Sculptor Samantha Jones’ new exhibition, “Vital Traces,” will be on view at the UMF Art Gallery through Oct. 28 on the University of Maine at Farmington campus., at 246 Main St.

There will be a public reception under a tent outside from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 23, with a performance by Samantha Taylor ’20 and a Q&A with the artist at 5:30 p.m. Attendees are required to wear face coverings inside the gallery. Participants can register on site on the day of the event or by emailing Sarah Maline at [email protected].

“Vital Traces” examines our unique human moment as we anticipate losses of great magnitude —environmental, social, cultural and personal. Jones identifies the struggle of humans today to define their relationship to the world as an experience of wavering grief, a perpetual sense of indeterminacy, of loss that is not yet lost. There is both tragedy and beauty in this moment, and a strong impulse for humans to create responses that go beyond the rational.

Jones’ deeply sympathetic exploration of personal and universal materials — from soap formed of breast milk and an extravagant collection of costume jewelry left behind after the death of a woman larger-than-life to abstract compositions of delicately blown glass, gold leaf and encaustic suggesting the beginnings of life itself — invite the viewer to reflect on their own experience of our profoundly complex time of perpetual transition.

Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, and by appointment.

For more information, email [email protected] or call 778-1062.