ART REVIEW : WHIMSICAL ANIMALS FIT THE SEASON

At this jolly, aggravating juncture of the season, most of the arts let their hair down. Dancers invite us to regress into the enchantment of the “Nutcracker,” musicians tune up the old saw for a little caroling and some theater is bound to act the Dickens out of Scrooge & Co.

The visual arts sphere, however, appears to be either too busy, too hip or too dignified to fool with holiday hilarity, so its more playful denizens are forced to either leave the demimonde or feel like orphans because art palaces don’t wassail.

Except the Muni. The good old Muni. For nine years now the city gallery in Barnsdall Park has presented a fantasy art Christmas exhibition that manages to mix the kitschy wonder of a department store window tableau with a measure of true artistic grit.

It does more than invite the kid within to come out and play; it evokes another nostalgic lost era, the ‘60s, by calling itself “The Magical Mystery Tour” after an ancient Beatles album. Occasionally some moppet gets mixed up and renames it “The Magical Misery Detour,” but that’s all right, Jack.

The current edition--on view to Jan. 12--gets off to a wonderful start with a group of dancing Manimals by Rachel Dutton. Actually, they are more like Girlimals, but that is hard to write. Anyway, they are life-size figures made of pitch and straw that appear to be dancing in a moonlight meadow like prancing roots becoming deers and dears. It’s quite Shakespearean, and the effect is not harmed by the fact that it all takes place beneath a cloud of flashy flying fishes by Christine Oatman.

An animal theme threads the show, reminding us of how closely creatures are associated with the holidays, both because of their presence at the Nativity and their links to the intuitive life of the spirit.

There are nice folky armadillos consorting with leopards and porcupines in a peaceable kingdom by Felipe Archuleta. Ed Larson presents quadrupeds whose mouths move and tails wag by way of attached whirl-a-gigs while Bill and Gale Gayle add a dose of astringency in “Serpent Beach Hotel” with its “Miami Vice” pastels.

But it is Gwynn Murrill who reminds us that this is a real art show. Her tableau of four coyotes, one snake and a hawk just lifts you about eight inches off the floor. She works in laminated wood, which tends to insist on symmetry. Instead, she has managed to capture the realistic gesture of a coyote’s alert turn of the head or curious sniff at the ground. Her combination of flexible realism and ancient Egyptian elegance captures the animals essence. Speaking of essences, don’t miss Allison Saar’s Blue Indian. I think she’s managed to absorb herself into his psyche.

Magic, I guess, is about worlds of private vision, so it makes sense that a number of these works are little environments. Barry Fahr and Richard Godfrey each built cubicles filled with light and geometric forms. They are like New Wave, 3-D M.C. Eschers for dinged-out rational idealists. Stuart Arends’ corner-wrapping goopy block walls are less stylish, gently didactic lessons in color theory.

Don’t fret, there’s also a good dose of nostalgic sentiment. Flo Perkins beckons down a memory lane lined with glass flowers. Marsh Judd’s polished paving stones tell a touching story about how her father pretended to gather pebbles for a walkway that was never built because his secret scenario was to teach his kids to love nature. Neither really lead to Victoria Rivers’ secret arbor or Sheila Kleins’ Cyclopean jewelry but they should.

Finally, there is Mineko Grimmer. Her work has been in enough of these exhibitions and always with such calming, witty effect one feels like calling her, “the ever popular Mineko Grimmer” or something corny like that. She’s the one who unfailingly grabs us with sound-works in traditional Japanese style. As usual, she makes Oriental music by suspending pebbles frozen in a block over a little pool crisscrossed with piano wire. As the ice melts, the pebbles make random compositions falling on the strings, plink, poing. John Cage meets Kabuki.

This year there is the added attraction of Grimmers’ forest of hanging bamboo which, walked through, sways and makes vigorous, no-nonsense sounds. Thonk, thonk, tonk.