Saints, sinners, paint
• CUT IT OUT
Suddenly last year, Resa Blatman's sultry paintings of birds and flowers amid Art Nouveau arabesques seemed sharper, lusher. The key was the Somerville artist's switch to painting on rectangular PVC panels with her patterns jigsawed out of the edges. This technique wove the decoration throughout the composition, and it put her subject into focus: the birds and the bees. She moved on to asymmetrical panels for Tufts University's annual juried exhibition this summer and then a Suffolk University Art Gallery show (up through January 17). As the work gets more curvy, it becomes ever more ravishing.