West Los Angeles

Pamela Holmes’ painted hydro-stone wall reliefs strongly evoke space-program photographs of Earth. Almost radiant, the biomorphic shapes--colored with rich earth tones and blues--suggest the iridescent purity of the planet as seen from outer space. Holmes adds some welcome layers of metaphor to many of the pieces by making shapes suggest sprouting seeds or portions of the human body. Some strong pieces suggest human organs: hearts, lungs or wombs. A few like the phallus/esophagus/sprouting seed-shaped “Untitled 5” are infused with a strong libido. This layer of sexuality, inferring that the planet is a body capable of giving and sustaining life, reads as a buoyant declaration of existence.

Tied in spirit and process to Symbolist thought, where art reaches for the spiritually infinite, these abstracted land and body organics cast our planetary pebble in space as an intimate, physical phenomenon. Holmes may have a Romantic base but her content, which brushes only lightly against parallels between mysticism and science, has distinct appeal for a modern psyche grown comfortable with considering the entire cosmos within a single drop of water. (Art Space, 10550 Santa Monica Blvd., to Dec. 23.)