Among the pieces in an exhibit of academic art at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library are “So I Close My Eyes and Give In to Sleep,” a pair of photos by Wanrudee Buranakorn, an associate professor of photography at UW-Eau Claire

Illuminative: The Art of Academia is an accessible look into the intelligent and imaginative work of local university art educators. The show contains the work of nine artists, all currently active professors of art in western Wisconsin and includes sculpture, photography, video, ceramics, and a flash website – 17 pieces in all – fitting nicely into the upper gallery level at the library. University art is an odd duck in that it doesn’t answer to supply and demand or to public opinion, or even to the artist’s heart: It answers to the intellectual and emotional rigors inside each artist in the context of the wider community of academics all also wrestling with ideas of artistry.

Sound heavy and complicated? It is. But this show isn’t. The work here doesn’t fit the cliché of the lofty and esoteric gasps of the mind flung against a white wall, it’s really quite friendly. The exhibition was organized by David Brock, member of the library’s visual arts committee and himself an art professor at UW-Eau Claire. “There is that stigma of the art professor making work that nobody gets,” he says. “Part of what I wanted to do was to open a door a little way to show that these are artists too, just seeing the world in a different way and that there’s a wider world of art out there.”

“Bouncing Bona,” a mixed-media piece by UW-Stout’s Nancy Blum.

The artists in the show, coming from the Stout, Eau Claire, La Crosse, and River Falls campuses, are definitely working with advanced concepts, but they are also educators and know how to communicate. The subjects and materials could not be more local – dolls, deer, bowls, snapshots, table linens, fishing line, a tree branch, the library, paper flowers, milk, television, hair curlers – but none stop there and all lead to unexpected situations, scenes, and not a single one answers all the questions it raises. This exhibition challenges, but in a gentle way, leading by familiar signs to a new road. Brock says, “Many of these artists don’t show their work locally because they’re not sure how they will be received, since what they make is often so different from what they see hanging locally.” Consider it an invitation, then, to follow these lines of thought and of image that may speak to you in a new way of something you thought you already knew so well.

Illuminative: The Art of Academia • through Sept. 2, check venue for hours of operation • L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, 400 Eau Claire St., Eau Claire • FREE • www.ecpubliclibrary.info • (715) 839-5004.