In the Galleries - Light/Dark CLOSES August 4 at the St. Louis Artists' Guild

St. Louis-based painter Soledad Van Emden memorializes the drive-by interstices of darkness under local highway overpasses in this collection of small works of unlikely depth. Everyday commuter cross points with Interstate 55, Highway 40, Lombard Street and Broadway are depicted with dramatic clarity, as shadowy bridges and archways appear like intricately patterned scrims through which yawn bright, paved expanses. These intimate, straightforward oil paintings lack sentimental flourishes and consider their subjects as they appear: all-but-invisible moments in the urban landscape, whose structural irresolution renders them oddly mysterious. Also showing: FULCRUM: an exercise in balance Photographer Laura Bailey juxtaposes images of natural splendor with the unnatural environment — finding dire visual irony in the resemblance between, say, a grid of farms and modular chemical tanks at an industrial yard. Through August 4 at the St. Louis Artists' Guild and Galleries, 2 Oak Knoll Park, Clayton; 314-727-6266 or www.stlouisartistsguild.org. Hours: noon-4 p.m. Tue.-Sun.