Skin, hair, eyes, lips, feet, legs - the human body is the main focus at the Lansing Art Gallery this month.

The two exhibits located at 113 S. Washington Square in Lansing opened Monday and will run through September 30.

Candice Grieve's exhibit "Faces of the Soul" is a collection of pastel images exhibited in the main gallery, while Suzanne Clements' "A Lesson in Self-Consciousness" runs in the mezzanine area.

Some of Grieve's pastels are quite impressive because at a glance they easily could be mistaken for photographs. Grieve's best talent is her rendering of human skin.

"Basically, I love the skin," Grieve said. "I love to do the skin. It's very challenging."

The compositions, and sometimes the hair, are the only give-aways of the true medium of the pieces. Grieve said she does not like to do standard portraits, but wants to include the personality of her subject.

"I delve into parts of the personality and try to bring them out," Grieve said.

She does this by casting her subjects in interesting positions and settings, she said. In the piece "Kaleidoscopic," Grieve has set her male subject on the grass. He was tied down with ropes by miniature versions of himself. Nearby, a spray paint can and toilet paper roll give reference to this boy's typical behavioral patterns.

The mini boys are occupying themselves by lounging, carrying on discussions, playing with a lighter, knotting the rope or pushing on the subject's face.

Other creative compositions include "Born Again," a portrait of a nude woman breaking free from a pair of butterfly wings, or "Labyrinth," a puzzle that when put together becomes the image of a sad or lost looking male face.

In the mezzanine, Clements takes a different look at the human body - the ways it stretches, moves and expresses feeling. Her studies of the body are self portraits of Clements' recovery from gall bladder surgery in August 2004.

The collection of drawings and acrylics are simplistic and graceful. The viewer might feel a sort of reverence about the body and its form through Clements' images.

Clements said she tried to capture "every sensation and feeling your body goes through" after recovering from a surgery.

"There's a long, long recovery period you're not prepared for," she said.

Her drawings seem to focus mostly on the movement and the positions the body can produce, while the acrylic paintings offer more of the emotions the body portrays post-surgery.

Some of the acrylic paintings are beautiful works maximizing the use of light and highlighting sections of the female body. The body is also twisted and bent into shapes that are highly reflective of both physical and emotional pain or suffering.

One specific painting, "Comfort," shows Clements curled on the floor in the fetal position. Her hair is tossed away from her, while her arm loosely clutches her legs, possibly indicating persistent, nagging pain.

Both of the exhibits feature the human figure, but in different ways. They are interesting to view together, to see how the two artists experiment with positions and composition.

There will be an artists' reception from 1-4 p.m. on Sunday in connection with the gallery walk that usually takes place on the first Sunday of every month. It had been postponed because of Labor Day weekend.