OXFORD — The Oxford Community Art Center’s June exhibits “Pocket Monsters”  by Elise McWilliams, with additional work by Jim McWilliams; “Transformations” by Elizabeth Birch; and “The Dot – Part 4” by Marta Wendt; open with an artist’s reception on June 8 at 6 p.m.

The exhibit continues through July 5th.

Elise McWilliams’ “Pocket Monsters” focuses on various animals, monsters and people involved in daily activities such as skateboarding, camping and mowing the lawn.

There is a theme of twins running throughout “Pocket Monsters.”

McWilliams is heavily influenced by children’s book illustrations and is working toward the completion of a contemporary children’s book.

She admires the simplicity, lightness, and seriousness of childhood drama and believes twins highlight the tension and sibling rivalry that occurs daily in familial relationships. 

McWilliams teaches art at Hollingsworth East Elementary in Eaton.

She earned her B.F.A. degree from Miami University in jewelry/metals. Her M.F.A degree is from Kent State University in jewelry, metals and enameling.

Her artwork is shown nationally and internationally, including Metalsmith magazine’s Exhibition in Print, a sculpture textbook, and her recent acceptance as an artist in residency at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.

Jim McWilliams, with his B.F.A. in sculpture and Master’s Degree in art education from Miami University, was part of the team that started the Oxford Kinetics Festival and Sculpture Race.

His work includes the large kinetic steel sculpture at the Oxford Community Park.

The Elizabeth Birch exhibit “Transformation” is a mixed-media exhibit featuring watercolor, acrylics and fiber pieces.

Birch, the art director for Middfest International in  Middletown for the last 28 years, said she believes “an artist is the mythmaker, a being who formulates from aesthetic experiences a translation through which a work of art becomes radiant, breathtaking and perhaps embraces an epiphany.”

“In many ways, my work is the embodiment of the Eastern ideal of using one’s ability as a thinker to reach a place where thought cannot penetrate,” Birch said.  

Marta Wendt’s four-part “The Dot” series concludes with this month’s exhibit.

The dot became the central icon in Wendt’s search for how the heart starts to beat. 

In these, the last four paintings in the series, “The Dot became the symbol for our Earth,” Wendt said.

Working from her home studio, Wendt produces artwork in watercolor, oil, jewelry, and glass enamel on metal.