Santa Monica

Creighton Michael’s sculpture suggests sun dried bones or fantastic, derelict machines worn smooth by time and the elements. Yet for all the common association with skeletal remains, the sculptures have a grace that speaks most clearly about life.

Sparse, elongated wood frames give each structure an airy organic shape that commonly supports a patch of paint stained fabric. The cloth is stretched loosely over the frame in sharp contrast to the bony armature in the fabric’s opaque density and flimsy suggestion of mass. Occasionally, as in “Draughton 2,” the wood form itself thickens, suggesting a seed pod. Left ambiguous, as the screen toting “Widsith 4,” shadows and wooden ribs take on a life of their own. This ambiguity compounds the elusive mystery of the organic form.

In 1973 David Hockney, working here at the print workshop Gemini G.E.L., completed a set of lithographs entitled the “Weather Series.” The eight images have Hockney’s typical, structured but fresh-faced approach, reducing difficult subjects like moving water into pattern. In this case it’s atmospheres that hold the artist’s attention--slanting, color-blasting yellow rays of sun slicing through a shuttered room or needle fine drops of driving rain bouncing off rings of pure puddle blue.

The color in these prints is lightly built up using pale grounds and densely drawn squiggles. Together they build lovely and transparent atmospheres like the hazy pink, smog-dense tinted air of “Mist.” But it is the strength of the drawing and the genuine charm of the rather ordinary subjects, rather than the printing techniques, that makes the images appealing. (Pence, 908 Colorado Ave., to Oct. 15.)