Pattern of conversation

Artist Jennifer Hennings is probably aware of where plaid has been and is certainly aware of where it is now. In MICA Gallery’s new exhibit, “It’s All About the Plaid,” she offers her unique twist on where it could possibly go.

“I see plaid as a representation of life,” Hennings said. “I see the pattern as the different strands of a person’s life, interwoven.”

Hennings is joined by a bevy of artists for the exhibition. Each contributes a piece in mediums ranging from black-and-white illustration to backlit installations. Each piece is supported by the plaid theme, but conveys an intricacy far beyond its conceit.

As for Henning’s share of the exhibit, she works with plaid clothing, repurposing and reusing ordinary items and transforming them into something different. With her piece “Man About Plaid,” for example, an ordinary men’s plaid shirt has had its sleeves removed and sewn back on at the cuff, opening the arms and giving the shoulders a hip, militaristic look.

The pieces feel like something new, but not entirely different from something you’d see someone wearing on a college campus. Hennings is relatively new to fashion design, having only practiced it for a couple years, but alludes to an almost serendipitous transition to designing trendy apparel.

“It was my younger classmates at LCC who encouraged me to get into fashion design” Hennings said. “It feels like with design it has come full circle.”

Another artist debuted her exhibit on Sunday on the other end of the Lansing gallery circuit. Patricia A. Bender’s preferred medium of photography could go hand-in-hand with the designs of Hennings, but Bender, a photographer, prefers to fix her lens on things far removed from the glamour of the runway.

“I typically look for little things when taking pictures,” Bender said. “Things that are overlooked.”

Her exhibit at the East Lansing Public Art Gallery in the Hannah Community Center is called “Small Things Considered.” (Yes, the artist is an NPR fan.) Shots are tight on the subject, whether of a pear on an old fence or a portion of a forest in upstate New York. While the images stand steady on their own, they strongly allude to the greater whole of which they’re a part.

The most intriguing aspect of Bender’s work is her use of practical effects in her pieces. Bender works exclusively in traditional photographic techniques — no digital trickery. Everything is shot on regular film and developed in a darkroom. Since Bender admits she barely knows how to operate a smartphone, let alone Photoshop, it’s a wonder how she is able to achieve the images that she does.

“It’s all about experimenting with weird methods in the darkroom,” Bender said. “The weirdest thing was using an old dryer lid with water on it to diffuse the light when I developed an image.”

The result is ethereal. The deliberately small prints juxtaposed with Bender’s dark room mad science makes her work appear as memories or dreams. “Staples” is exemplary: A tight shot of a tree bearing the marks of countless lost cat signs and garage sales posts. With a soft focus creeping around the perimeter of the image, it feels like a slide of an image projected from your mind’s eye.

Bender took the leap to photography from her former vocation 12 years ago. She used to be a writer for the Princeton Packet, a New Jersey-based newspaper. After drawing inspiration from the works of photographer Sally Mann and a few photography classes, she was on her way.

“Small Things” is her first exhibit in Michigan, and presumably in a long line of many. As far as where she plans on taking the style of her work next, the answer is kind of obvious.

“I want to work bigger,” Bender said. “I want to start utilizing some more traditional photographic techniques like wet plate tin. I never want to stop learning.”