I was not impressed with the images on the invitation to the alumni art show at South Puget Sound Community College, but when I walked into the gallery I was pleasantly surprised. Not that it is all great - there are some pretty bland and traditional pastel and watercolor landscapes and a bunch of flower pictures I could easily live without, and some works that are intended to be funny but are meh.

But there is a lot of good stuff too.

Tim Kenny's photo-realist lithographs are striking and unique. Two of them picture men with what appears to be X-rays or sonograms of mechanical parts inserted into their bodies. (I recently had an angioplasty and saw the prints, and these images look a lot like the pictures of stents and grafts in my body.) There is also a Kenny lithograph of a hand and arm with a mechanical apparatus attached. These works are beautifully crafted and inventive.

I like Lea Mitchell's three tiny, dark acrylic landscapes, which teeter on the edge between abstraction and impressionism. Her graphite and pastel drawing "Touch" is a subtle and nicely balanced drawing of a hand touching a face.

Perhaps the most powerful piece in the show is Aimee Biggerstaff's "Malcolm," a ceramic head that is about three times life size. It's the head of an older man. He's bald and there are a series of nipple-like protrusions on the top of his head. It's a disturbing image, and I could probably never live with it if I owned it; but nobody ever said art has to be pretty or comfortable.

Read Alec Clayton's full review of "Then and Now" in the Weekly Volcano's arts section.

SOUTH PUGET SOUND COMMUNITY COLLEGE, "THEN AND NOW: ALUMNI ART EXHIBIT," THROUGH MARCH 21, MONDAY-THURSDAY, NOON-4 P.M., AND BY APPOINTMENT, 2011 MOTTMAN RD. SW. OLYMPIA, 360.596.5527