The dual opening of Gallery Mornea’s newest exhibits Friday night brought out one of the largest crowds the gallery has seen.

As the night wore on, the three rooms of the gallery became busy and vibrant, filling with people sipping wine or beer and chatting about the art surrounding them.

The crowd size appeared to top the 200 people expected to attend Friday night’s opening of “We All Loved Each Other So Much,” paintings by Kathy Halper, and the “Serial Painters” group exhibition of Ralph Levinson, Patricia Owsiany, Marketa Sivek and Cynthia Wiggins.

The gallery usually houses a more established artist and then features a group exhibit of emerging artists, the gallery’s creative director David Gista said.

Kathy Halper, a resident of Highland Park, is the solo artist currently featured at the gallery.

Her pieces are a mix of painting and collage with paper and depict people she has seen in photos in the news, throughout history and now.

“These photos are just so beautiful to me,” Halper said.

Many of the photos Halper draws her inspiration from have a tragic element to them.

The desire to bring beauty and tragedy into a form with which many people can connect is one of her goals, Halper said.

One of her pieces, “Lean On Me,” shows a close up of two people holding each other, set against striking reds and patterned paper.

Halper, at first hesitant to explain her work, because she said she wants people to interpret her pieces on their own, said the piece was drawn from a photo in the newspaper of people at a funeral.

Above the mourners hangs another piece, depicting a woman after Hurricane Katrina.

In the gallery’s next room, the group exhibit is on display.

“This exhibit is composed of four artists working on series with very different approaches,” Gista said.

Each series features a set of paintings dealing with a similar subject and color scheme.

But each individual series differs greatly from the others.

Ralph Levinson’s “Conversations in the Natural World,” dominates one of the walls.

The series of 12 paintings shows snapshots of the sky with each painting having contrasting elements: “light and dark, earth and sky, and stagnant and moving.”

The art focuses on making opposites work together, Levinson said.

On the opposite wall are Chicago artist Patricia Owsiany’s “Face Stamps”, 6-by-6 inch close-up portraits of people’s faces.

“I like the landscape of the face,” Owsiany said.

Owsiany takes close-up photos of her subjects – sometimes walking up to strangers with a camera – and then paints the portraits.

“I focus on whatever I can pull out of the photograph,” Owsiany said.

These “thumbnails,” are like sketches for Owsiany – a way to wind down.

The room also houses the group exhibition’s other two artists, Marketa Sivek and Cynthia Wiggins.

Sivek’s paintings encompassed several different series, including “Dresses,” and “Red Balls.”

The subjects for Wiggin’s “Family Portraits” paintings are her ancestors. Beneath each painting is a story about the subject.

Halper’s paintings and the group exhibit will both run through May 19 at Gallery Mornea, 602 Davis St.

Reach Anna Prior at [email protected].