"I Saw the Light," a tiny, jewel-like show at the Project Room curated by John Caperton, is based on a quick-witted double-entendre. The three artists with work in the show, Richard Harrod, Rob Matthews and Richard Torchia, all have a fascination with perception and the effects of light on physical matter. In three completely different ways, they all draw our attention to the act of seeing and metaphors of light. This show offers just a tiny sampling of their work, but luckily there are plenty of opportunities to see more in the area.

Richard Harrod, an installation and video artist formerly of Philadelphia but now residing in New York, has constructed Birds, an aggressive and seemingly haphazard arrangement of bare light bulbs, wires and small disks of paper. These disks, each a drawing of a different multicolored bull's-eye, are a marvelously accurate record of the aftereffects of bright lights on the retina. Like a funky science-fair project, Harrod manages to capture a collision of human biology and optics with the raw technology of man-made light. Near the installation, Harrod has politely installed a piece of bare plywood to contain the light in a corner niche in the gallery, decreasing its invasive "light pollution" spillover onto the other works in the show. Harrod's work has been featured in recent shows at Moore College of Art & Design and BaseKamp.

Robot Dream, by Philadelphia artist Rob Matthews, is a series of four small and exquisitely rendered pencil drawings of chiaroscuro night scenes. They all capture a certain vague drama created by juxtapositions of toys and sleeping figures illuminated by flashlight in a child's bedroom. These miniature scenes of crumpled bedding, human figures and anthropomorphized action figures are charged with emotion and irony -- and are worthy of Goya. One shows a dark silhouette of a hulking robot from behind as it seems to scrutinize a sleeping person; another beautifully captures the delicate patterns of light on a tiny sleeper's face. The drawings are a joy to behold: precisely drawn with fragile contours and parallel pencil strokes, yet full of vigor and excitement. If you like these, you can see more of Matthews' drawings -- 40 more, to be exact -- in a show titled "Holy Smokes" that's now on display at the University of the Arts (Gallery 817 on the eighth floor of the main building) and in an upcoming show at Spector Gallery.

In *, Richard Torchia has constructed a petite and modernistic projection device that offers up a tiny slice of nature. Like Torchia's other installation works, which use optical or technological devices to remove and underline a small piece of the visible world for our scrutiny, this new work shocks us with the beauty of ordinary things. A video tape loop showing a sky crisscrossed with bare tree branches, slowly moving clouds and a swooping bird is projected onto a small translucent surface made of a piece of Mylar mounted on Plexiglas, creating a ghostly, luminous surface. Similar to the experience of viewing a painting by van Eyck, we find ourselves marveling over the miniature and completely accurate facsimile of the world on this flat panel. To make the illusion even stronger, the light of the projector, if seen from just the right position, becomes a tiny sun. Here, the asterisk is representational (not just a reminder of a related idea), signifying the transformation of the rear projection "hot spot" into a viewable midday sun. See other of Torchia's wonderful and witty "sun picture" pieces at the Morris Arboretum and soon at the Philadelphia International Airport.

Though these tiny samples of works by Harrod, Matthews and Torchia give the viewer plenty to consider, curator John Caperton offers a bit more. The delicious twist, which I've come to anticipate in exhibitions curated by Caperton, comes from his tongue-in-cheek reference to evangelical religious experience. In "I Saw the Light," he seems to be suggesting that the effects of secular art are just as deeply transformative and authentically spiritual. See for yourself!

Partners in Art

The complicated and difficult task of creating fine art prints is often left (by artists) in the hands of experienced master printers. However, sometimes special relationships develop between artists and printers that enhance the creativity of both collaborators. An exhibition now at the Hicks Art Center Gallery highlights some particularly fruitful collaborations between artists and master printers at four distinguished American presses, C. Royce Ettinger Fine Art Printing, Brighton Press, Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and Durham Press. The exhibition, curated by Newtown printmaker Caren Friedman, includes written statements by each of the artists and printers that weave a fascinating story about the prints in this show.

The exhibition contains three versions of sculptor Astrid Bowlby's print, Cindi's Hair, revealing how she and Cindi Ettinger of C. Royce Ettinger Fine Art Printing worked together methodically and patiently to achieve a darker, richer surface. The deeply etched metal plate is also on display, testifying to the high level of craft and cooperation in this collaboration. Painter Sarah McEneaney, whose two prints Paint Print and Beneficial Bath represent collaborations with two different printers, was interested in the process of translating her ideas from their usual manifestation as paintings into multicolored prints. She wrote: "While the processes and techniques of lithography and intaglio are very different, in both cases the experience of working with a master printer was very rewarding. As a painter who works primarily alone in the studio it is challenging to put myself into the hands and mind of an artist so highly skilled in so different a craft."

Sculptor Christopher Lesnewski credits Eileen Foti of Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper as a true collaborator and wrote, "Eileen's vast experience, encyclopedic knowledge and extraordinary repertoire of printmaking techniques served only as a foundation, an entry for our collaborative project. Her questions, insights, courage and creativity produced an edition that exceeded the sum of our individual contributions." The resulting variable edition of 30 prints was made using nine silkscreens, four litho plates and relief prints of more than 50 found objects he brought with him -- such as broken headboards, tiles, floor mats and Hula Hoops previously run over by cars.

There were frustrations on the way to other very successful end results. In Emily Brown's print For J.S.B., representing an expanse of empty ocean, she and Cindi Ettinger chose to work with aquatint using sugerlift -- a technique in which achieving the correct balance of light and dark is sometimes difficult, and the result unpredictable until the entire image is completed. Ettinger wrote: "Our first proof was done with black ink. It looked awful. The strength of the ink was too overwhelming for the image. After Emily had gone I proofed it again with graphite ink. The transformation was amazing. I think she was very pleased when she finally saw the print again almost two months later."

Through April 9, Hicks Art Center Gallery, Bucks County Community College, 275 Swamp Road, Newtown, Pa., 215-968-8432