Christopher Terry, Provisional Altars. 3W Gallery, 159 W. 300 South, 983-9266, Nov. 19-Jan. 7; reception, Nov. 19, 6-9 p.m. You’ve got landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, even “Nightscapes” (see below) ... but tablescapes? USU art professor Christopher Terry has made a career of them. Terry’s paintings project a sense of mystery and anticipation, a tension achieved by combining light, symmetry and a feeling of silence. “I attempt to build a rhythm ... that recalls the pace of ritual and dreams,” Terry says; his rituals can include the religious, or something as simple as a family meal. Of his “Episode With Blue Cone” (above) he states: “[T]he feeling ... is that the objects are left in a somewhat disordered state, and the painter, and therefore the viewer, just finds them that way.” He bought the sugar bowl, whose lid sits to one side on the table, in Paris en route to an exhibit of the great realist painter Georgio Morandi’s work, “so it’s always seemed like a talisman of some sort for a still life painter.”

Karen Horne, “Evening Performance” (below), in Nightscapes II. HORNE Fine Art, 142 E. 800 South, 533-4200, through Dec. 18; reception, Nov. 19, 6-9 p.m. In 1899, Alice Merrill Horne drafted legislation to establish the Utah Arts Council, the nation’s first state-sponsored arts council. “If you really want to learn what art is, live with it: make it a part of your home and your experience,” she said. Her great-granddaughter took that sentiment to heart. A professional artist for more than 20 years, Karen Horne (with husband Michael Rowley) opened a downtown gallery in 2002 featuring work by numerous Utah artists including her mother, noted landscape artist Phyllis F. Horne; Ted Wassmer, 94, the state’s oldest working artist; and even recent college graduates. Shows organized around themes like food or the color of night include works ranging from traditional to contemporary. The gallery revolves around communal energy, Karen Horne says.

Stefanie Dykes, Prints. Art Barn/Finch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane (1325 E. 100 South), 596-5000, Nov. 19-Dec. 30; reception, Nov. 19, 6-9 p.m. In 1933, when the Art Barn housed the new Salt Lake Art Center near the U campus, it became a gathering place for artists to drink wine, exchange ideas and—gasp—even hire nude models. The Art Center moved downtown in 1978, but the gallery still offers space to emerging artists. Stefanie Dykes, a 2003 U graduate in Printmaking, co-founded the nonprofit Saltgrass Printmakers in Sugar House. She spent hours cutting each wood block for the prints in this show, which incorporate traditional “shivitis” and “mizrachs,” decorative plaques adopted by exiled Jews from Islamic culture and used in synagogues and homes to orient people to Jerusalem for prayer and align themselves with God. “I’m using them as a personal “shiviti” that incorporates ideas of asymmetry and balance,” Dykes says. Her sister moved to New York last year; “Cyclical Time” (above), she says, “is my ‘shiviti’ to help realign our relationship across time and space.”