Sugar and mold growing on rocks, limbless dolls and other disturbing images are anything but typical images associated with Valentine’s Day. But that’s exactly what Moorpark College’s Art gallery is showing this month.

Each month Moorpark College’s curator, Julie Hughes, seeks out new artists and displays their artwork in the Administration Building Gallery. From Feb. 9 to Mar. 5 the collection titled “Sweetness” is open during school hours.

“Sweetness” somehow follows but repels the commercialization of Valentine’s Day by using candy and other things considered ‘cute’. “‘Sweetness’ asks the question: Can something be so sweet it becomes disgusting?” said Hughes.

Hughes is a working artist herself and knows the displayed artists personally. Artist YaYa Chou and Hughes once shared an exhibit in the now closed Gallery Revisited, Silverlake, California. Hughes describes Chou’s unique and moderately controversial work using sugar and mold.

“Her work is treating sweetness as an invasive life form. It is insidious in the way that it overtakes more natural forms, much the way it does in our diet,” said Hughes.

Taking a different approach Nicole Culver shows dolls with no arms and no legs. Hughes commented on the different kind of strangeness.

“She’s not giving them limbs, eerie, you’re not sure how benign these pictures are.”

Also showing are Mitra Fabian’s 3D cryptic zippers, and Pete Goldlust’s digital images of decay and the psychological.

This show suits the single seeking solace rather than the happy in love this Valentine’s Day.