The current Arts Connect Juried Members Exhibition at Catamount Arts’ Fried Gallery brings together more than 70 works by as many local and regional artists. For the past 10 years, this annual event has showcased both established and emerging artists. In the winter landscape of our environment and perhaps the current chaotic political environment, the exhibition’s varied works in oils, acrylics, mixed media, sculpture and textile offer up a much-needed mental space for contemplation, reordering of priorities and expansion of understanding others’ perspective.

Alta Turner’s “Trophies 1 and 2” are striking tapestries in silks, metallics and linen that turn upside down the concept of what is considered “trophy” in the realm of animal hunting, social colonization, sexual domination and other twists on hunted and hunter. In one tapestry, a male with a mop of blond hair lies prostate in much the same way a tiger pelt might decorate a parquet floor. His body is nothing more than skeletal remains, but the face is flush with a fleshy expression of terror and surprise, as if asking, “How can this be?” In the second paired tapestry, a Black female figure is depicted as sensual conquest. She sits, reclined, with her legs open, genitals exposed beneath a grasslike skirt. The subject in this context is reminiscent of 19th-century paintings of subjugated “native” women and her pose, in the more recent past, of Hugh Hefner’s centerfold exploitation. The tapestries are First Place winners this year.

Abstract painter Katherine Coons is represented by “Shaman Bird at the Opera,” an intriguing assemblage that incorporates found objects — here — painted tins, plaster, dried twigs and newsprint. Many of Coons’ paintings are fronted by these mystical, spiritual bird-like figures. Made of dipped plaster wrapping, they are gritty and messy and powerful in their stance. In a recent conversation with Coons, I asked if there existed a deeper connection for her with these fantasy creatures. She responded, “I’m inspired by my relationship with nature. I go out into my woods and bring back twigs, and other objects and then I work without a maquette. The birds are formed quickly with my hands forming them into these talismans.” An exhibition of Coons’ Shaman birds is concurrent at the Quimby Gallery at Vermont State University at Lyndon.