MYSTIC - The 34th annual photography show and the Connecticut Women Artists, Inc. juried shows will be on display at Mystic Arts Center through Nov. 14 and each has delights for the eye.

The Connecticut Women Artists, Inc., show features works selected from original oil, watercolor, pastel, acrylic, mixed media, collage, graphics, photography, sculpture, and video. Pieces were selected and judged by Lilian Tone of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and she chose the winners of the three cash awards.

The MAC's annual photography show exhibits what photography can do with, and without, digital technology, and was judged by Vermont author and photographer Peter Miller.

"I have thought so much about the idea of being a juror - and how hard it is," said Tone, who is assistant curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the MoMA. The Connecticut Women Artists, Inc. rented the Davis Gallery at the Mystic Arts Center for this show, and to keep costs down, had Tone judge computer images of the artwork.

"Ideally, you would have all the works in one place and visit them. The truth is, that it becomes very expensive to do that, and in order to make the show available to more people judges frequently view pieces online," said Tone. She said she has to imagine the scale of each piece and take her biases into consideration when she selects award winners.

Each artist could submit several entries, which Tone said made the job slightly easier.

"With more than one piece from an artist, you could get a sense of the kind of proposal that that artist is putting forth," she said.

Tone said she is now organizing a traveling exhibit from a collection at the MoMA.

"We don't have a launch date yet for the traveling exhibit I'm working on, but we were given this incredible collection by William S. Paley, that includes such works as 'Boy leading a Horse' by Pablo Picasso. It's very exciting," she said.

Most recently, Tone curated a collection and contemporary art exhibitions at the MoMA such as Focus: Paul Klee (2006) and The Bauhaus (2006) and projects with international artists including Cai Guo-Qiang, Piotr Uklanski, William Kentridge and Udomsak Krisamanis.

The Connecticut Women Artists, Inc. provides a forum for women's artwork and continues to emphasize the importance of art in society today. The organization was founded in 1929 when 13 women artists exhibited at Hartford's Wadsworth Athenaeum.

Karen Barthelson is the MAC's executive director. For this show, she selected several oil paintings from the center's collection by Edith Briscoe Stevens, a founding member of what is now the Connecticut Women Artists, Inc. Stevens kept a studio in East Gloucester, Mass., and was a landscape plein aire and marine painter.

"We're fortunate to have some of Stevens' work along with the other early women artists' work from our collection, and hope guests will view them in the Shuster gallery," she said.

Hanging in the Halsey and Liebig Galleries is the Mystic Arts Center's 31st annual photography show, sponsored by Mystic's ABC PhotoLab. The annual juried photography show is open to all artists with an emphasis on original imagery, and offers cash prizes and honorable mentions.

Miller juried the show, and included a statement in the program about the nature of photography and how to judge an exhibition.

"It comes down to experience, your personality, what your eye and mind and heart and psyche tell you," he wrote about judging photographs. Punctum, he wrote is the "invisible energy in a photograph that somehow ignites you. Eyes dilate, heart speeds up, there is an intake of breath." In a lifetime, some photographers may create a few hundred pieces with punctum, others may only make a handful, he says.

Miller said he thought the submissions to this year's MAC photo show were "really good - a lot of these photographers are amateurs and some have skills as good, if not better, than professionals."

"This show had a wide spectrum of photos of different styles.... the judge will always look at what he seems to like best: I prefer documentary style, Americana stuff," he said. Accepting his biases in judging, Miller chose various styles of work for awards. Some were in the documentary style, others were decidedly not: a large format color piece of a baby with wings by Bruce Edwards, and a nude by Kaitlyn Boucher for example.

While in Mystic judging the show, Miller has started work on a project about breast cancer that he's excited about. The Leica Gallery in New York City seems to be interested in the idea, but "the pictures are kind of tough, though," Miller said.

The two juried shows will be on display at the Mystic Arts Center, 9 Water St., through Nov. 14. Click here for more information or call (860) 536-7601.