At first glance at the eight white patina-washed sculptures, one is surprised to find out that the sculptures are pieces of wood.

Artist Khalil Allaik invites viewers to explore matter and void as found in the universe through his stellar wooden sculpture collection in the Lehigh Valley.

Allaik is one of four local Eastern Pennsylvania artists and educators being featured through May 24, Siegel Gallery, Iacocca Hall, Mountaintop Campus, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. Allaik's work is also on exhibit through April 15, The Ronald K. De Long Gallery, Penn State Lehigh Valley Campus, Center Valley.

Of the biennial exhibition of artists and educators, Director-Curator at Lehigh University Art Galleries Ricardo Viera says, "I feel the discourse of the handling of materials speaks for themselves. They speak a different kind of language."

Allaik's work ranges from canvas to mixed-media, to steel and wooden sculptures. The multidisciplinary artist's wooden sculpture is the language that carries Allaik's theme of matter and void that is derived from the cosmic forces of the universe.

"Khalil's sculptures are extremely expressive," says Viera. "He is searching to express not just for the aesthetics of the work but to allow the wood to speak with sense in a superior way."

The native-born Lebanese artist's eight wooden sculptures in the Lehigh exhibit depict curvatures, cavernous portals of cosmic swirls and subtle sensual motifs.

"I enjoy working with wood," Allaik says, "The texture of each wood has a different sense of feel that invites you to handle it in a different way." He says working with wood is meditational.

There are 53 pieces by Allaik, who is featured with two other artists, in the Penn State Lehigh Valley exhibit.

Allaik's miniature wooden sculptures are geometric in style carved out of solid wood blocks. The eight large wooden sculptures in the Lehigh exhibit were carved out of natural wood.

"The large wooden sculptures were a relationship that brought their form to a specific design from the natural wood," Allaik says. "The 53 sculptures I designed from scratch to unleash what was already inside."

Says Ann Lalik, Gallery Director and Curator at Penn State, "His carvings and drawings are unique life forms from his mind. Khalil's work is fabulous in general. His work is mainly different almost genius to take the idea of voids from the universe to his art and evolve and revolve it in a 3D material."

The shapes of the wooden sculptures in each collection tell a different evolutionary process of existence. Says Allaik, "Each sculpture is a gate to invite you to a specific world, to show you the creation that is around you."

Allaik's wooden sculptures are shaped and designed within a cosmic composition.