MARION — Spring has come early to the Marion Senior Center, mostly through artistic cross-pollination.

The Senior Center “Think Spring” exhibit had an opening reception March 7, and features floral works in various media.

Debbie Hussey exhibited two quilts at the exhibit. One depicted the Greek goddess of spring, Persephone, with colorful flowers for hair.

Another, “Irish Vase” was a quilted representation of a photo that its artist took on a vacation to Ireland. What she jokingly referred to as a “vase” is actually a boot.

For the composition of her quilts, Hussey drew inspiration from fellow Marion artist, Mary Ross. Though Ross works primarily with paper collages, Hussey said he has known Ross’ work for a lot time, and that working with Ross in paper made her more bold in quilting as well.

“If I can do compositions in paper, I can do them in a quilt” she explained

Another artist, Barbara Anderson, works on a much smaller scale, and also works in paper.

She uses a combination of quilling, or sculpting with tiny rolls of paper, and paper sculpture techniques.

“I love doing flowers, but I don’t like the flowers they did with quilling, Anderson said, “so I took scissors and a hole punch and tried to figure out something that worked better.”

She then paints over the petals of her flowers.

She is also planning to work on a sailor’s valentine made of tiny shells.

Ross helped her by providing the shells from a collection that her neighbor left her.