IN THE MAIN GALLERY, “Heather Hobler: Sure Sign of Life” features new work by Boston-based artist Heather Hobler (formerly Heather Hobler-Keene), who creates elegant, layered drawings using ink on vellum to explore the imagery, typography, design, and psychology of magazines and the way that we relate to them as we browse through their seductive pages. In this show, Hobler takes the commercial language of glossy periodicals and makes it her own, combining words and pictures in a highly personal way, so that each drawing expresses a unique and idiosyncratic response to the world at large, inspired by but not limited to the message her source material was originally intended to bear.

A graduate of the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Hobler’s work has been included in the DeCordova Annual (2003), and the 18th Drawing Show at Boston’s Mills Gallery (2004), juried by Raphaela Platow, and has recently been exhibited at Pigman Gallery in San Francisco, and at Kenise Barnes, New York. This is her third one-person show at Allston Skirt Gallery.

IN THE MINI SKIRT, Allston Skirt Gallery is proud to show new work by Providence-based artist Alexia Stamatiou, whose intricate paintings follow a group of Rapture-ready Christians as they wait for Salvation. Stamatiou works with gouache and ink on paper or panel to depict scenes from a detailed narrative, which she has been developing for several years, involving an imaginary group of faithful Christians whose expectation of Salvation has been put into an unexpected limbo. Waiting in the forest after relinquishing all earthly possessions, Stamatiou’s pious group explores the possibilities that they find open to them – the proliferation of the species and the idea of “giving up the ghost.” This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Boston area. She received her BFA from Cooper Union, New York, and her work has recently been seen in solo exhibitions at Sunday Gallery in New York and at Bucket Rider Gallery in Chicago.