The Menino Art Center’s (MAC) 36th Annual Hyde Park Art Association (HPAA) Members Exhibition was combined with a holiday reception on Dec.19, featuring 47 pieces that will remain on display through Jan. 9. The show has works done in oil, acrylic, textiles, digital print, enamel, paper mixed media and photography. Award winners were also highlighted with many of the artists available to discuss their work.

“This is what people submitted, which presumably is one of their better pieces,” said the Center’s executive director, Erik Gehring, describing the exhibit in general. Gehring also has one of his own photographs, “Hybrid Yew” in the show.

“I have a whole series of photo abstracts that I photographed in the Arboretum… in the rain, the cloudy conditions really help even out contrasts and subtle colors… what really helps is the water, the saturation,” he said of his process.

“I love to take photographs, but I don’t put them in shows all that often,” said Sasja Lucas, referring to her photography piece, “Structure and Decay,” which depicts an old window/entry into an abandoned building. “I love to get into the details… to find some kind of quirky thing.”

She noted if you look carefully, you will see a little bit of color and black. “The contrast between something that is so strong and boarded up with plywood that has deteriorated,” suggesting it offers more to consider. One attendee said that the written description of the piece “really added to it” and thanked Lucas for including it.

Each artist’s personal story can provide background to the creation of their piece.

“I almost always paint in oil, but I usually do landscape paintings, and they usually have a lot of clouds in them,” said Dotti Baker, whose “Wild White Rose” an oil, depicts one rose. “I have an art teacher. She suggested I do the white flower to help me be able to do clouds better, because of the shading I would have to do on the flower.”

Baker agreed that it did indeed help and she’s now moved on to painting fruit. Changing the subject has helped her “smooth out” her painting moving from edges into shading. Baker came late to art, taking art classes after she retired. She said she always wanted to paint and finally had the time. “Maybe a bowl of fruit,” she said when asked about the subject of future paintings.

Robert Johnson’s “Ugly Blue Fish” a mixed media (“textured assemblage”) is striking with its protrusions of paper and different shades of blue.

“This is the first one I made of this size (18 inch x 18 inch). They are usually bigger, 30 inch x 40 inch. I say this is more pure, it’s the kind of thing I do on paper,” he said.

Johnson pointed to how you can see the eye of the fish, the mouth. “I used a different magazine, the Academy of Arts and Sciences.” Johnson took the colors of different ads in the issue of the magazine and using gesso, soaked it for a day in salt water before manipulating it. “I kept moving it around until it felt right, as that’s the only way this is going to work.” Johnson is basically a photographer, so he adjusts his technique when working with other materials. He’s pleased with the result. The piece is not for sale. “I decided to keep it off the market.”

Jane Wiley’s digital print, “Effervescence” depicts “a rubber ducky who reimages himself as a sea serpent. It’s cinematic and sculptural at the same time,” she said describing the method she used to create the piece. She said she stumbled onto the technique while learning more about digital photography. “It kept leading me on to new things.”

Maritza Ranero’s “Dye Cast Mold Broken” stands out with a mustard background enamel paint on stretched canvas, radiating a Matryoshka doll-nesting look with an outline radiating from the center out or vice versa. Ranero usually works in enamel. She used combs in a circular manner to move the paint out in this piece. “I also thought this was like two-minute egg…seeping out,” she said. “But the more I did, it made me think about a cartoon where they are yelling and they show the tongue and the mouth.” She liked that idea of “something seemingly broken, but that’s not always a bad thing.”

The Menino Art Center is closed the weeks of December 22 and 29, 2025. Normal gallery hours will resume the week of January 5, 2026, with this exhibit open to the public until Jan. 9, 2026.