Featuring the drawings of Erin Anfinson, Kristi Hargrove, Mark Hosford, and Chris Scarborough, Metamorphoses is showing in the Frist Center’s Conte Community Arts Gallery through October 28. The space often hosts projects created by specific, diverse Nashville communities, but a display of contemporary drawing makes for a pleasant change.

The show is strong all around, but Scarborough’s inclusion was a pleasant surprise, and Hargrove’s work in the show continues her fascinating exploration of the relationship between sculpture and drawing.

Scarborough’s work often borrows elements from Japanese anime, and in The Modernist a deer is given the enlarged, glassy eyes found in Japanese cartoons. The deer’s realistic rendering is also subverted by Scarborough’s exploding of its back into a range of cascading cubist planes.

With Peep Hole II, Hargrove draws the outline of a friendly dog but fills it in with unexpected textures that simultaneously evoke both fabric and flesh. In her Inchoate series, she creates three- dimensional bubbles that push out from her surfaces by drawing with intense pressure on the back of the paper.

Threesquared Gallery closed Matt Christy’s Arguing Alone is Lonely at the end of July. The show featured paintings, drawings, and collages that explored the idea of “the masses.” Christy’s work is process-based, and the best pieces achieved a compelling balance of improvisational energy and thoughtful discerning.

Nicole Baumann’s Fortune Holiday runs through August 24 at Seed Space. It features the artist’s hand-embroidered paper flowers, ice cream cones, and wood axes in an installation that explores memory and nostalgia. Baumann’s craftsmanship is undeniable, but I would have liked to see a bigger display, as the gallery threatens to swallow her tiny elements.

fristcenter.org/calendar-exhibitions/detail/metamorphoses

threesquaredgallery.com seedspace.org

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