Photo By STACEY RECHT CZAR

Scott Addis' elaborately textured paintings, such as "Etude 1" currently on view at the Fitton Center, show how he tries to breathe life into the canvas.

The Fitton Center for Creative Arts offers the city of Hamilton wide, dramatic vistas through prismatic panes, solitary small spaces and buzzing busy spaces -- and lots of art. In addition to its performing arts, theater, dance and poetry, the Fitton's rotating art exhibitions offer the area a unique opportunity to see fine art in a fine space.

Fitton's quiet galleries, framed by the city on one side and the Great Miami River on the other, mirror their surroundings: both structural and organic, the expertly outfitted walls gather and utilize natural and hung lighting. Exploring the sharp and flowing art spaces at the Fitton would be worth the trip up north, if only to view the striking surroundings.

But you're not there for the architecture. You come for the art. The art at the Fitton is worthy, too, of your travels. Exhibitions Director Cathy Mayhugh selects artists with a local connection whose work spans years, media and subjects. Works by two landscape painters with very different styles currently occupy the main galleries.

Scott Addis' work graces the walls of the second-floor Anne Ruder Bever Galleries. Between Two Worlds, his organic and industrial fusion, suits the similarly organic and industrial architecture of the Fitton. Addis, an émigré to Canada (he moved to Montreal from Cincinnati three years before the 2004 election, by the way, and has opened his own gallery there), made his professional debut in Cincinnati in 2000.

His elaborately textured mixed-media landscapes seem ready to ooze, each glossy, lacquered finish teeming with movement. Ethereal lines move beneath the layers; one painting's use of spray paint conjures perfectly a cool mist in a forest ("Pushed Design").

"I try to breathe my life into my canvas -- a personal statement as provocative as evocative -- and to share that breath of humanity with others," Addis writes in his artist's statement.

Addis' work is inspired by nature, but his use of industrial materials such as varnish, enamel, caulk and silicone add a stylized appearance and texture to the works that is both organic and synthesized. A landscape artist intrigued by the texture and feeling of mixed materials, he finds himself in that space between two worlds, one hand creating painstaking detail, the other rushing to obscure that detail.

"He's experimenting, veering off traditional materials right now, using latex and in some, wax, and some of them varnish. He's really pushing this layering and mixing of color," says Mayhugh. Addis' Between Two Worlds is on view through Feb. 5.

The first floor Lobby Gallery features Cincinnatian Carol MacConnell's landscape exhibit, Life is Good. These paintings are quiet, faithful renderings of American countrysides. Her pieces vary in size, occupying the walls in long, straight columns with life-sized subjects, interspersed with smaller panels. Her work seems endowed with a certain familiarity, glorifying the local vegetation many of us have spent our lives ignoring as we sped by in cars. What MacConnell's work lacks in innovation she makes up for in faithful appreciation of her unchanging subjects. She seems to find light and color in landscapes that would otherwise reflect gray back at a gray sky. This exhibit runs through Feb. 12.

A glass case displays MacConnell's snapshots, sketches and materials, illustrating her process. She will give an informal gallery talk on Feb. 12 at 11 a.m. as part of the Fine Arts Fund's Sampler Weekend.

Last year Fitton partnered with Butler Tech to create Options Academy, a vocational arts program for high school students who find learning in a traditional setting challenging. The students complete their regular high school courses online, then spend their time in the art studio, painting, drawing, sculpting and learning photography. Their artwork as a whole surpasses that of the general high school population, and with instruction from Deby Sage, their teacher, as well as visiting artists, many of these students could be quite successful. Their current sculpture project is on view in the Carruthers Center gallery.

Fitton is now collecting works from artists throughout the region for spring's 41st Annual Greater Hamilton Art Exhibit, a juried exhibition. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 5. The opening reception and awards ceremony is March 6, and the exhibit will be on view through April 30. The show is open to artists of all levels and all media, so expect a stylistically diverse and wide-ranging collection.

Three exhibits will occupy the Anne Ruder Bever and lobby galleries from May 14 to July 2. Fitton welcomes Cincinnati's Leslie Shiels. Her exhibit, Cultural Patterns, will include her famously rich, high-color, expressive oil paintings built with a technically masterful hand. This exhibit focuses on the world's cultural juxtapositions. Karen Heyl and Howard Steinberg team up to combine photography and stone. Steinberg's Leaf Portraits, a series of sharply organic leaf forms, complements Heyl's intricate stone sculptures. Heyl hails from Cincinnati, and Steinberg is a California photographer. Leslye Sherman's paintings will adorn the Lobby Gallery in an exhibit titled Celestial Navigation.

A restful summer awaits Fitton visitors with the Summer Quilt Show and clay artist Sally Myers' exhibit Resting Place (July 16-Sept. 18). ©