Large-scale, indoor murals rule the Hall at Crane Arts for the beginning of the summertime season. InLiquid Art + Design presents four artist members in the exhibition: Donna Backues, Joe Brenman, Delia King and Shira Walinsky. Each artist utilizes materials that add distinct textures and surfaces to their works including collage, acrylic paint and glass. The result is a colorful montage of varied styles that is both inviting and lively.

Delia King, “Record Listener.”

Delia King shows off three of her glass and cloth compositions that focus on female figures both reveling and relaxing in different settings. For “Record Listener,” a woman lies on her back atop two green sofa cushions, surrounded by strewn-about album sleeves. In one hand she holds a cigarette, eyes closed, while the background bubbles and drips with bright paint streaks. This vivid daydream amidst unheard melodies reminds us each of the times when music has enlivened our lives or eased the burden of a rough day. In “Three Heads,” three women in profile peer directly at the viewer from the corners of their eyes. Their faces are streaked with tiny lines of gold and the deep brown Afros on their heads sparkle with metallic circles, specks of blue, and hot pink splotches of paint, making their already mysterious and majestic appearances all the more regal.

Joe Brenman, “Scotty on Lawrence Street.”

Two enormous paper collages by Joe Brenman prove that the medium is not limited to tiny, framed pieces. One is rather abstract – “Green Mountain Vermont” – in which the apparent landscape of soil, sky and plants blends into a bulbous rocky form divided by chunks of dark green paint. Most of the other sections are pieced together with similarly-colored bits of cut paper, placed into a tumble of patterns and configurations, each removed from its original context to create a rhythmic new form. The same is true for “Scotty on Lawrence Street,” which depicts a distorted, bearded character dragging what appears to be a shopping cart through an intersection of blue streets that more closely resemble canals than roadways.

Shira Walinsky, “Karna Gurang.”

Shira Walinsky provides both a landscape and a portrait. The peaks in “Mountainside” are monotone and monotonous when surrounded by alternating multicolored squares, but their lines and angles unmistakably depict a distant mountain which, in any other context, would certainly trump the surrounding scenes. The works were created to convert a storefront in South Philadelphia with the help of refugees from Burma and Bhutan. In “Karna Gurang,” we find the face of a Nepali Bhutanese man donning a hat of red and bluish zigzags and a thick, puffy collar. His face is stern but calm, and his eyes are almost black, revealing no color or white areas, adding an element of strange ambiguity to his stare.

Donna Backues, “City Blocks.”

A 48-square series entitled “City Blocks” makes up Donna Backues contribution. Using acrylic paint on unstretched cotton canvas, Backues renders minimal snapshots of the urban environment with a brush instead of a camera. They range from dark blues that hint at dusk, to images with red and yellow patches that seem as if they had been painted at dawn. In this way, the artist captures both place and time in paintings that would otherwise be almost entirely abstract.

Come bask in the colors and textures of these InLiquid members, and be sure to check out everything else this building has to offer. Crane Arts will be home to all four artists’ work through the 5th of July.

Crane Arts is located at 1400 North American St., Philadelphia; [email protected]; cranearts.com.