The Community Artists’ Collective opens the new year on Saturday, January 7, with “When I Think of Home,” a solo exhibition by artist Morgan Newton, a Howard University alumna from Houston.

Her former art instructor at Howard, Melanee C. Harvey, PhD, defines home in the exhibition as the feeling of sanctuary, love and joy shared across family and community.

Harvey writes, “the paintings included in this exhibition mark a distinct stylistic shift that conveys the aesthetic and spiritual blossoming of Newton’s pursuit to internalize familial notions of home and cultivate home within herself. Newton centers Black female figures as symbols for her life experiences, in idealized, chromatic and in some cases, fantastically celestial environments to suggest the infinite potential of the nurtured self.”

“The recurring themes in my work are self-love, self-actualization and growth,” Newton explains.

An opening reception will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, January 7, at The Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116, for the exhibition which continues through February 4. The Collective is open Thursday through Saturday from 12 noon until 5 p.m. and by appointment.