The Johnson Center for the Arts in downtown Troy will host a public reception for the Walter Black and Mose Tolliver exhibits from 6 until 8 p.m. tonight.

Morgan Drinkard, center executive director, said everyone is encouraged join the Troy-Pike Cultural Arts Center in celebrating the work of these two very talented artists.

“Walter Black, the 2012 TroyFest Best of Show winner, exhibits his newest pieces of art in the lower galleries,” Drinkard said. “The Most T exhibit in the upper galleries has more than 120 pieces on display from the collection of Doug Hawkins. Both of these exquisite collections are more than worth a trip to the museum.”

Drinkard said those who attend the reception will have an opportunity to visit with Black and collector Hawkins.

For the Johnson Center exhibition, Black, a Troy native, chose to exhibit clay pieces.

“Contrast is intriguing, especially that between industrial design and natural forms,” he said. “I use clay to illustrate the battle between these two forces. I imagine my recent work as biomechanical weaponry, dug up 50 years post war. It is taking on an element of dark mystery that draws the viewer in cautiously.”

The “As Mose T Would See It: Expressions Through the Life of Moses Tolliver” is on loan from Hawkins, who is a longtime collector of folk art.

“I would often travel to Mose T’s house in Montgomery and carry him scrap wood and pieces of furniture to paint,” Hawkins said. “He sat on the bed to paint. He was always smiling.”

Hawkins began his collection in the early 1990s but his collection dates from 1970 until 2006, the year of Tolliver’s death.

“Mose T’s work is a prime example of outsider art,” Hawkins said. “His expressions of things, animals and people show a very different picture of the world.”