A Tale of 2 Students at Palomar College Gallery

Louise Kirtland-Boehm, director of Palomar College’s Boehm Gallery (no relation) is what all good curators should be: a talent scout. In addition to mounting shows of such established local artists as Ernest Silva, Faiya Fredman and Raul Guerrero, she has made a habit of canvassing schools for emerging talent.

In 1987, she organized a group show of students working toward their master of fine arts degrees at San Diego State University and UC San Diego. The show helped introduce new work to the community while testing the integrity of the work outside its own native academic environment. By presenting a variety of work reflecting a breadth of approaches, the 1988 “MFA/SDSU/UCSD” show also helped dispel stereotypes associated with the two universities’ art departments.

This year, Kirtland-Boehm has selected just one student each from the two schools for a show (through Nov. 21) with the same title as its precedent. Both M. Luera of SDSU and UCSD’s Gary Boswell show promise, a consideration of primary importance in this type of show. Both have achieved a respectable technical maturity and an interest in evocative themes, but neither manages yet to present a rich, enduring and fully evolved body of work.

The figures in Luera’s series of paintings, collectively titled “Invented Lives,” loom larger than life in scale and in their glowing, cinematic vibrancy. They press against the edges of each canvas, creating a visual tension that Luera matches with ambiguous and often unsettling visions of men in conversation, in communion and in conflict.

In “Men in Boat,” two shirtless men flank a central, fully dressed passenger. The man in the immediate foreground seems to be whispering affectionately into the ear of the man in the middle, while the figure in the rear shifts his gaze to the side and continues to row.

“Men in Suits with Youth” also shows a man sandwiched between two others, but this time the younger man in the center wears no shirt, and those in front and back wear matching suits. Here also, it is the man in the foreground who makes contact with the central figure, but his gesture is less gentle than that of the man in the boat. He presses his hand against the youth’s jaw, and though the young man smiles, his expression seems forced and uneasy.

A similar confrontation takes place in “Men with Fish,” where two men, waist-deep in water, share an ambiguous, awkward moment. One of the figures wears an expression midway between a scowl and a laugh as he pulls back a younger man’s head by his hair. By painting the younger man’s eyes closed, Luera denies his face an easy read and instead gives it the simultaneous expression of passion and pain.

Luera borrows much of her strategy of subverting familiar images and ordinary relationships from the New York painter Eric Fischl. Like Fischl, she paints large, lifelike figures in casual but ambiguous situations, mixing the clothed and the semi-nude, the young and the older for suggestive effect. Her men have tremendous physical presence, but she doesn’t consistently endow them with enough psychological depth to sustain that presence. As a result, the paintings verge on the superficial and sensational.

Boswell’s neighboring installation, “Semaphore Horizon,” deals more with the cerebral than the sensual, perhaps to a fault, but the work does induce a physical self-consciousness that slows the pace and prompts new perceptions. A semaphore, the signaling device commonly used on railways, never appears in a literal form, but other modes of marking location and direction fill the gallery’s walls and floor.

A compass is mounted on one wall, an arch of cutout, painted arrows hovers high on another, near a formation of drawings of eyes, in the shape of the big dipper constellation. A painting of blue, hazy sky with a single feather attached to the surface alludes to determinations of wind direction and force. Newspaper pages, strewn across one long wall, are covered with stenciled text repeating a phrase about the various positions of the body during sleep. On a tree branch, covered in gold leaf, hangs a piece of cloth, as if a marking of one’s path in the woods.

None of these navigational systems is functional here--the compass is fixed to the wall, and the feather to the painting--but all of them do evoke an acute awareness of one’s position in space, one’s movement and direction. By presenting these systems outside of their normal, useful context, Boswell draws attention to them as abstract notations, symbolic languages in themselves. They become abstract, poetic phrases punctuating the austere gallery walls, important clues with no real meaning of their own.

ARTISTS’ OPPORTUNITIES:

Sushi Gallery is issuing an open call for proposals for its sixth annual public art program. For “StreetSites ‘91,” Sushi will commission several temporary, site-specific projects at public locations within the city. The program is open to all artists living in San Diego County. Selected artists will receive $2,000 to create their work. For more information, call Sushi (235-8466) or attend a “technical assistance” meeting at the gallery (852 8th Ave., downtown) on Monday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. The deadline for proposals is Monday, Nov. 26 at 5 p.m.

The Carlsbad Arts Office is seeking proposals from local artists interested in participating in two of its annual programs. The Grants program will award $20,000 this year to fund cultural and artistic projects in Carlsbad. Artists in all media and not-for-profit institutions are eligible, but individual artists must be sponsored by a not-for-profit organization. Grant applications must be received by Dec. 3.

Proposals are also sought for Carlsbad’s Artist-in-Residence program, which aims to involve Carlsbad citizens in creative experiences. Projects will be conducted in schools or community organizations. Last year, residency grants were awarded for a dancer and a storyteller, who conducted three-month-long projects in Carlsbad schools. Proposals must be received by Nov. 16.

For more information about applications and eligibility for both programs, call the Carlsbad Arts Office at 434-2920.