BOUNTIFUL — Just because something is useful doesn’t mean it can’t also be beautiful.

The art of Mary Anne Loveless. who is the featured artist at Lamplight Gallery now through the end of October, manifests itself most often in things that people use everyday. Working mostly in polymer clay, she takes things such as journals, pens, and simple magnets and transforms them into intricate, richly-toned patterns that look like they belong in a jewelry box.

Journals are the focus of Loveless’s current exhibit, gathered under the show name “Sanctifying the Mundane.” Brightly painting snippets of paper cast the possibilities of what a journal might contain — a germ of a poem, the sketch of a prom dress, or even doodles in the margin — in a creative light, a highly intelligent display decision that make the journals even more artistic and seemingly magical than usual.

Not that they don’t do well in that department on their own. The patterns used to make the covers are as varied as brocade, an image emphasized thick, jewel-toned fringe on some of the bindings that look like ornate headdresses.

Of course, simplicity has its own charms. Though Loveless’s collection also includes jewelry, the most tempting trinkets in her exhibit are her collection of bug magnets with wings that look like little slices of the rainbow. A kind of cross between a butterfly and those shimmering beetles, Loveless’s bugs look like flowers picked from some exotic tropical tree that it’s impossible to grow in Utah.

In their care, even something as functional as a grocery list starts seeming just a little bit more beautiful.