Photo illustration by Joshua McCoy/Daily NewsMisha Ambrosia's &#822036 Views of Fountain Square” opens Friday at the Capitol Arts Center. &#8220Fountain Square Park is the heart of Bowling Green,” the New Orleans native said. &#8220My husband and I have been drawn to Fountain Square Park since we came here.”

As artist Misha Ambrosia read about the Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai’s &#8220Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji,” which influenced Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh, she decided to put his idea to work in art centered around Fountain Square Park.

&#8220Fountain Square Park is the heart of Bowling Green,” said the New Orleans native, who moved here a couple of years ago. &#8220My husband and I have been drawn to Fountain Square Park since we came here. We go to concerts in the park and I wanted to do something to thank the city of Bowling Green for what they did for Katrina” victims, including some of Ambrosia’s family members, who sought shelter here after the hurricane.

Friday through Aug. 22, Ambrosia’s &#822036 Views of Fountain Square” exhibit is at the Capitol Arts Center on Main Avenue.

A free, opening reception for the show is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Ambrosia said she’s looking forward to it.

She’s enjoyed creating the 36 views, though it was hard to whittle down the number.

&#8220I could do a hundred of them,” she said Monday, after working on a painting until 4 a.m. that day.

Lynn Robertson, gallery director at the Capitol, said Ambrosia’s show &#8220is going to knock people’s socks off, first of all because of the love of Fountain Square Park, but also because someone has taken the time to do all these different views of the park in the snow, from the fountain, in the sun, the street.”

Ambrosia based the pieces on photos she took of the park over the course of the year.

She created her works with acrylics, pen and inks, watercolors, sepia tones, scratch board and more.

The exhibit will be in the Capitol’s often overlooked, upstairs Mezzanine Gallery.

&#8220People often go into the (ground floor) Houchens Gallery and don’t go upstairs,” Robertson said. &#8220But her work is going to pull people upstairs to the other gallery. It’s that strong.”

Ambrosia’s show is in conjunction with a Houchens Gallery show of ceramics by Bob Brigl and Norman O’Neal, both of Bowling Green, and paintings by Antigone St. Claire of Franklin.

Robertson said Brigl does &#8220very strong ceramic pieces” and that O’Neal &#8220is also a strong ceramist.”

She called St. Claire’s paintings &#8220a good balance to these ceramic pieces because they’re all going to be pretty strong, bold.”

Brigl said his pieces have been created around fossils and precious and semiprecious jewels.

&#8220It’s mixed media, so the stones and jewelry work as the focal points of the piece, and I work around these mixed media additions,” Brigl said.

A black stoneware vase was created around a snail fossil that is &#8220millions of years old,” he said.

Brigl thinks such works will show well alongside those created by O’Neal, who once was his pottery student and now shares studio space with him and three other potters at The Pots Place on Main Avenue.

Robertson said all of the exhibits opening Friday are &#8220wonderful.”

– For more information, call the Capitol at 782-2787.