sinner expects to sell the piece for $20,000, Kiley said, and she's being extremely careful with the vessel. "I have this resting on a down pillow," she said.

Sinner, of course, is among the most highly regarded artists in the Quad Cities, and Kiley notes that he knows what price his work commands. But she is no slouch, as evidenced by two awards she won in the 181st Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, presented by the National Academy in New York City.

A tall, enigmatic pyramid constructed from a series of stacked cubes stands perched on the balcony, a silent witness to the comings and goings of the travelers below. The pyramid's surface is covered with patches of colored sheet metal riddled with snippets of old advertising and logos. Each cube's facet is a small composition in its own right. The fragments of pop-culture detritus of the ziggurat's skin beg to be organized and deciphered, but yield no clear message.

The response to our spring photo contest was, in a word, overwhelming, with double the number of entries we received last fall. For the first time in our photo competitions, last fall we built the contest around themes ("danger," "metamorphosis," and "liberation") rather than categories such as "people" and "places.

The latest exhibit at the Figge Art Museum, Migration of the Spirit, creates an unsettling mood that is simultaneously full of melancholy and levity. The exhibit, which runs through April 16, is a powerful show that explores a tragic history through the vision of Miami-based artist Edouard Duval-Carrié.