Some people hide their butter in the fridge, stiff and preserved. Others leave it out, soft, warm and anxious for a knife so it can seep into hot starch or melt in a pot of boiling water.

The things we use in our homes wear many masks, and often symbolize the realms of comfort and indulgence that make life sweet. But, like all things in our lives, they become commodified, mundane and lose their luster. 

Mike Piggott has been exploring in his paintings the allure of these everyday objects. 

Household items, birds and people on the beach are the inspiration for Piggott’s  “Objects and Things,” opening at the Muse Gallery on Friday. 

A vase and a flower stand like a woman in an evening gown, two sticks of butter send a layered message about balance, and a tissue box extends an appendage of relief.

The objects are painted against quiet backgrounds. The edges are soft, sometimes, with bright colors seeping through, showing a little more vibrancy, as well as possibility that lies underneath the objects. 

These paintings bring to mind 19th -century regionalists like Edward Hopper, Grant Wood and Wayne Thiebaud, who were exploring the visual potential of realistic, everyday scenes. Often those painters would use one simple visual element in a painting to point to a more seductive world.

Birds

I remember waking up in the early morning on a friend’s front porch, on a sofa head-to-foot with her, watching birds catch worms in her front yard. 

Each bird followed a specific circle or loop for its morning routine, alighting on a specific few branches and patches of ground in some hidden order. Their adherence to a course, and the efficiency with which they followed it, were convincing physical evidence that some higher order, or higher being, was guiding them.

Piggott’s painting “Birds on a String” brought me back to that moment, pondering how the cosmos described their shape with small birds in a Jackson front yard.

In Piggott’s painting, 11 birds are perched on a line that runs and loops through a sky-blue background, linking them all together, despite their different feather patterns and purposes. A huge painting, “Birds on a String,” has the same simple, mystical appeal as his household still-lifes.

Beach

Piggott’s beach scenes offer a glimpse into the lives of people. The larger paintings show a dozen or so people laying out, playing in the sand or strolling back to their towel from an unseen beach.

A warm, sandy palate and blurred lines give the paintings a wistful feel. A lack of texture in the sand, and the lack of any water, give the painting an open perspective, leaving room for the viewer to fill in the blank about the details of the scene, like sounds and smells and other associations. That feeling is even more acute in two of Piggott’s smaller paintings “Girls on the Beach,” where two girls are playing with a baby. The interactions stand on their own, the people have no shadows and the nostalgia is vivid and dream-like. The opening reception begins at 5 p.m., Friday at Muse Gallery, 62 S. Glenwood.

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Junk ’n’ funk

ScrapArtsMusic isn’t just a bunch of people banging on junk. The quintet makes complex music composed from jazz and world music traditions – and the instruments are sculptures in and of themselves, recycled from waste.

Greg Kozak, a co-founder of the group, had been making junk instruments since childhood. He was busking with recycled instruments in Vancouver when he was discovered, and wound up performing for huge crowds at pro-sports games. Now his group, ScrapArtsMusic, travels the world to perform dynamic, high-energy, choreographed concerts.

ScrapArtsMusic perform 7:30 p.m., Friday at the Center for the Arts. Call 733-4900 for more information. PJH

“Two Sticks of Butter,” oil on canvas, by Mike Piggot.