Photo submitted to Times Observer Laura Fantini poses with a pair of her works. Fantini’s work will be on display from March 11 until April 1 at the Crary Art Gallery in Warren.

A world-renowned colored pencil artist will be bringing her work to the Crary Art Gallery in Warren.

Crary Art Gallery has announced Laura Fantini: Hope and a New Beginning. Seeds and plant forms poetically rendered in colored pencil, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based Italian artist Laura Fantini, who presents a new body of work that includes drawings from her new series of seeds called “Hope.”

The exhibition will be on display from March 11 until April 1. An opening reception will take place at Crary on Saturday, March 11, from 6 to 8 p.m., including a gallery talk at 7 p.m.

For the past two decades, Fantini’s artistic practice has been exclusively dedicated to colored pencils. In the last few years, she has devoted herself to the rendering of simple still-life objects found in nature. Her work is smooth and appears to be almost photographic at a first look. However, a closer look reveals great intricacy of detail. From thousands upon thousands of precise, distinct, cross-hatched pencil-strokes, Fantini builds up rich tones.

“Hope and a New Beginning” includes colored-pencil drawings from her new series, “Hope.” Here, the power of seeds plays a fundamental role. It is a positive and optimistic message because seeds represent hope and a new beginning. They are an integral part of who we are and emblematic of birth and growth. They are small, but complicated and mysterious, and what they do is extraordinary and magnificent. Without seeds life would be threatened, from human beings to plants and animals. Sometimes a seed is all that remains of a plant. It is the beginning and the end, but also the hope for the next generation. Through these detailed small drawings, the viewer will come to realize how a pencil for an artist can be as powerful as a tiny seed in nature.

This exhibition includes a series of 25 drawings of seeds (10×10 inches or 16×16 inches, framed-size) found mostly in US and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but also Italy.

Fantini is a hyper-realistic minimalist artist living and working in both Brooklyn, N.Y., and Bologna, Italy. She graduated from the Liceo Artistico and Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, her hometown. She was selected by Profilo d’Arte — Banca Profilo among the most interesting emerging Italian artists. Her many exhibitions include those at the Museo della Permanente in Milan and Galleria Forni in Bologna, at the Staten Island Museum in New York, at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, at the National Museum Jose Malhoa in Portugal and Denise Bibro Fine Arts in New York, among others. Fantini has won various awards including first prize in the First Annual Sylvia Glesmann Floral Exhibition and in the Jane Peterson Memorial Award at the Salmagundi Club in New York. She also received The Canson Paper Award for Excellence and the Second Prize — Award for Exceptional Merit from the Colored Pencil Society of America. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Hunt Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, at the Monaco Government Tourist Office in New York, and in numerous private collections in Italy, UK, US, and Japan.

Fantini is a member of the Salmagundi Club in New York and a Signature/Merit Member of the Colored Pencil Society of America.