Five stars 

Murphy Art Center, studio #204-B; Nov. 30

Last Friday, the matriarch of Indianapolis artists, Lois Main Templeton, celebrated her 80th birthday. Artists of all kinds — writers, musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors — plus young students, teachers, art patrons and, I suspect, all who meet Lois are charmed by her. Spunky, intellectual, thoughtful, inventive, earthy and authentic, Lois is a conduit of expansion and expression. Her exuberant abstract paintings, layered with word-spilled thoughts, merge the physical and psychic in give-and-take discoveries. She continues to show us the importance of locating inner and creative spaces through her book, Finding Your Way: The Studio Book (2000). Lois has radiated her creativity on lives in Wisconsin, the San Francisco Bay area, Maine, her Indianapolis studios at the Faris Building and Murphy Art Center and classrooms where she has taught. The birthday party in her studio, hosted by Editions Limited Gallery, treated us to an open house with Lois, complete with cake iced with images from her works, jazz by her dear friend and often collaborator Frank Glover and her current paintings. A rich, ice blue-colored canvas coated the back wall of the studio, her work sweet and sassy as ever. Happy birthday, Lois! www.loistempleton.com, Editions Limited Gallery, 317-466-9940.