Richard Stine is an artist who has always seemed very much in touch with his inner child, albeit a very wise and talented inner child.

His drawings have a childlike simplicity that belies the “intelligent design” that goes into their creation. His work can be seen in several books, including “Random Dogs” and “The World of richard Stine,” as well as a line of greeting cards produced by his own company, Pal Press.

While he has worked most of his career in small images, last year he veered off in a different direction and began creating his flights of fancy on a grand scale — large canvasses criss-crossed and pock-marked to perfection in his unique abstract style.

In his latest show, opening Sept. 1 at Gallery Fraga, Stine has taken his art in yet another direction, but he’s still in step with that inner child.

“When I was just a couple years old my dad started teaching me how to use tools,” Stine has said.

His new show is called “Small Extremes” and features constructions that combine two-dimensional work with three-dimensional presentations. He calls the show “a homage to my dad, the magical builder.”

Stine recalls how his father used to let him loose with a block of balsa wood, a jar of nails and a hammer.

“After a long time pounding and the block filled with nails, Dad would pull them all out and I’d start pounding nails all over again.”

Meanwhile his father was building things for the fun of it, including a full-sized biplane cockpit for the kids to “fly.”

Stine said the show is also an homage to “revisiting that cockpit in my own way … and to looking around metaphorically with those goggles on again and seeing through them my hands, tools, wood, paints, inks and paper … and (it is) also a homage to ‘making’ for the sheer and absolute fun of it. My best art comes this way.”

“Small Extremes” opens with a reception for the artist at 6-8 p.m. on Sept. 1 during First Friday. Gallery Fraga is located at 166 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.

Across the street Bainbridge Arts and Crafts is opening two exhibitions, “Silent Conversations: Jeffrey Brown and Kristin Tollefson, and “Small Sculptures, Big Ideas,” with works by a variety of sculptors.

In “Silent Conversations” bronze and copper “talk” with brass, glass and steel, in new works by Brown and Tollefson.

Brown transforms sheets of bronze, copper and stainless steel into elegant vessels, finished with a fine patina.

Tollefson creates her art from metal wire and recycled industrial materials, combing the two to produce works that are both delicate and strong, masculine and feminine.

The pieces in “Small Sculptures” are on a scale that allows the viewer to appreciate all their details and craftsmanship at once. Artists in the show are Larry Ahvakana, Brian Berman, Denise Harris, Tom Jay, Phillip Levine, Gerry Newcomb and Amy Roberts.

There will be an opening reception at 6-8 p.m. on Sept. 1, and a gallery talk with Victoria Josslin at 2 p.m. on Sept. 2.

Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, a nonprofit gallery, is located at 151 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.