A step inside Absolute Gallery in Lansing's Old Town will offer visitors the chance to glimpse inside Brazilian printmaker Sônia Menna Barreto's imagination.

An exhibit of her lithographs, called "Realism Surrealism" opens at 307 E. Grand River Ave. today through October 1.

Director and owner Kathy Holcomb discovered the exotic artist when she was researching Latin American artists for a client.

Simply put, Menna Barreto's work is difficult to categorize.

On one hand, her technique is similar to other realism artwork because the figures are realistic looking. Her subject matter, however, is not typical of other artwork in the realism category because it does not depict everyday scenes.

This may lead the viewer to classify Menna Barreto's work as surreal because of its fantastical characters and objects in unrealistic settings. Surrealistic artwork is commonly philosophically or sometimes politically driven, but Menna Barreto's work seems less inspired by a philosophy and seems more like her overactive imagination at work.

Menna Barreto's paintings are playful and tame collections of jesters, masked characters, gondolas, canals, theatrical performers and books. Other odds and ends, such as spools, card desks or flies can be spotted in her paintings at random.

One of Menna Barreto's pieces, "Os Doze Erros," which translates to "a dozen mistakes," is full of stray articles. The lithograph challenges viewers to find its 12 mistakes in it, a difficult task that takes a good deal of searching to find.

"Canaletto" is another typical piece from Menna Barreto. The artwork shows a canal scene set on a shelf of a small shelving unit. The canal overflows near the bottom into an open drawer where a masked figure with a hooked nose punts its masked customers around. A book on the shelf would block the view, but depicts the continuation of the scene on its cover.

"Realism Surrealism" fell a bit short of expectations because its obscure name doesn't quite capture the scope of the exhibit. But it is still worthy of a quick stop if you are in the Old Town area.