Flowers, hangings made from found objects, and portraits are all part of the appropriately titled `M?lange ?Trois', an exhibition by Katherine Zuill, her daughter Elise P. Church, and Clifford Shikler, in the Bermuda Society of Arts' Onion Gallery at City Hall.

Mrs. Zuill is no stranger to the local art scene, having previously exhibited at both Heritage House Galleries and the Bermuda Society of Arts. An interior decorator and floral designer, although she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the New England School of Art, and the Boston Museum School, her training was in drawing and architectural-related work. Four years ago, the wife and mother decided it was time to do something for herself, so she took up art with a passion. Not only does she fill many of her days in her purpose-built studio here, but also wherever she travels there too go her paints. Her love of landscapes and Nature are both well represented in the present show. Scenes of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Napa in California, and the north-eastern United States are all captured in oils.There are also very large studies of individual flowers - reflecting her admiration for the work of Georgia O'Keefe.

"A lot of my paintings are out of my head, and all the seasons are represented," Mrs. Zuill says of her current body of work.

Miss Church, a graduate of New York's Skidmore College, studied art at the Lacoste School of Arts in France and Parsons School of Design in Paris. A resident of Brooklyn, New York, she has exhibited in galleries in New York and Vermont, and had a one-woman show in the Edinburgh Gallery in 1995. This year she also participated in a group show at the Bermuda Society of Arts.

Her current works are a departure from the canvases we are more familiar with, and reflect "growth through pain" following a personal loss.

"The work includes three-dimensional objects as small as a doll and two-dimensional wall hangings as large as a blanket. They are all made from women's things in a woman's craft," the artist says. "Materials are carefully selected for their familiar qualities. Specifically, I choose second-hand fabrics, toys and articles of clothing that are feminine in colour, texture and pattern. The objects are then sewn by hand and machine and often quilted together, stuffed or embroidered. The sculptures are soft, bright, squishy, smooth or furry, much like something you'd find in a little girl's room."

Miss Church says her sculptures, "though childlike in nature, refer to being a woman in content".

"As a child I collected stuffed toys that lay in piles on my bed in my pink room. My world was soft, comforting and nurturing. The materials I use to make sculptures reflect this time and place. The same desires for creating a nurturing home for a family remain, only it is no longer pretend." The third member of the group, Clifford Shikler, is a realist painter whose media for this exhibition are oils and watercolours. As a child he was inspired by his father, a famous New York artist, and spent many hours sitting alongside him in his studio, where the smell of the paints and the beauty of background classical music helped to stir his artistic juices. Much later, he attended the Pennsylvania College of Art before graduating from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Fine arts degree.

Today, he is a professional artist who has painted with Miss Church for seven years, and with whom he shares studio place.

Mr. Shikler particularly enjoys painting portraits and still life studies of people in "various moods of life", the colour choices and renderings of which he says "tell a lot about someone's frame of mind in subtle ways".

This is his first visit to Bermuda and therefore his first exhibition here.

`M?lange ? Trois' continues through November 15. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Admission is free.