Creations formed from found and appropriated objects and clay-covered debris will be featured at an exhibition opening Friday, Jan. 9, at Wartburg College’s Waldemar A. Schmidt Gallery.

“Ballast,” showcasing creations by Gratia Brown, will run through Feb. 13. A reception will be Thursday, Feb. 12, 7-9 p.m.

Brown, who earned a Master of Fine Arts from Edinboro (Pennsylvania) University, uses fragments of broken items to construct precariously balanced collages.

“My work celebrates the discovery of the poignant beauty in a pebble, a fragment of concrete and the snarl of thread in the reverse of needlework,” Brown said. “These moments of discovery are also inspiration for daydreams and recollect — the same as when we experience finding faces, animals and narrative in clouds or landscape features.”

Her work has been shown in galleries in the United States and abroad, including recent shows at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, Bradley (Illinois) University, the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Pennsylvania, and Bizen, Japan. She is a resident artist and lecturer in ceramics at the University of North Dakota.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. The gallery, in Bachman Fine Arts Center, is open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily.