The first exhibit, in a planned series of five elements, is brilliantly curated by writer, artist and professor Marcia Morse.

"We met several times in the last year or so, and my role as curator was not so much to select work from among things submitted, but to work with the artists as they responded to the central text created by Lori Ohtani and to ask questions (maybe probing, maybe formative) about the progress of their work," says Morse.

Ohtani says the central text was inspired by T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" and distilled into five image definitions linked to themes of sensory awareness: desert/barren: sense of sight; life/death: sense of taste; nature: sense of smell; time: sense of touch; stillness/solitude: sense of hearing. Ohtani, a dancer, gave movement to these images in a butoh performance on opening night.

There are some shifts in medium for a few of the artists. Keiko Hatano's "Since the Beginning" features red flowers from various parts of the world embroidered on camouflage-patterned cotton, an unforgettable metaphor for blood, war and the fragile components of battle and boundaries.

Unlike her highly textured paintings, Diane Nushida-Tokuno's "Sanctuary" is a mixed-media installation that addresses the seven deadly sins.

Violet Murakami's "Tsuchi (Earth)" fills a wall with irregularly shaped pieces of pigment-dyed rice paper.

Tsugumi Iwasaki-Higbee's five mixed-media assemblages have a touch of humor. Each scenario is a metaphor for the reproductive cycle.

Yoko Haar's two sets of ceramic tiles address Earth's "Microcosm and Macrocosm" and "Tectonic Plates" in linear relief elements and soft blue-gray and warm brown color tones.

In Noe Tanigawa's wax, beeswax, oil-and-varnish "Earth Series," as well as "Acrobat" and "Initiation," a layering of strong transparent and opaque colors (and a mixture of materials) give significant depth to her powerful abstract expressionistic paintings.