A Thin and Flimsy Attempt to Be Satirical : Painting: Helen Redman’s works parodying the seaside lifestyle don’t pack much punch.

Helen Redman’s new paintings may have a bit more bite than usual, but they are still pretty thin and flimsy. In her show, “At the Edge of the Ocean,” at the Kruglak Gallery at MiraCosta College, Redman mildly parodies a range of Southern California seaside indulgences, from sunning and sipping to surfing and swimming. Her jabs at the absurdity of this lifestyle are too feeble to function as effective satire and too clumsily rendered to stand alone as illustration. Redman mirrors the vacuous, but she also succumbs to it.

A local artist, Redman shapes many of her canvases to echo the huge, arching wave form she has borrowed from Hokusai, the 19th-Century Japanese master of the woodblock print. She borrows liberally from Masami Teraoka, too, a contemporary artist who updates the Japanese woodblock genre with witty interjections from present-day commercial culture. Redman’s Japanese swimmer videotaping in the ocean derives directly from Teraoka, as do many other figures, but Redman lifts only style from Teraoka, absorbing little of his sarcastic spirit.

She tries, in such images as “Apocalypse Wow,” to pit this region’s terrors--earthquakes, tidal waves, military invasions and the like--against its hedonistic mood of malaise. Columns and arches topple from seismic stress, while resort types lounge in bikinis and Rolexes. Brain-baked and blase, nearly all are caught unaware. Her humor is obvious, however, and her contrasts unfulfilling.

In Redman’s eyes, the coast is a place of sensual indulgence and intellectual oblivion--paradise, with only an occasional reminder of death. Her palette is that of the beach itself, aqua, sand and the garish, screaming oranges and buzzing greens of scuba suits and surfboards. In a few additional works, Redman takes on the mortality-defying efforts of bodybuilders, but again, her wit proves too dull to give those parodies punch.

Kruglak Gallery, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, through Aug . 1. Open Monday through Thursday 10-1, and Tuesday and Wednesday 6-8 p.m.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: THE ART OF COLLECTING

Panel discussions tend to be all bores and snores, but a program Thursday night at the San Diego Museum of Art promises a livelier time.

Museum director Steven Brezzo will moderate a discussion about collecting art with several articulate members of the local art community, including Doug Simay, an avid collector and owner of Java Coffeehouse/Gallery and ABC Books; Mark Quint, co-director of the ambitious gallery and artist residency program called Quint/Krichman Projects; acclaimed artist Raul Guerrero; longtime arts advocate Danah Fayman and Pierrette Van Cleve, editor of the “Art Cellar Exchange.”

The program, part of a three-part series of discussions on “The Art of Collecting Art,” will take place in the museum’s Copley Auditorium. Reservations are suggested. Call the museum at 232-7931.