Orange County

A three-person exhibit of California photographers on the theme of “Flowers” seems about right for the sunbaked brains of summer. But pretty is as pretty does, and there’s not much noteworthy activity here.

Debra Heimerdinger’s “Wallflower Series” points up blandly obvious contrasts of bloomin’ brightness and architectural decay. Tulips grow out of cracks in a wall, irises perch in a desolate corner, calla lilies in a mason jar preen in a dark, ravaged room. She also shoots images she calls “Botanical Specimens” (in one, a row of irises is laid out solemnly on a milky plastic material) and “Flower Re-arrangements” one of which juxtaposes white magnolias with chunks of white Styrofoam in a tissue-lined box.

Dar Spain throws an aura of nostalgia over her hand-colored flower images, often shooting the blossoms against or within old-fashioned containers. A calla lily lies immaculately across an ashtray with gold-initialed borders. Another lily, tinted blush pink and light blue, rests inside the tinted red velvet interior of an open metal box.

Mark Matthews selectively spray-paints dense carpetings of leaves and flowers, using separate petals and blossoms removed from their stems as well as whole flowers. “Rose Drops,” a Cibachrome photograph of red, pink and yellow petals strewn on pink-and-blue leaves, looks almost like a fabric print. A photograph of orange and yellow tulips and “decapitated” tiger lily blossoms on brown and green leaves suggests a late-20th-Century deconstruction of the classic floral still life that retains the life-and-death contrast so crucial to the genre. (Susan Spiritus Gallery, 3333 Bear St., No. 330, Costa Mesa, to July 30.)