LA CIENEGA AREA

Trained as an architect, L.A. artist Lisa Lombardi continues to move away from the realm of functional art and into the genre of pure decoration. Formerly in partnership with her husband, Mo McDermott, Lombardi created functional objects--planters, chairs, screens--that doubled as visual puns. Now working independently, she shows a new series, titled “Desert Canticle,” which takes the shape of the cactus as a launching point into an anthropomorphic free-for-all.

Working out of a kitsch souvenir aesthetic, Lombardi has a sense of form and composition that puts one in mind of David Hockney, and her highly theatrical cactus people would look equally at home on the streets of Tijuana or in the high-tech office of a yuppie. Combining various woods--birch, pine, mahogany--and a palette of “Miami Vice” colors, Lombardi’s work continues to seem as though it could be put to some constructive use beyond pleasing the eye. Some of the pieces are lit from within and could double as lamps, while a cylindrical floor-standing number, titled “Gorgeous Georges,” appears to impersonate a hat rack. (Jessica Darraby Gallery, 8214 Melrose Ave., to July 4.)