A Miniature Ocean

Opening reception Sat., June 27, 5-9 p.m., free, exhibit through July 30, Mew Gallery, 906 Christian St., 215-625-2424, mewgallery.org.

by Chelsea Calhoun

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

visual art

When most women find out they're pregnant, they tell their closest friends and begin buying everything from diapers to bassinets to those weird things that suspend children in a doorway, somehow entertaining them. But when sculptor Darla Jackson got the good news five months ago, she created "A Miniature Ocean," inspired by a book she read that compared the growing belly of an expecting mother to a miniature ocean. She ran with it, once again using her anthropomorphic art (which, in this case, includes a mother rabbit with a boat on her head, pictured) to explore human emotions. "I made up my own creation story, so to speak," Jackson says. "There's a mom rabbit, and she picks up these baby rabbits out in the ocean. It can be viewed as dark and funny at the same time — it depends on your point of view."