Reeti Malhotra, Contributing Photographer

Last Thursday evening, the Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance, or BACA, West Gallery hosted its opening reception for its brand-new satellite exhibit at 360 State St.

A sanctum for the casual art lover, the gallery features the work of five Connecticut-based artists: Jay Bright, Anne Doris-Eisner, Val Kropiwnicki, Michele Micarelli and Kevin Van Aelst. Though displayed in the same space, each artist’s collection is distinctive.

“The [exhibition] is interesting. It’s entirely different to a museum because each artist is so different,” said patron Christine Rattler.

Micarelli’s work is featured first: a dizzying array of beautifully woven and vibrant rugs drawing inspiration from images within popular culture, each piece seems to hypnotize the gallery’s patrons, who gather before the artist’s wall, wholly entranced.

Juxtaposing Micarelli’s work is Doris-Eisner’s, who works entirely with acrylic on ink and a black-and-white palette. Each piece is remarkably fluid, inspired by the forms of nature.

“My inspiration is often binding trees that have evidence of trauma,” Doris-Eisner shared. “They’ve [been] ripped open and damaged, but they’ve gone on living with strength. They’re my inspiration, and also self-portraits.”

A former art educator, Doris-Eisner worked at the Amity Regional High School for 36 years to teach others to process grief through art.

She turned to her current medium of black-and-white acrylic work in 2001 following the passing of her son.

“The grief was enormous,” she said. “I just couldn’t deal with color — my work turned black and white. [But] I found it gave power to what I was trying to say about how we all need to honor our lives just like in nature and find that way of going forward, albeit forever changed.”

According to Richard Blacher, BACA co-founder and exhibition curator, there is no unifying theme to the exhibition. “We just want to showcase the artists’ work and connect them to the wider community,” Blacher said.

BACA was founded in 2014 as a non-profit organization aiming to showcase free artwork to the public to enrich Branford’s — and later broader Connecticut’s — arts and cultural communities.

“We started with pop-up exhibits at different venues and just grew and grew and grew. [Eventually] a couple of businesses in the New Haven area reached out to us — Claire’s Corner Copia, the Elm City Club — asking us to hang art, so we did. Now [360 State St.] calls us and says they’re redoing the lobby, so we’re doing our fourth show,” Blacher said.

Artist Val Kropiwnicki spoke to the News about the value these shows have as a source of inspiration for his work.

Kropiwnicki, a public high school art teacher, uses a mixture of media to create political and environmental pieces that invite viewers to question their perspectives.

“I’ve always been a type of artist [for whom] art is therapy for me,” he said. “It’s a way to internalize the world around me. The conversations I have — like this — and the experiences I have in the world, both good and bad, find their way into reasons for why I make art,” Kropiwnicki said.

The exhibition opened on Sept. 11 and will run until Dec. 24.