Carmel Art Association features two artists connected by friendship.

CAA gives the spotlight over to the art of two women – oil paintings by Heidi Hybl and sculptures by Kathleen Crocetti – in a show called Luminous Color that opens this Saturday (on Sunday, Jan. 19, at 11am, the artists will lead a walk-through of their art). They are longtime friends, though their work has followed independent paths.

Hybl’s work may remind local art cognoscenti of Lucas Blok’s rectangular studies of the color wheel. It may remind Powerpoint users of the permutations of the fill-shading effect. Or it may remind those who know the work of Bridget Riley of optical illusions of depth, contrast and color. But would they remind the viewer of the light and landscape of Big Sur? That’s what Hybl is trying to capture in an abstract approach, through just a gleaming, almost metallic sheen of her subject – “reduced to the components of color and light,” says the artist.

Kathleen Crocetti worked in stone for eight years before branching into other mediums, like performance art in fiber optic costumes. So she’s comfortable with conceptual art. She’s also been active in political art. She did a traveling piece for World AIDS Day of a giant cocoons made of recycled phone books. She and many community members constructed hundreds of clay figures to represent (and protest) the deaths caused by the Iraq War. She tried to sneak a community-made peace mural, commissioned by Code Pink, into Gaza. For Luminous Color, she reverts to a more pure study of color and light, in the form of sculpture, as an “intellectual and aesthetic puzzle.”

Together, these two artists are using their art practice to embark on a journey that is also the destination.

LUMINOUS COLOR opens 5-7pm Saturday, Jan. 4, at Carmel Art Association, Dolores between Fifth and Sixth, Carmel. Free. 624-6176, CarmelArt.org