ARTS WATCH : BARTLETT EXHIBIT COMING IN FEBRUARY

The big takeout on artist Jennifer Bartlett on Sunday’s edition of CBS’s “Sunday Morning” should have whetted local appetites for the local exhibit of this exceptionally talented painter. The show at the Brooklyn Museum will visit the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art Feb. 8 through March 23.

Organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the exhibition is the first major show on this 44-year-old native California painter. For San Diego, it holds the promise of being one of the most exciting contemporary art shows of the year.

Hugh Davies, the La Jolla museum director, described Bartlett as “a Monet for the ‘80s” and “one of the top 10 (women painters) of all time.”

A comprehensive, mid-career survey of more than 100 works, the exhibition chronicles her development from 1970 to 1985.

Bartlett moved from an abstract style through a romantic form to a sturdy, painterly realism. One of the Bartlett trademarks is a blocky, geometric house that first cropped up in her works in 1969.

Her talent encompasses a vast stretch of images, themes, subject matter and media. Now a New Yorker, Bartlett will conduct a walk-through of the exhibit at 11 a.m. Feb. 8 and sign copies of the exhibition catalogue and her recently published book on art, “History of the Universe.” The show, which has appeared at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, will travel to the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, in Pittsburgh in April.

In other museum matters, Davies confirmed that the book on contemporary British painter Francis Bacon, written by him and his wife, art historian Sally Yard, is expected to be published in the spring.

NAME GAME: “What’s in a name?” Martin Gregg asks in a press release that bemoans the paucity of critical coverage of the erstwhile California Performing Arts Centre for Children. In the face of a “concerted effort” over six years, Gregg, the organization’s executive director, sought with apparent failure to educate a reluctant media about the “quality theater” he offers for all age groups.

“Most people had the impression that plays were presented exclusively with or by children” when in truth, Gregg writes, the shows were being done by “talented and professional adult performers”--as well as the scores of kids that populated such musical presentations as “Toby Tyler,” “Yankee Doodle Boy” and “Bah Humbug!” The real problem, Gregg maintains, is that professional theater critics rarely review shows by children, no matter how good they may be.

So goodby, children. Hello, adults. This year Gregg, hoping to snare the always elusive theater critic, has dropped the “for Children” from his organization’s name, just in time for the annual production of “Bah Humbug!” running Dec. 12-23 at the North Park Theatre, 29th Street and University Avenue. In a cast of 55, only eight are children, Gregg said. The rest are “professional adult performers” who, with the exception of the leads, are paid from the tickets they sell to friends and relatives. Each may keep up to $200 of such sales.

“Perhaps now, with the name change, we will be accepted as presenters of quality theater for all age groups,” Gregg said.

ART KIDS: Speaking of children, a group of high schoolers is essaying the improbable--performance art, that peculiar, once avant-gardish, now aging strain of art that animated itself and leapt, figuratively and literally, off the wall a decade or so ago.

Pure performance art--if not a contradiction in terms--derives from visual art, and while it is neither theater, dance nor music, may contain elements of each. Now a small group of teen-agers is taking on performance art. They have written and are preparing to perform their own pieces at Sushi, San Diego’s performance art space. The bilingual students, primarily from San Diego High School, are studying under performance artists Sara Jo Berman and Guillermo Gomez-Pena, who are artists-in-residence at Sushi under a California Arts Council grant.

The students include Mexican-Americans, Mexicans and Anglos, with at least one from Tijuana. “We wanted to expose them to a working method and to have a multi-ethnic group,” Gomez-Pena said. “The challenge is how they can solve their cultural differences.”

Subjects developed by the youths, whose average age is 15, include family life, drugs, loneliness and romance. One key was convincing the participants in the three-month workshop to write about their everyday experiences. Othelia Morales said of her brush with performance art, “I’m very glad that Latinos undertake these types of activities. It helps us to become better human beings.”

Performances will be given at 8 p.m. Dec. 13 and 14 at Sushi, 852 8th Ave.

REP REDUX: Last week’s announcement from the San Diego Repertory Theatre that it will move into the Lyceum Theatre in April left a hole in its season. “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” Michael Brady’s drama about a family in mid-life crisis that opens Jan. 28 in the Rep’s 6th Avenue Playhouse, will fill that void and be the last play of the season.

Rep artistic director Douglas Jacobs is having some difficulty casting two teen-age roles in “Gillian.” “They’re demanding roles,” he said. “We need two 16-year-olds-going-on-25. They must be bright, precocious, vulnerable.” Interested teen-agers should call the Rep to set up an appointment for Thursday afternoon or evening.

ARTBEATS: For the joyous sounds of Hanukkah, tune in to KPBS (FM 89) at 9 p.m. Saturday to hear the buoyant music of the Klezmer Conservatory Band in an hourlong program that combines short stories with this traditional Yiddish music . . .

Budding screenwriters may want to be on hand at 2 p.m. Thursday when David Hines and Jeffrey House, authors of the movie “Once Bitten,” return to their alma mater. The two 24-year-olds will discuss the “Hollywood scene,” in room P-32 at Palomar College in San Marcos . . .

Those with a more musical bent may want to enter the “Christmas in San Diego” songwriting contest. Entry forms are available at the Redletter Record Release offices and Circle Sound in San Diego, and Western Audio in Santee . . . Lovers of contemporary art can bid on “artoys” created by Southern California artists at Friday’s Installation Gallery fund-raiser. Tickets for the 8 p.m. auction at the First Interstate Bank Plaza, 401 B St., are $25, and $60 for dinner and auction . . .

Richard Riddell, the Tony-winning lighting designer who is chairman of the UC San Diego drama department, has also won the Joseph Maharam Foundation Award for his lighting design of the musical “Big River.” Two of the awards, made by a panel of designers, also went to Heidi Landesman and Patricia McGourty, scenic and costume designers respectively, for “Big River.”