By Eren Göknar

An exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, “Lucid Dreams,” touches on themes from Oedipus to Jean Cocteau’s “Orpheus.” The show strikes the subconscious zone between dreaming and wakefulness. One French critic, Gaston Bachelard, proposed that dreams are building blocks to the imagination.

The exhibit’s contemporary works flow from two 20th Century artistic movements - surrealism and art deco. The French surrealists took their doctrine partly from Sigmund Freud’s idea that dreams represent manifestations of hidden urges.

One featured artist in the exhibit, Marlene Bloomberg, uses petit point canvas, which has smaller holes than other needlepoint. A gallery-goer might stare at Bloomberg’s oil-painterly colors before realizing that this is surrealistic needlepoint. Because she doesn’t want her art pigeonholed as women’s work, Bloomberg prefers to call it canvas work. She needn’t worry - her vibrant designs have little of the traditional domestic sampler about them. The Parisian native uses sleepy ambiguity often. In “Metamorphosis,” an owl morphs into a cat, as it just might in a dream. “Cat Man” has a head of brilliant orange and grayish brown fiber resembling fur.

Pacifican Deborah Corsini’s abstract art deco tapestries have no recognizable shapes. A former textiles designer, she is inspired by Navajo rugs. Her weaving emits a higher voltage than Bloomberg’s quiet stitchery. One striking eight-foot-tall tapestry is “Sunday Strip.” The Silly Putty pink reminds one of the pastel funny pages. But there are no cartoon characters, just black ink lines in various widths moving in and out like lightning bolts.

The exhibit is well worth an hour or two of your time. The exhibit ends on Aug. 28

The museum is at 110 Paseo de San Antonio. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. The museum is open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, call (408) 971-0323.