ART REVIEW : GROUP SHOW BLENDS WELL TO INAUGURATE GALLERY

Wita Gardiner has not only moved her excellent gallery, oriented toward fine crafts, into town from La Mesa, she has changed its name.

Formerly known as Reflections Gallery, from now on it will be known as the Wita (pronounced Veeta) Gardiner Gallery (535 4th Ave.).

In La Mesa it was crowded into 500 square feet; in San Diego it has expanded into the 2,500 square feet of what had been briefly the Conlon Grenfell Gallery. Gardiner discovered the space during Artwalk late in April and met a congenial and agreeable owner in Jim Ahern, who had hoped to keep the property as a gallery.

The presence of the Wita Gardiner Gallery along with International Gallery and Spectrum signifies a substantial representation of contemporary fine crafts downtown within a few blocks of one another. The Michael Dunsford Gallery, in addition, exhibiting classic fine crafts and decorative arts from earlier decades, adds a historical dimension. With the other significant galleries in the area, a complex and full art infrastructure is developing south of Broadway.

“This was the right move! It felt right!” Gardiner said.

An urban person by upbringing, she loves downtown and is determined to succeed there.

As is traditional for a new gallery, the first exhibition is a group show. Entitled “(1+1+One+1)2,” it features works by eight artists, four of whom invited four others in their specialties.

Marta Wallof’s ceramic sculptures refer to architectural forms and landscape features. Elaine Scheer’s sculptures, constructed of slip-cast porcelain forms, refer, in contrast, to utilitarian domestic objects such as flower pots and crates.

Glass artist Kerry Feldman also uses landscape imagery in pedestal sculptures and wall pieces he calls “glass paintings.”

Colleague in glass Paul Leal makes figurative and abstract works of great beauty and ingenuity. “Blue Screen,” supported at eye level by a steel stand, is a nude female’s back in relief. Two other works, made of glass fired in a kiln, contain fully detailed nude female forms in the round. They are negative, or hollow, forms created through the complex process of lost wax casting.

Leal’s strong, abstract works are clunky geometric forms in seductive blue and purple.

Jeweler Christina Smith uses a vocabulary of recognizable forms--the globe, a map of the Soviet Union, missiles, human figures and airplanes, for example--to make small, wearable sculptures that are commentaries on society and politics. Irene Mori, in contrast, is satisfied with pure, abstract forms, some of which owe their inspiration to primitive art.

But the star of Gardiner’s inaugural group show is Ana Lisa Hedstrom, who specializes in the Japanese technique of crimping and dyeing silk called shibori. The basic principle is as easy as wrapping fabric around a pole, but it allows for great complexity of design.

Hedstrom learned the process, not in Japan, where she had gone to study ceramics after graduating from Mills College in Oakland, but in the Bay Area.

Having acquired an appreciation for textiles while journeying home through Southeast Asia and India, she enrolled in a shibori workshop at the Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts in Berkeley. At the time the technique was unknown in the United States, so teacher Yoshiko Wada and the class experimented to re-create it.

To the shibori technique Hedstrom united her skill as a painter and her extraordinary color sense. The simplest of her works, the scarfs, are like soft paintings that you can handle. The peculiar bounce or denseness that crimping effects in the fabric creates a unique sensual experience complemented by its visual delights. Imagine, for example, gently stretching a length of smoke-gray silk to discover a salmon undercolor shot with cranberry, or an iridescent blue that opens to reveal iridescent lavender.

To her works of art-to-wear Hedstrom adds her mastery of architectonic form. Indeed, one of the pleasures of looking at her garments for women is to study the way she has built them, alternating patterns, colors, shapes and textures. Their complexity evades description. “Collage” is a term appropriate for the artist to use and instructive for the viewer to consider with reference to the work. Hedstrom, during an interview, also referred with good reason to her clothing as “sculptural but painterly.”

“The best way for me to work,” she confided, “is to pin pieces to a large white wall, leave them there, study them and then adjust them.” It is no surprise to learn that Hedstrom started her career making wall hangings and wants to return to that art form.

The Wita Gardiner Gallery is presenting Hedstrom’s works suspended on Lucite rods so that their qualities as soft paintings may be appreciated. They are impressive as abstract works of art. But they are also feminine and seductive. Several are masterworks of visual experience.

The exhibit continues through Sept. 20.