(Enlarge) "A Sunday Afternoon," caught by painter A Webb, is part of the multi-media exhibit "The Bike Project: A Visual, Literary and Cinematic Celebration," now through Nov. 15 at Howard Community College.

You can exercise your mind with "The Bike Project," which includes visual art, writing and film at Howard Community College. The art component encourages artists to creatively spin their wheels as they make bicycle-related artwork.

Some of the artists respond to the challenge in a literal-minded way, while others are much more abstract. Among those actually constructing a bicycle of sorts is Richard Zandler, whose welded steel "La Soeur a Bicyclette" uses its thin metal strands to make what amounts to a bicycle frame. You can only ride it in your imagination, because this non-functional armature is meant to conjure up ideas about how a lightweight bike zips along.

Nancy Linden and Breon Gilleran's collaborative "Joy Ride (So Long and Thanks for All the Fish)" incorporates real bicycle wheels as part of an assemblage that also uses metal bars, mirrors and charcoal drawings.

The above-mentioned artworks certainly make direct thematic connections with the curatorial thesis, but one of the most pleasing works in the show mostly relies on suggesting the sense of motion associated with bikes. This untitled mixed medium assemblage by Christina McCleary is suspended above the gallery floor.

It's largely defined by skinny metal coils and corresponding coils of brown paper that together evoke how bikes fly down the open road. McCleary conveys this feeling so gracefully that it's too bad her installation also includes a realistic photograph of a bicyclist affixed to the gallery wall. It's a mundane touch that's not needed here.

In any event, it's interesting to note how the many additional artists working in various mediums in this exhibit alternately give you representational and more allusive images of bikes.

"The Bike Project: A Visual, Literary and Cinematic Celebration" remains through Nov. 15 at Howard Community College. Go to www.howardcc.edu.

Coe and Frost coexist at Grimaldis Gallery

Landscape painter Henry Coe has had many exhibits at the C. Grimaldis Gallery over the years. His current exhibit of oil paintings is notable for the degree to which these countryside views along the American East Coast and in France communicate a contemplative mood.

In "Summer's End," cows graze in front of a purple-gray barn. It's a quiet scene that makes you aware of what it's like when warm weather is about to give way to autumn coolness.

"Hollow Road Shadows" has several farm structures and vehicles to capture your attention, but the composition is defined by the long shadow cast by a building in the foreground.

Another rural scene, "Late in the Day," includes purple shadows that make for an agreeably melancholy natural setting.

Autumn officially arrives, if you will, in "October Afternoon." Most of the trees are still green, but the leaves on one tree have turned orange so assertively that the tree is really just a vividly colored zone.

It's significant that there are vehicles parked near farm buildings and yet no moving vehicles on the roads in this exhibit, because the human presence is very subdued here. Indeed, people rarely make a direct appearance.

One of Coe's French-set paintings, "Le Chatelet Shadows," features five small boats presumably beached by a low tide. This relatively long view of the scene includes two people so tiny in the middle distance that it's easy to overlook their presence on the beach.

Also exhibiting at Grimaldis is Carol Miller Frost, whose acrylic and oil bar drawings are abstractions that rely upon tightly bunched and twisting lines filling most of the paper.

A nice example is "Thicket," in which the interlaced black lines are set against a pale gray background. Although you can see stray lines around the edges of the image, the lines are so densely packed at its center that they seem determined to become a solid form.

Henry Coe and Carol Miller Frost exhibit through Nov. 14 at the C. Grimaldis Gallery, at 523 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. Call 410-539-1080 or go to www.cgrimaldisgallery.com.

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