The two friends in Ann Lehman’s sculpture — we only know they’re friends because the title tells us so — appear as though they’re deep in the middle of a long conversation, one that started long before we arrived and will continue after we’ve gone. One is perhaps trying to convince the other of something. He’s pressing his point. The other isn’t convinced, but he’s hearing the argument out. It’s happening on a bench that could be in any public park. In short, it’s a definition of community: people coming together in an open space, exchanging ideas, listening and speaking, challenging one another knowing that the friendship is stronger than any argument, that the bonds between people matter the most.
Lehman — who died in 2022 at the age of 94 — knew more than most about both art and community, a point made irrefutably by“The Alchemy of Art,” the latest show in the Hilles Gallery at Creative Arts Workshop on Audubon Street, running now through Jan. 27.
