San Antonio’s Contemporary Beacon

Levente Sulyok's "Collapse," 2010, in the poetically titled group view "Everyday is Ordinary." Sulyok gives us a fresh take on text paintings. The Hungarian-born, internationally exhibited artist holds an MFA from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and is currently an associate professor at Wichita State University in Kansas.

San Antonio-based Ansen Seale is one of the most inventive photographers around. In the group view "Transmission," he creates a minimalist statement with the image "Hand Jive," 2013, comprised of hand gestures dissolving into abstraction.

Another San Antonio talent, Emily Fleisher gives us the universe in a Ronzoni box with "Nearly Everything," 2012. The enchanting sculpture bearing a micro video — whose odd Pop Surreal sensibility is evocative of Robert Gober — is among three works in her solo, "Stellar-Scape," installed in one of Blue Star's four galleries.

This unforgettable portrait, Frank Oriti's "Summer Help," 2012, conjures a blue-collar worker from the slacker generation stuck in a dead-end job. Among the highlights of "Everyday is Ordinary": It's a work by Cleveland-based Oriti and is an inclusion in the international BP Portrait Award competition exhibition opening June 18 at the National Portrait Gallery, London (through September 20).

Ron Lambert's "Smoke Signal," 2014, signals a new direction in sculpture with its incorporation of photography. The nationally exhibited Pennsylvania-based artist mines the notion of environment to give us a psychological portrait of a place that posits the people who might live there. It personifies the nuanced vibration of "Everyday is Ordinary."

Nancy Floyd's "Enactment, Same Shirt (on right)," 1983/2012, serves up an unflinching portrait of aging as the Atlanta-based artist turns her lens on herself. This work is part of her ongoing 30-plus-years series and will be the basis for a second book, "Weathering Time."

Another work by Nancy Floyd, "My Brother's Robe," 1982/2012, documents her own life, time, memory and aging in intervals 30 years apart. It's included in the eloquently curated "Everything is Ordinary" (through August 9 at Blue Star).

A fresh face in the Texas painting realm, University of North Texas MFA grad Shayne Murphy's "Surfacing," 2013, demonstrates a sure-footed new language of abstraction. (Murphy was a 2014 Lawndale Art Center studio program resident.) He's among the most promising Texas finds from "Everyday is Ordinary."

These are not ordinary rocks, but recreations of rocks by internationally exhibited Kentucky artist Cynthia Gregory. The work, "Museum of Stones," 2012, is included in Gregory's solo installation, "Of Reference, Of Departure, Of Origin," which possesses a subtle American 19th-century literary vibe.

Another Gregory creation, the charmingly childlike "Ordinary Time," 2014, speaks to the universe and time. It's included in her solo, which takes over one gallery at Blue Star.

In a second group show, "Transmission," Letifa Medjdoub's "The Fabric of Silence," 2013, takes over the entrance doorway to the museum. The French-born artist is based in San Francisco, and for this piece enlisted 60 people who took turns operating a hand-run knitting machine;. This social practice project was created for the presentation of Witold Gombrowicz's "Princess Ivona" play at the Performance Art Institute in San Francisco.