Artists Carol Galligan and Milt Friedly are the ultimate recyclers.

They see only opportunity in what has been discarded, elevating what has been deemed ugly or no longer useful into works that are at once arresting and astonishing.

Their new show at Keystone Art & Culture Center, 420 Pearl St., runs through Feb. 17 and offers up playful possibilities as these mature artists channel a fresh, childlike quality through their work.

While not originally envisioned as a collaboration, Galligan's "Mountains and Waterways" paintings stand in conversation with Friedly's "Metals and Mixed Media: the Usual Made Unusual" collection of sculptural works in the center's gallery space.

Galligan's gesso and ink renderings are a symphony of mountains that dissolve under the influence of water. Melting snow, laden clouds, rivulets that turn to waterfalls can all be imagined in this abstract work.

Several of Galligan's paintings, which are titled after lines in Chinese poems, feel as if they're studies from part of a longer scroll, expressing almost a ghost quality of the imaginary calligraphic poems that would accompany them.

"I don't title my paintings, the poets do," she said.The rich layers of textures, achieved by applying dyed rice paper, scraps of old paintings and, most surprisingly, shed snakeskins to the surface, all work to create an organic quality of movement in the works that speaks to wonder. There is an interplay of solidity of stone with a floating quality, as if in a dream.

Similarly, Friedly's works, especially his bronze pieces, express a fluidity. Here fire dances (and in one piece, it's not a metaphor, he actually has flames shooting out of nozzles), an ironing board pirouettes, the suggestion of fossilized spines undulate. There is a lightness to the rusty metal, elevated from the junkyard. Amid the process of decay and dissolution, Friedly coaxes the spirit of the metal to shine forth.

His industrial archway becomes a temple door, set with a basin of water ready to bestow a blessing. His free-form poured-bronze abstract appears as an evolved altar piece speaking to a chaotic yet intelligent design.

Friedly playfully hangs symbols of danger (barbed wire, motorcycle handlebars, a pistol) from a meat hook, flipping them upside down and rendering them completely vulnerable.

The juxtaposition of these artists makes for a inspired exhibit, in which viewers can relish the process of the old being reborn and reimagined as something entirely new.