By KARAN MINNIS,Guardian Lifestyles Reporter,karan@nasguard.com

No matter the season or the time of year, art is the one thing that transcends all else. So if you not interested in the holiday carnival, the balls or even the indoor fairs, maybe the new "We're All As Mad as Each Other" exhibit is for you.

Presented by artist Heino Schmid the exhibit, which is open for public viewing on Friday Dec. 12 through Wednesday, Dec 31., at the Popopstudios Center for the Visual Arts, 26 Dunmore Ave., Chippingham, features over 20 small pieces that are teamed with one nine foot high, 20-foot wide drawing.

The collection is created on bits of paper and features common gestures paired with not so random phrases. The phrases are said to be snatches of actual conversations the artist overheard in passing while the drawings are of the quirky habits often seen. The text that appears in each of the pieces are phrases that Schmid has mentally recorded and written down in sketch books as possible future show titles over time. However, when flipping through his collection a few months ago, Schmid realized that he had never used them, but says they had some use.

"I decided to work retroactively and work towards illustrating some of those things a little bit," said Schmid in a recent Guardian interview. "And I found that there was a common thread with some of the things that I was responding to, and a lot of it was odd."

However he says the comments don't necessarily reveal a lot of the conversation or the person.

"There's a certain distance that I try to keep, both with the subject as well as the drawings, and also with the text," he said. "There's a generality to it that I'm trying to keep. But there's also a quirkiness that I hope comes through. Usually when I hear and see a lot of these gestures and comments, it sort of makes me smile a little bit."

Schmid, who claims to have been thinking a lot about the history of drawing lately, says that he likes the preliminary nature of drawing. It's actually his favorite form of expression.

"There's something preliminary in the drawing gesture that I respond to," he said. "It's a little bit more disposable as far as the material is concerned. I can do a drawing and do it quickly or take my time with it and if I don't like it, I can throw it away without necessarily feeling like I've lost a treasure or something. There's something fleeting about the gesture, and again that, coupled with the content of the work, made it seem like a good fit."

"I have a bunch of midsize frames that I can't seem to fill, so [my drawings have] to be small or really big," said Schmid. "I can't seem to work in the middle. But it switches. The larger stuff tends to be more involved than the little things."