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Colson, Hardy and others at RCAD; Mack and Mason at mack b By Mark Ormond Selby Gallery at Ringling College is hosting two exhibitions in their annual community focus through May 30. The main gallery features the work of 24 artists who are on the faculty of the college's Continuing Studies and Special Programs. The back gallery highlights the career of Frank Colson who exhibits his talents in a diversity of media. At mack b John Mack and Cindy Mason are showing new work through May 31. Frank Colson, who was born in Paris in 1931, has had a distinguished career as an artist and teacher since 1959, working at FSU, University of Tampa, Penland School of Crafts and at his own Colson School of Art in Sarasota. He has been particularly active in producing private and public commissions including for Miami-Dade Art in Public Places; Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall; St. John Evangelist Church, Naples; and the City of Orlando for City Hall. His work is inspired by human and animal forms especially the horse. These are but points of departure for work that fuses the recognizable with ideas from his most vivid imagination. Ringling College has opened a new Alumni Gallery and the first artist featured is John Hardy, who attended Ringling in 1945 under the G.I. Bill with now other well-known artists including Robert Chase, Glenna Finch, Bill and Marty Hartman and Syd Solomon. Hardy developed his realist style under the tutelage of his Ringling painting instructor Christopher Clark who had been influenced by Paul Cadmus. His four large paintings are impressive and very much about the act of painting. One can observe every brushstroke and each nuance of mixing and blending and overlay. These four works should be an inspiration to every student who walks by them. The generous gallery space at mack b is hosting an impressive visual juxtaposition of the sculpture of John Mack and paintings and works on canvas and mylar by Cindy Mason. There is a curious synergy between the two, perhaps generated by the controlled linearity in some aspects of Mack's steel "legs" and Mason's vertical and horizontal marks. Both artists are meticulous object makers and yet neither is about perfection.Mack's joints and rivets are an important aspect of each work's identity and presence. Mason's hand is visible in each line or circle mark on the surface of her work. She includes words in her pieces that are sometimes tiny and barely decipherable, that connect us to her process. Mack's "Paramount" (15x13 feet) mound form is flush with the back wall. It draws one down the length of the gallery to the inches-wide video screen that is at the vortex of its inner core. The enormous sculpture, painted a dark "battleship" gray, defies the exact comprehension of its unique contoured form. Across from "Paramount" other steel sculptures by Mack are pregnant with motion as if their rigid but elegantly spindly legs could carry them across the room. His polished steel orb is mysteriously lighted from within, giving it a balanced inner and outer dimensional presence. Mason is showing work (6x6 inches to 48x48 inches) in a palette of black, white and soothing but striking orange. She is consistent and nuanced in her approach and execution. Her abstract works are about journeys she has taken that allow viewers to set off on their own.