The Hidden Lantern Gallery in Rosemary Beach announced the opening of its first show exclusive to the art of collage, A World Inside A Paper Landscape, featuring local artist Perdita Ross.

The Gallery will mark the occasion with an Artist Reception on Thursday, August 9, from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. The show will be on view until Sunday, September 16th.

The artist’s paper constructions are like floating worlds — three-dimensional landscapes one can enter and explore. Like the Impressionists, who absorbed qualities of the Japanese aesthetic into their pictorial practices in the late 19th century, Ross’s works are markedly Japanese. In this new suite of collages, Ross evokes the dramatic perspective, exaggerated colors, asymmetrical composition, quiet beauty and transitory moments particular to Japanese woodblock prints.

Ross describes her technique as drawing with scissors, each cut creating spatial shapes with which she sculpts her paper landscapes. Movement is achieved from rigid paper, as seen in the undulating ripples in the water to the sway of a palm tree. And at moments, there is complete stillness, as the moon perches in the sky, emitting a sense of quiet against Ross’s striking palette.

The more the viewer looks into these paper worlds, the more that is discovered within the myriad details that fill the complete works— the reflection of the moon, a bird whose arches spread parallel to the waves of the sea, even a mermaid.

Established in 2010, The Hidden Lantern Gallery is committed to the visibility of local and regional emerging artists. Exhibitions feature works of art in various media, with prominence given to painting and sculpture, but where traditional materials are utilized in unconventional ways.