“Carol Hepper: Translucency,” an exhibit of sculptural tapestries, will open Feb. 26 in the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University and continue through April 14. It is free and open to the public.

A reception, also free and public, will be from 4 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26, featuring a personal appearance by the artist.

Born in 1953 and raised on a South Dakota Sioux reservation, Hepper says that she is motivated to make art “charged with the history of the animals that have lived within their skins.” The show features six large tapestries of translucent fish skins woven together and hanging from armatures; they appear to be floating against colored backgrounds, filling the sculptures with the weightless volume of light.

Will Hipps, curator of the exhibition and director of the gallery, said the artist’s connection with the natural world is an extension of her art and her experience of the American West.

“The transcendent power of Carol Hepper’s work springs from the synthesis of medium and form” says Hipps. “We progress from our initial recognition of fish skins and schools of fish, beyond what is seen to the felt, the abstract. Kinetic energy is created by the expert and dynamic undulation of translucent light and color, and our perspectives change as we move about the piece. It is possible within this sense of the kinetic to find a point of meditation, of silence.”

Daily hours of the gallery are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed holidays and weekends. For more information, call Hipps at 234-3466 or visit the Web site at visualart.coastal.edu and click on Gallery.