The Gallery at Ward Centre is a small cooperative gallery with an artist-to-artist, informal environment that allows the kind of shows that more established institutions seldom can offer. Its current show features new work by "funk" ceramicist and art professor S. Kay Mura and photo-realist painter Doug Young.

Mura is a professor of art at Leeward Community College, where she teaches ceramics and sculpture. She was born in Denson, Ark., and grew up in Denver. She received a bachelor's degree in art history from Pomona College, a master's in sculpture from Claremont and a master's in ceramics from the University of Hawai'i. She came to Hawai'i as an East-West Center grantee in 1967.

She uses a variety of ceramic techniques to tell her stories, often with humor or whimsy.

The recurring theme in her work is relationships with the self and with others, both human and animal.

"I've always liked looking at animals and knowing about them," she writes. "Their forms and their personalities inspire me."

Organic shapes and textures are primary elements in her work. Their surfaces are enhanced with drawing, writing and other patterns, and she often uses vibrant color to convey energy in her clay forms. More recently, she has been trusting the natural clay surface to hold its own.

Mura's ceramics in this exhibition embrace the theme of family, in this case, for example, a human mother-earth figure holding a red-lipped, yellow caterpillar-like creature, the bear-like father figure standing behind.

Freud would have a field day dissecting the psychological layers here, but for Mura it's about the fun of the medium and imagery that never takes itself too seriously.

Indeed, one might compare her animals to those of Disney, filtered through the experience of the baby boomers — a generation that experienced childhood during the tranquil calm of the Eisenhower years, then loss of innocence upon John F. Kennedy's assassination, on through the the heartbreak and division of the Vietnam War, counterculture altered states of consciousness and the deeply divided times we live in now.

Mura's work speaks eloquently to it all.

Young, born and raised in Honolulu and a full-time artist since 1974, chose to play with Mura's family theme through the "I Ching," the ancient Taoist Book of Changes that is used for divination and spiritual guidance.

This artist was fully immersed in the early '70s photo-realist movement, working for Ivan Karp at O.K. Harris Gallery in Soho as well as for many artists. He exhibited in Los Angeles for more than 20 years.

His work is in various publications, public and private collections, and he is a recipient of the prestigious Individual Artist Fellowship from the state Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

Young attended New York University, the University of Hawai'i and Coe College, from which he received a fine-arts degree.

His time at Coe included a two-year work-study program in New York City and Germany as the assistant to the late realist sculptor Duane Hanson.

This new work marks yet another chapter in Young's evolving style. Of the 64 attributes and hexagrams of life embedded in "I Ching," he chose to explore the concepts of duality, providing nourishment and family.

Intertwined with these attributes are images of his teenage children's iPod, IMing (instant messaging), and digital iphotos — in short, the "I"-lifestyle, as he describes it.

Young takes images from his children's computer screen and their world: digital snapshots of their outings, visions, perspectives, friends; their junk food (especially Goldfish Crackers). He depicts their frame of mind/communication; their constant appendages of the computer and iPod; their high-speed Internet world.

The Chinese hexagram "I" is made to look like an open mouth, coinciding with his daughter's image. "Providing Nourishment" is literal, visual and psychological.

Mura and Young worked together on these new works so that we see a merging of subject matter — digital images of Mura's human mother, bear father and caterpillar child family, including a closeup of the yellow larval child, appearing in Young's "Family Mura/Coffeeman."

Young's masterful grasp of medium, form, design and color continue to inform with these accomplished works that speak eloquently of this time and place.

David C. Farmer holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and drawing and a master's in Asian and Pacific art history from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.