Hot it was on Thursday night -- hot off the presses, that is. The Fresno art scene doesn't usually boast a gallery opening that includes a printed catalog, but that's what greeted visitors to Gallery 25's "Alchemy" show. (OK, so it was bloody hot, too, but what else is new?) Beehiver Felicia Matlosz was anxious to see "Alchemy," and she says it was worth the wait. Here's her take:

The buzz about the new "Alchemy" exhibit at Gallery 25 turned out to be true. It is a plush, strong, marvelous display of some of the area's most creative talent. With a showcase of 29 artists, there is plenty to visually devour. Make sure you carve out ample time to breathe in the scope of this show.

First, why the title "Alchemy"? The catalog introduction, written by one of the featured artists, Trude McDermott, states: "The contemporary use of the term alchemy is frequently a reference to a mysterious synthesis or fusion of different elements into a new form." From that premise, these artists forged visions from that concept.

The moment you walk through the gallery's front door, you will briefly ponder which way to go. But I think you'll be pulled to the right. On the wall hangs one of Robert Weibel's large-scale gunpowder works of bison. This one is a multiple image, in a lighter, golden-brown tone, that gives the work an ethereal feel, as if aiming for transcendency. To the left is a huge, vertical, three-panel painting by Nanete Maki-Dearsan, called "The Abilities of Butterflies." It's a dramatically dark, textured work, with whiffs of white seemingly struggling from submergence for a separate plane of existence.

But don't neglect the smaller pieces, such as Erin Webster's "The Blackening." It struck me like a mix of surrealist Salvador Dali and that last shot of David Hedison in "The Fly." You know, that moment in the film when the scientific transference of man and fly goes horribly bad, and the man's head is stuck on the fly's body. Except in this painting, it's a woman's alarmed-looking face on top of a brown bird's body, her eyes fixed upon a coffee cup suspended inside a narrow, tall glass container. It's a trippy painting, evoking lots of modern-day angst.

I don't have enough space here to detail other work in "Alchemy," so I plan to go back and write a story about this feast of a show.

Meanwhile, Donald started out at Spectrum Gallery for a show by photographers Terry Hayden and Blaine Gunsul. Donald writes:

For starters, I just want to put in an enthusiastic plug for Spectrum's relatively new space right in the thick of things on Olive Avenue. The location is great, and the interior of the space is really coming together. (An interior display wall has been added, which adds some bulk to the feel of the place, and freshly installed carpeting improves the acoustics, which is a help when big crowds are thronging the display area as was happening Thursday night.) I've been here numerous times, but on this visit it seemed more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than ever. Just seeing people spill out of a gallery onto a Tower District sidewalk is fun in itself.

From the moment I walked in, the show grabbed me. Titled "Light Silver and Time," it features what some might consider to be "old-fashioned" photography -- in the sense that it's all done in that ancient style known as analog. Remember when photographers used honest-to-good film in their cameras and did all their print work in the darkroom? In today's incredibly fast moving digital world, such techniques seem almost quaint. But it's clear that photographers using this method have retained their affinity for it for some special reasons.

First and foremost, It's the creaminess of the highlights. Hayden uses Ansel Adams' famous "Zone System" of exposure, in which he meters for both the shadows and the highlights in a scene. In the darkroom, he's able to stretch the process to accommodate the extremes of those tonal ranges. I'm sure there are techniques for doing the exact same thing digitally, and perhaps it's just the power of suggestion when as a viewer I'm looking at the finished result -- but I can swear there's something different than looking at a digital print. Perhaps it's one of those never-ending debates between purists, one akin to the low-intensity squabble between CD lovers and those who still love vinyl records. Whatever it is, all I know is that the first word that popped into my mind was creamy.

My favorite pic of the show: Hayden's "Bodie Taxi," pictured above, taken in that fascinating Gold Rush ghost town on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada. In the foreground, a rusting heap an old vehicle. Behind it, an abandoned structure weathered with age. (Interestingly enough, if you look WAY in the background, you can see a tiny human figure. It was a man who refused to get out of the shot, Hayden told me. The funny thing is that it makes the photo the only "portrait" Hayden has in the show.) This could have been a stark, even despondent, scene. But to me, there's something inviting about it, as if I could walk right into the foreground and enter the scene.

Hayden explains: "The best, most concise, term to relate to this image is 'dynamic symmetry.' I was taken by the basic symmetrical elements of the scene and knew that the flow of the eye over the final image would involve the dynamic motion of 'being there.' In all of my work the ultimate goal is to cause the viewer to connect to the scene."

Consider this one connected, Mr. Hayden.

Felicia writes:

At Fig Tree Gallery, Yasuko Yamakawa has a show called "The Ghettoization of Emily." The works are influenced by inner city culture and the artist's feelings about the Tower District neighborhood. The paintings in the show are not as interesting as the multi-media works, like "Barbie's Million Dollar Fixer Upper." It's a small-scale model of a two-story home. The inner walls are badly plastered, and the floors are bare of furniture. Upstairs, on an outside balcony, stands a Barbie doll in a skimpy two-piece outfit.

Donald writes:

I always try to add a new ArtHop stop to my itinerary, and on this night I decided to stop by Studio 74 (1274 N. Van Ness Ave.) in the Tower District. Gallery owner Diane L. Johnson-Mendes has transformed a little bungalow into a charming gallery that is warm and inviting. Her emphasis, she told me, is on "emerging" artists. These are artists just getting revved up in the art world. (And they aren't all necessarily young.) As the band Suicide Lounge performed outside, I wandered through the small gallery and admired the diversity of artistic styles. It's definitely worth an ArtHop stop. This is a gallery that I know we'll want to look at more closely in the coming months.

Johnson-Mendes' featured artist for the month is Hanford photographer Jan Stiff, who offers a range of landscape images and digital art. Stiff has one series in which he replaces the sky in his landscapes with colorful images of deep-space phenomena taken from the Hubbell space telescope. I don't care for them. The resulting juxtaposition has a glossy, sterile feel that seems best suited for a paperback sci-fi book cover. With his regular landscape shots, he has a good eye, but his works here appear to have been enlarged far too much. His super-saturated palette, which looks quite sharp and stunning in a small version on a computer screen, looks muddy and blown out when the photos get too big. And I just wasn't impressed with the technical results in some of landscape photos, such as ones taken in Crystal Cave in Sequoia National Park.

This month at City Hall, the workers have taken over the monthly art exhibits -- literally. I found it somewhat intriguing to see an artsy side to people whose day jobs are in Fresno city government. Both floors are filled with paintings, photographs, drawings and other pieces expressing these employees' creative take on the world away from their office cubicles or other duties.

Keeping that in mind, I found a couple of gems in this show. I admired Damon Clay's small pencil drawing of Marilyn Monroe. It may have been based on a photograph of the sex icon. Her head is turned to the side, cupped in one hand, and her eyes are downcast, nearly closed. Her other arm wraps around the front of her body, clad in black, as if shielding herself from further unwanted attention or protecting herself from predators. The drawing captures her weariness and a poignant inner mood.

I also enjoyed the outdoor photography of Robert Hanford. He has three in this show, including one called "Winter Storm," a black-and-white scene where streams of clouds hover and swerve around majestic snow-flaked mountains. But it's the interplay of light and shadows that are vital to enhancing these kinds of photographs, and Hanford has captured such a moment.