The Quinlan Visual Arts Center’s 62nd Annual Members Exhibition will open with an awards reception at 5:30 p.m. today.

The show will be on display through Dec. 6, showcasing the diversity of the Quinlan’s membership, which includes beginning artists and professionals.

"We trace this show back to the origin of the center, which was the Gainesville Art Association, which was a core group of a sketch club," said gallery director Amanda Kroll. "We’ve had a member show every year since then."

"The faces of our members have all changed from sketchers to everything in between," Kroll said.

This year’s show will be judged by Jim Thomas, the gallery director for the Sautee Nacoochee Center in Sautee.

"We have a really great network up here of artists and artist organizations, and it’s a great way to celebrate that by bringing someone like Jim in to judge the show," Kroll said.

Kroll said the job of sifting through and hanging the more than 250 submissions the center gets for the show is a tough one, but volunteers from the Georgia Art League help with the task.

"We have to look at it not just how the individual pieces can be categorized, but how the whole show is going to hang as its own representation," said Kroll. "It’s like a huge jigsaw puzzle."

Kroll said the Quinlan staff focuses on what visitors will see when they walk through the gallery. "We’ll hang by color, we’ll hang by size, we’ll hang by subject and eventually every piece will find a home," Kroll said.

Down one gallery hallway designated for portraits, Atlanta artist Leslie Thomas’s "Red Kimono," a painterly portrait, stares down at "Eyes of the Tiger," a large, up-close painting of a tiger’s face by Toccoa artist Tom Ingraham.

One wall features blue works, another red. And the entrance gallery contains what Kroll determined to be a "cross-section of the show," representative of all the submissions.

Ribbons are awarded to winning pieces, and artists from across the country exhibit works in any medium, including acrylic, oil, watercolor, glass, wood and clay.

"This is about celebrating our membership because they are the foundation of our center," Kroll said.

"We have some great artists in this town and in our community and beyond," she said. "We really are very fortunate."

If you’re an artist and you want to join the Quinlan, Kroll said it’s as easy as paying the yearly dues. Artists can join at any time of the year.

A one-year membership at the Quinlan costs $50 for individuals, $90 per family and $45 for artists, students and teachers.