Theatrics in painting and hip hopping rabbits.

That’s a taste of what will be on display when Clinton sculptor Georgia Gerber opens her studio to the public Saturday, Oct. 15 and Sunday, Oct. 16.

Gerber and husband Randy Hudson will present the work of their daughter, Laura Hudson, who recently completed a two-year master’s of fine arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

In addition to some of Hudson’s most recent figurative work, the show will allow art lovers to also see two new large sculptures of Gerber’s that will be shipped off the island the following week.

Hudson said the paintings in this show were inspired by two years of her study of the figure.

“I started filming people to get their gestures,” the artist said.

Gesture is the gold for which every figure painter pans, mining a model’s pose for that which brings out the movement, shape and line of a body; the subtext of a body’s language.

Once she started gathering people together to film them and to inform her paintings with their gestures, she discovered a continuum of ideas.

“Then ideas started to merge and I started to throw events to get footage. It turned into a kind of performance art,” Hudson said.

The series that came out of these gatherings she calls “Everybody is Friends Here,” and “Grown Play.”

“I would hold an event in my loft. I’d put down some tape and told everybody to wear their favorite party outfit. I had them interact together in this closed off space, while I filmed them,” she said.

Hudson gave her models props, added musical changes, had them all move to left; anything to keep the party in a state of flux and more interesting for her footage.

“I like that idea that I’m only in control as far as the where and when of the event,” Hudson said.

“What happens otherwise is random — who shows up and what plays out in body language.”

What she gleaned from the images, and from her influence of two years at school, gave her paintings that play with different progressions, seeing how blocks of color work with the eye, a certain manipulation when cropping the figures and an overall sense of improvisatory painting.

“I was interested in different shades of colors working together and a more distilled take on the figure,” she said, “like if you squint your eyes and see fields of color.”

Her graduate exhibition consisted of a room full of large canvases filled with nearly life-size figures, creating a sense of the viewer being involved in the scene. She called it “Art Opening” and the paintings in it cleverly reflected the scene it was portraying.

Hudson said her next idea is to create a memoir of sorts.

She will invite her models to camp out in a space eight months before she shows the paintings. Instead of viewers walking into an “Art Opening” where the paintings on the wall reflect what is going on in that moment, these new paintings will create a memory of what happened months before. It’s jazz for the painter: riffing off what her models create.

Gerber, looks to bunnies and mice for her riff.

For this show, Gerber will show two major sculptures that will be on their way the following week to the Uline Corporation in Wisconsin. Many of her works already grace the Uline campus, but these two recent commissions will be the largest pieces in their collection.

Gerber was inspired to create a larger version of one of her popular Dancing Rabbit Series, and thought that the whimsical mice of “Boy’s Night Out” would also make an excellent larger-than-life sculpture. With the aid of technology, the artist was able to create these two enlargements and then mold them. They will both be available in limited editions.

As a longtime professional artist, Gerber said it’s invigorating to be around her daughter who has that energy of every emerging artist who is excited about showing her work to the world. Gerber said she is inspired by her daughter’s determination and confidence as she begins her own professional career.

“It is energizing to be around, and reminds me how important it is to maintain and treasure those feelings at any age,” Gerber said.

“It was a nice coincidence that she had been putting together this new body of work at the same time I have some large sculptures ready for delivery — so we are partnering for a weekend show that I think people will enjoy,” she added.

Hudson said sharing shows with her mom is always special, but it keeps getting better.

“I’ve always loved having shows with her,” Hudson said.

“Now it’s cooler because I’m going off in my own direction.

I really like it and I’m hoping we can do this forever.”

“An Exhibition of New Paintings” by Laura Hudson and “Open Studio and Preview of New Sculpture” by Georgia Gerber will be from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15 and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16 at the Georgia Gerber Studio, 6790 Heggenes Road in Clinton. Visit www.georgiagerber.com for more information.