Love and Hate: A Valentines Day Art Show

Valentine's Day is a polarizing holiday for most: love or hate it.

has made sure that you can do both, and have a donut too.

Today kicks off the Love/Hate Valentine's Day Art Show featuring work by local artists including:

• Christine Benjamin
• Nic Caesar
• Murphy Adams
• Carlos Villez
• Jen Renzel
• John Hagaman
• Kori Thompson
• Anthony Barbaria
• Valery Milovic
• Michael Foley
• Lacey Bryant

 Campbell Patch asked a few of these artists what Valentine's day is all about, and what their artwork had to do with it. Here are their responses.

Christine Benjamin

"Valentine's Day is about all types of love - love lost and love found. My paintings depict my different characters and their feelings about love - in my painting "Blue For You" the character is sad about a love lost and her skin has turned blue. 

Lacey Bryant

"Valentine's day is hated on a lot, especially by those who have been spurned by love (and who hasn’t)? While I'm not a big fan of commercialized holidays, I think there is kernel of a good idea in there.

Wouldn't it be a nice change to spend the day reflecting on the people, places and things you love? Perhaps if the day didn't focus solely on romantic love people wouldn't feel so left out and bitter.

So Valentine's Day is a day to be happy about the people and places and things in my life that I love and I'm so lucky to have, to me. My pieces for the show are a series of 4 small watercolors depicting cross-sections of anatomical hearts which reveal different thoughts on the contents of one's heart."

Kori Thompson

"Valentines Day is... for the depressed, broken hearted, insane people and other wise plain madmen.

My two pieces are of crows on broken skate decks. I feel like they have a history of their own and by painting on them I'm kind of enhancing that."

Murphy Adams

"Valentine's day is for googly eyed saps...(kinda like me).

My work in the Love/Hate show is a bit about both, hating yourself for loving someone (Never Again & The Confession), foolishly giving your heart without thinking about what that involves (Take My Heart) and the physical manifestation of being head over heels (Lovesick)."

The reception goes to 3:00 p.m. Feb. 12.