The Way I See It: ‘Multiplicity’ at Hyde Gallery

Now showing her “Multiplicity” exhibit at Hyde Gallery in Grossmont College, Lea Anderson delights and intrigues art connoisseurs with her depictions of life forms. Think of looking through the microscope at cells and hair strands during Biology class, and you get the idea.

Only it’s so much more than that. Anderson’s creations cause everyone to stop and look closer. The acrylic shapes of fossils, cells, and various types of primitive life forms multiply like DNA chains across the floor and walls of the gallery.

“Memoryfeeld” greeted me and my friend Cathy as soon as we walked into the gallery door. The curious mix of black, brown and bright colored amoeba-like drawings spreads across two adjoining walls.

Children even like it. They dance and run along the shadowy reflections on the floor. Adults gaze and take a jillion photos of the “Millipod” piece which seems to pulsate right off the wall. The delicate colors and shapes of MembrainChain please the child in me. I admit, it is hard to keep my hands off Anderson’s work. But I do, out of respect, so I just memorize the look of it, relish the way it feels.

Yes, Anderson’s art makes me remember how it was to feel certain things as a child: squiggly mud between my toes, the cold skin of a frog,  a bulging-eye tadpole in a fish-bowl skimming across the back of my hand.

The shapes and colors and moving sensation of “Multiplicity” make me want to go out and find that microscope in the garage and gaze through it at what I can dig up in the back yard.

The installation at Hyde Gallery will be there through February 23rd. The gallery is open Monday through Thursday.