Dreams, memory and a visual language reminiscent of rebuses are all at play in the variegated artwork of Jane Hammond, whose recent works on paper are on display at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art through March 23. "Jane Hammond: Paper Work" offers a close look at the artist's conceptualist approach to assemblage and her colorful lexicon of images.

Hammond was trained as a sculptor and gained a formidable reputation in the 1990s as a painter (limiting herself at first to a six-color palette) as well as a photographer and printmaker.

She will speak about her work Jan. 31 at 5:15 p.m. at the museum. Faye Hirsch, critic and senior editor of Art in America, also will speak in conjunction with the exhibition, March 6 at 5:15 p.m.

Many of Hammond's works take the form of postcards and scrapbooks, photographs and game boards, maps, charts and costumes. In her paintings and works on paper, Hammond combines and recombines imagery, creating memorable associations between pieces.

For many years, she employed a strict lexicon of 276 found images, mined from such diverse sources as magazines, board games, maps, books on magic and puppetry, science manuals, children's books and the Internet. An avid collector, Hammond uses both crafted and found materials, such as handmade glassine envelopes and matchbook covers, swatches of cloth and antique Chinese notebook paper.

"I'm interested in the relationship between pictures and language; it's the very essence of how we think; it's at the very heart of culture itself. It was pictures first, then it became writing," she told Bomb magazine in an interview in 2002.

The traveling exhibition of work created from 1989 to 2006 "features more than 55 unique paper objects, conveying both thoughts and the slippery process of thinking itself," says Andrea Inselmann, the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, in a statement. "They collage together myriad techniques and materials as well as ideas and feelings to create a stream of mental associations and visual stimuli, underscoring the effect of context and connotation on the construction of meaning."

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated 168-page catalog and will travel through 2009. It was organized by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

For more information, call (607) 255-6464 or visit http://www.museum.cornell.edu.