PUEBLO - For the past few years, the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center has been synonymous with beautiful, thought-provoking and surprising exhibits.

But “Southern Colorado’s Beautiful Mind,” three stories of eye- and-mind-boggling exhibits opening today, sets a new standard for Pueblo’s arts center.

It’s not just the quality of the work, but the sensation of discovery. John Suhay has been the center’s photographerresidence for decades, but this is his first major exhibition; the late outsider artist Tony “The Bricklayer” Perniciaro was better known as a personality than as an artist; visionary painter Orlin Helgoe has been all but forgotten; and cardboard artist Jessie Montes and computer artist Ivy Carter are virtual unknowns. Only painter Dean Fleming has a national reputation — but, says curator Jina Pierce, “he’s one of the most underrated artists in Colorado.”

All this would make “Southern Colorado’s Beautiful Mind” as strong a group of exhibits as has ever appeared at the center. Making it even stronger is a substantial exhibit of Rembrandt etchings.

Pierce considered calling these exhibits “Creativity and Madness” before settling on something more neutral. But madness is not far below the surface here, especially in the paintings by Helgoe, an art teacher at the University of Southern Colorado before his suicide in 1982 at age 52.

“He’s the most significant artist who ever lived in Pueblo,” Pierce says. Helgoe’s work is large and powerful, especially the paintings inspired by a buck he shot on a 1970 hunting trip, which led to an epiphany about the nature of our connection with the world. In addition to conveying deep spirituality, Helgoe was a master painter. Each painting seems to occupy a different visual world, whether it’s the eerily transparent yellows of “Skyline Lady,” or the bold shapes against white space of “Death of a Two-Point Buck.”

In Perniciaro’s lifetime — he died in 2004 at the age of 87 — he was best known as a loudmouthed heckler at art openings who stuffed his coat pockets with whatever food was available.

But Perniciaro was also a poet who turned out thousands of pieces of art. His drawing style was aggressively childish, and he apparently had no desire to improve; but the visual crudity perfectly complements his direct but poetic captions.

Simplicity and poignancy unite in such works as “Was born during the age of steam… am dying in the age of hot air,” or “When the dream is over, don’t forget to put it in a box” — a drawing of a corpse.

“John Suhay came with the building,” Pierce says. He used to rummage around in the trash heap that the center replaced in 1972. His work — which fills the center’s largest gallery — is a monument to a life of carrying a camera around. Suhay has created a photographic record of Pueblo the likes of which few cities can boast.

Suhay describes himself as “documentarian” rather than fine artist, and technically he’s telling the truth.

Some of the shots are crude — even some of the best ones, such as “Not Quite Happy with the Photographer,” with its irritated- looking state fair employee.

But he always demonstrates an artist’s eye and patience, whether it’s an atmospheric picture of the CF&I steel mill or a quirky shot of southern Colorado high society.

Fleming’s work is as big and bold as Helgoe’s, but the tone is open and joyful rather than painfully introspective.

“When I talk to Dean, I feel like I’m talking to God,” says Pierce of the artist who founded Libre, the nation’s oldest active artist’s commune.

In this series of tree and branch landscapes, Fleming uses an enormous brush with a stunning combination of freedom, richness and economy.

Montes is a former high-school custodian who was so bothered by the amount of trash the school generated that he began to recycle some of it, using thin strips of corrugated cardboard to create applique works that range from kitsch to genius.

Thematically, the connection of Rembrandt to the rest of the exhibits isn’t the artist but the collector: Ronald Moreschini, whose other interests include Victrolas and mechanical banks.

Most of these prints were pulled after Rembrandt’s death, but they’re mostly high-quality versions and they are, after all, Rembrandt, doing something he did better than anyone else in history.

The opening is 5-8 p.m. today. The Rembrandt exhibit is open through April 23, Fleming through April 30, and Carter, Helgoe, Montes and Perniciaro through May 8. details

The Sangre de Cristo Arts Center presents “Southern Colorado’s Beautiful Mind”

When: Opening 5-8 p.m. today; regular hours 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday

Where: 210 N. Santa Fe Ave., Pueblo