The calligraphic X's of architectural iron on a Lawrence, Mass., bridge talk to the faux teepee in Rialto, Calif., with which they have been juxtaposed. In the rarefied air of the Deerfield Fair, children sail through cirro-cumulus clouds in a big blue sky. In Albuquerque, the blue- and red-striped highway overpasses paint figure-eights of cloverleaves. These are a few of Steve Lewis' images, the varied perceptions of just one artist among several in the Phillips Exeter Academy faculty show, "Sevenfold," at the Lamont Gallery through Feb. 2.

Lewis is the chairman of the Art Department at PEA, and his saturated colors and crisply composed digital images are the first you encounter. They offer ordinary views in extraordinary ways, a particular way of seeing the culture through place. His compositions have a lived-through quality, the product of a ready camera and an extended road trip. They invite you to slow down, to see what you miss in the rush.

"My work explores issues that reflect aspects of our current urban landscape. I roam with my camera in search of the compelling; I love the surprise of seeing a revealing scene," Lewis shares in the show's literature.

Lewis is working the tensions between irony and beauty, between myth and reality. His compositions feel reverent, and this feeling, coupled with quirky subjects, can play toward the surreal elements of our culture or offer an irony. "I hope that my pictures point to our collective sense of what is alluring, significant, and at times humorous," he writes.

Lewis was present but too busy to interview at the artists' reception, at which students, friends and all seven faculty members were present. The scene highlighted the many voices at play in this show. The artists' statements are twofold, examining the artist as teacher and reflecting upon the role of a teacher as an artist, and each artist has curated his or her own work, adding another layer of intention. Ron Burke and Sarah Burns show their ceramics, and in her statement Burns explains how each piece leads to the next. Nick Dawson offers a racing sculpture with cherry Lifesaver tollbooth tokens. Chandra Glick and Steve Lewis exhibit large digital photos, while L. Gene Howard offers experiments in Polaroid transfer. Tara Misenheimer's paintings pop at you, exploring iconic 1960s hair on backgrounds of creamy lavender and milky teal and the excesses of Beatles-obsessed teenagers.

Managing creative energies as a teaching artist is complicated. One makes compromises about how one spends time, and sometimes it feels like it's difficult to be true to both callings. This is a conversation I had with both Glick and Burke. Burke, as an established artist, was offered teaching and left creating to pursue his work with students. Now he, like the others, hears the dual call and shares a responsibility for communicating his art-making to his students.

Sometimes it feels like an implicit communication: look at my art and see what I do. Other times this communication feels more explicit. Photographer Chandra Glick joked with several students at the opening, "Here's where I share my secrets." The setting for this comment was utterly apropos. In a small alcove off the main gallery space, a 10-by-16-foot wall offers Glick's art-making journal from last year. She's cut the binding loose and collaged a wall of ideas: sayings, doodles, epigraphs and epigrams, sketches, self-portraits, color studies and fashion magazine clips. One sees some of the generative echoes and minute progressions that led to the large-scale digital prints in the next room. I found it both remarkably intimate and generous, as did a number of her students who gathered around. Glick smiled and posed for school newspaper photos, which the student then showed her on the camera's digital display. She was looking too serious, so they tried again, modeling in a small way that this is how you get your image right.

Glick's fascination with curves and greens catches my eye. Her soft-focused work is meant to evoke a historical, dreamy musing. She writes in her statement, "Many of us share the memory of childhood delight in squinting our eyes at the streetlights at night until they become prism-like... By intentionally altering the focus in my camera I am able to capture some of the softness and abstraction I see when squinting... The colors begin to vibrate and bleed into one another, hovering on the surface of the photograph. I am most satisfied when the photograph has a luminous quality that evokes a faded dream, a memory, or an impression."

Titles like "Lift Me Up So I Can See" help her viewers get situated in the viewing. Her point of view in the work is low to the ground, countertop height as in "In the Kitchen." Bathed in blue, a close-up of a beam of light through a crack in the door places the viewer in the position of a crawler. This offers the effect of being brought to one's knees, which is quite a unique accomplishment. I felt little resistance to entering this head space.

Glick's had a busy fall semester, preparing for the show. She's using time off from teaching to work at the Vermont Studio Center, where she was recently awarded a residency. Her sole charge is to eat great food and make art, she said. She's enjoying the company of the painters and poets there, noting small changes as she focuses on the generative side of her art-making life in a concentrated way. "I have had trouble talking about my images and how they work. Now I might comfortably characterize them as small poems or poetic ideas," she said. She's wanted to use the camera to "create a sense of quiet and slowness in order to take in the feeling of a place or a moment," and her residency will give her the time necessary to more fully develop her ideas about the "painterly photograph" and its possibilities. Glick writes that the viewer of abstraction often searches for the recognizable, and she'd like the viewer to move "beyond finding what it is and into what it evokes."

One will find abstract and concrete, exploration and experimentation at "Sevenfold." The role models available have found myriad ways of communicating their love of teaching and art-making to both students and the general public.

"Sevenfold" is at the Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, through Feb. 2. Admission is free. Call 603-777-3461 for more information.