“Circling Around Ineffability” features a spoiler the artist found.

TIFTON — Kristy Hughes, an abstract artist from Valdosta, uses her work to recognize and legitimize small moments in day to day life. On Saturday, Nov. 10, Plough Gallery hosted an opening reception for the artist and her work in a new exhibition titled, “Piece by Part.”

The title of show reflects both how the work is made and what the work means. Hughes explained that each collage is made by using “multiple, disparate parts to make one.”

She finds material — paper, plastic and trash — by scouring her neighborhood and by reusing material in her home to create collages. The pieces are made by adding and subtracting layers to create different textures, colors and patterns. Individual pieces come together to form works of art as small as a thumbtack and as large as an entire gallery wall.

Each collage or decollage, the process of removing layers instead of adding, addresses a moment or idea in Hughes’ life that she has had to reconcile or reconsider.

For instance, in her work titled “Circling Around Ineffability” she is trying to better understand how it feels to want to describe an idea or feeling, but not being able to. Her four by six inch abstract works are called “meditations.” She makes these when she is stressed or overwhelmed; it is literally how she meditates.

Walking through the gallery, seeing her pieces large and small, Hughes is able to reflect on where she was at the time that she made it. This is what she spends her life doing. And it is that idea that she wanted to reflect on: what makes up her life and what makes up any life.

She recited a quote from Annie Dillard’s, “The Writing Life,” “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

“Which is kind of really scary,” she said, “and depressing sometimes.”

Hughes thought of the days in the studio where she spent hours working on pieces only a few inches big. Frustrated, she would wonder, “What’s the point?” But seeing her work together, she knew even those small moments of frustration were building something bigger.

“I’m learning more about myself by making the work and how I see the world,” she said.

She easily recognizes those moments in her work, but she doesn’t expect viewers to do the same. Hughes said she completely understands that abstract art can be difficult to appreciate. To make it easier to understand, she compares abstract art to music without lyrics or poetry.

Abstract art challenges viewers to accept it for what it is and not to pick it apart. On “Circling Around Ineffability,” she has attached a spoiler across the lower third of the collage. Whether or not it is hanging in a gallery, that piece of the collage is still a spoiler. However, viewers are challenged to see it as a piece of a larger artwork.

The spoiler creates a bold white curve, it also adds another dimension, making the work lift off of the wall. A thin rectangular piece of yellow foam intersects the spoiler, officially binding it to the artwork as a whole. In Hughes work, the individual parts create the whole, they are not the whole by themselves.

She said she has thought often about life in its day-to-day parts.

“Your day-to-day life may not feel like anything special, but when you bring it all together it makes a life,” she said.

Almost like how a spoiler by itself isn’t special, but when added together, to other materials, it can be.

“Little things by themselves aren’t anything special, but together they create something more than they could by themselves,” said Hughes.

“Piece by Part” will be up until Dec. 8. Plough Gallery is located at 216 W Eighth Street.