Opening Friday: "A New Breed of Watercolor"

Opening Friday: Being lightweight and easily portable, watercolor is a favorite medium for plein air painters who can set up in fields, on lakefronts and wherever mountain vistas beckon. But there's a more enigmatic brand of watercolor art afoot these days, the contemporary offshoot of a long tradition of watercolor narrative and illustration. In "A New Breed of Watercolor," five young painters -- Serena Cole, Keren Kroul, Margaret Pezalla-Granlund, Lindsay Smith and Betsy Walton -- offer strange and beguiling images of fantasy architecture, unexpected encounters and haunting portraits. Cole's audacious "Plentiful" (pictured) is a far cry from those pale and wan traditional watercolors of the past. Opening simultaneously, Alex Kuno's "Springtime Follies" features his usual cast of big-eyed children wandering through bleak landscapes in which they are attacked by beastly monsters and nasty troubles. So droll. (Opening party 6-9 p.m. today, free. Soo Visual Arts Center, 2640 Lyndale Av. S., Mpls. Ends July 26, free. 612-871-2263 or www.soovac.org)