Works That Give Beautiful Shape to Sound : Art: Miriam Sievers’ interpretations of musical instruments evoke both the skeleton and soul of music through the barest of means.

“Through extended, long, drawn-out, somewhat expressionless, unsympathetic tones of a bassoon, resounding in the empty depths, everything became green,” wrote Wassily Kandinsky, probing the affinity between music and art, between intangible sounds and abstract forms, colors and shapes.

Miriam Sievers, a San Diego artist, gracefully extends this dialogue between sister tongues. In her current show at Palomar College’s Boehm Gallery (1140 W. Mission Road, San Marcos), she gives sculptural shape to sound and to its source. Filled with her free-standing, hanging and wall-mounted works, the gallery becomes a workshop where instruments lie in wait, their raw wood bones and gray felt skins exposed to the air’s caress. At the same time, these forms for making music evoke sounds themselves--notes suspended in space, measured beats, wavelike rhythms.

Literal, intuitive and sensual responses to music coalesce with subtle beauty in Sievers’ work. Her interpretation of the bassoon builds on Kandinsky’s: A dark wood post stands staidly upon a geometric base, while a thin steel rod meanders northward beside it--a prolonged wail. The counterpoint of tones and that of forms become one here, and the architecture of the base doubles as the structural foundation of the freely floating sounds.

Sievers’ is an art of omission and implication. Both the skeleton and the soul of music are evoked through the barest of means--delicate planes of wood, brass fittings, felt, steel and air. In “Call,” another thick dark rod of wood, ending in a metal horn, rests horizontally on a wood shelf. Inches above, a slender steel rod hangs in a slight arc, embodying the horn’s persistent call.

Sievers’ work visualizes the invisible in plainly but carefully crafted forms. Time asserts a viable presence as one follows the slow, dipping curves and staccato geometries of the work. Understated and highly accomplished, Sievers’ work bridges the worlds of sight and sound with a profound respect for the idioms of each.

The delicate spell of Sievers’ work is broken with a dull and muddy thud by a group of paintings in the adjoining gallery space.

The “Game Series,” by local painter Gail Roberts, aspires to critique our wasteful, detritus-producing society, according to the artist’s statement. She pairs painted scenes of unsullied landscapes with checkerboards, rubber balls, marbles and other plastic toys. Occasionally she melds these objects to the surface of the canvas, painting rocks or other undefined landscape elements directly over them.

Does our regard for the earth resemble children’s play, with its simple, stated rules, its carefree appeal, its irrelevant consequences? In the worst of cases, perhaps yes, but Roberts fails to elucidate the relationship between the landscape and the game in a convincing manner. Her view is dark and critical but vague.

Two smaller works deviate from the rest and show more promise. In both “Wings” and “Signing,” latex-cast hands with clenched fists, splayed fingers or cupped palms are embedded in the painted surface. Though they gesture and signal, their confinement there paralyzes them and renders them mute. Thwarted communication works effectively here as a theme; in Roberts’ other works, however, it’s an unintended result.

Both shows continue through March 14.