AT RANCHO SANTIAGO COLLEGE : ART EXHIBIT USES HUMOR--SERIOUSLY

Rancho Santiago College art instructor and gallery curator Mayde Herberg believes that there can be more to humor than a good laugh--especially in art.

“I think that it can be a very powerful tool, that it can effect change and raise people’s consciousness on certain issues,” Herberg explained in an interview this week. To help make her point, she has organized an exhibit, “Seriously Humorous,” that explores the use of humor in the work of 19 contemporary California artists. Some examples:

- In two works by Dustin Shuler, a telephone and model car are gutted, “skinned” and mounted flat on boards, as a hunter might display a prize pelt.

- An aquarium, complete with goldfish swimming through a miniature Zen garden, is fitted into the body of a television set. The title of this work by Carl Cheng: “Alternative TV.”

- In an assemblage by Bruce Houston, a plastic bride and groom stand side by side, as they might atop a typical wedding cake. But something’s amiss: A long green tail snakes out from beneath the bride’s gown, and the groom has antlers.

- A watercolor painting by Masami Teraoka is styled after the traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of 19th-Century Japan, but one item--a melting double-scoop cone of ice cream--is out of place among the otherwise traditional settings and costumes. Teraoka calls his work “31 Flavors Invades Japan/Rocky Road.”

Herberg, who has curated the college’s gallery for seven years, said the idea for the exhibit evolved, in part, because she has long been interested in humor as an artistic device and also because she uses humor in her own work. What she found in organizing the exhibit, which runs through Feb. 26, reinforced her thoughts on the value of humor in art.

The artists in the show, Herberg said, use humor to get at deeper issues, whether political (war, environmental abuse) or more personal (social pressures, relationships).

“When we look at things that are funny, we feel sort of liberated by being able to laugh at some of the crud that goes on,” Herberg explained. “There are some really heavy things in (the show)--it’s not all ‘tee-hee-hee’ stuff at all. I hope people will be able to look at things or issues that they couldn’t confront if it were presented in a less palatable way.”

Marilyn Madigan, a sculptor whose “Wedding After Van Eyck” (an update, in life-size molded plastic figures, of Dutch painter Jan Van Eyck’s famed 1434 “Wedding Portrait”) is included in “Seriously Humorous,” echoed Herberg’s thoughts in a phone interview.

“Sometimes I say I nip heels with gentle humor,” the Orange resident said. “I think when you have some humor in your work it’s more approachable by the viewer.”

Dustin Shuler, creator of the “skinned” telephone and car model, works not only with model cars but has also turned his attention to the real thing. He has skinned a number of automobiles, including one at Cypress College in 1985, and in 1980 he dropped a 20-foot nail through a 1959 Cadillac to create a work he called “Death of an Era.”