Mitch Ryerson wants you to climb all over his artwork, and Lori Lander paints scenes so luminous you could dive into them. Both Ryerson and Lander will be honored this September at the Spirit Awards Benefit, which celebrates Art at the Heart of Community in support of Maud Morgan Arts. Ryerson’s benches, playground structures and repurposed tree trunks and Lander’s paintings of women in markets, rice fields and festivals plunge viewers (and climbers) into unexpected lands.

Every time children come upon Ryerson’s Pooh House on Hurlbut Street—a mini-lending library carved into the remaining trunk of a silver maple, complete with a stuffed Pooh Bear—they make their parents stop to see it. Ryerson, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, likes the challenge of creating a structure that is both inviting and durable.

“When you make a dining room table, it is more predictable how people will use the piece,” says Ryerson. “But designing for the outdoors is a little more of an adventure.”

Many of his outdoor pieces are multifunctional. The Marimba Benches at Forest Hills Cemetery serve as seating and as musical instruments. They also bear poetry written by local middle-school students.

“It is always a collaborative process,” says Ryerson. “You’re always working with other people and you have to listen to them for the work to be successful.” Ryerson’s show will focus on his public work from the last 10 years including drawings and models of playgrounds and park benches as well as furniture pieces.

Lander’s paintings capture everyday moments in communal gathering places around the world, often the Indonesian island of Bali. Lander, the co-founder of the Cambridge Martin Luther King Day of Service and Many Helping Hands 365, is particularly interested in observing how people work together.

“I am particularly drawn to the special grace and dignity of women as they attend to the rhythms and rituals of daily life and as members of their many communities,” says Lander. “I try in my paintings to explore the movement, color, and light of their lives through pattern and texture.”

Lander’s bold palette infuses each painting with the glow of the sun. Yellow shirts shimmer against cerulean skies and cobalt seas, ripe vegetables shine in open stalls, and rice fields radiate golden heat. In the Temple Procession series, women balance offerings of fruit above their heads, and sunlight strikes at an angle, juxtaposing the brilliance of light and the coolness of shadow within each figure. If you gaze at the paintings long enough, you begin to feel the sun warming your own back. That’s when you know it’s time to head outside and bask in the real sun on a park bench or enjoy the view from the top of a climbing structure.

“With the Grain: Works by Mitch Ryerson” and “Rhythms and Rituals: The Work of Women, Art by Lori Lander” will be on display at the Chandler Gallery from September 22 through October 23. The opening reception at the Spirit Awards Benefit will be held on Sunday, September 21, from 6:30-9:00 pm.