SIGHTS AROUND TOWN : Sci-Fi Bloodlines : Kim Loucks’ ‘Voices’ at Art City II gallery features aliens of her imagination.

The most unusual art exhibit in Ventura County at the moment is a sight/sound/space concoction starring alien creatures who can’t keep their mouths shut.

“Voices” features a series of paintings by Kim Loucks, in which mutant creatures of her devising are seen in a wide variety of settings and landscapes, like snapshots from a very weird vacation. There’s a “voice” on a trip to a natural wonderland. There’s a “voice” with its head in the clouds.

Overhead, hovering in the reverberant space between the wooden floor and the corrugated metal roof of the Art City II gallery, we hear Ted Killian’s sonic stew of chattering voices and vaguely tinkling guitars. The sound literally shakes the rafters, where six tape players are perched.

To add the third dimension, Paul Lindhard’s sinewy sculptures, which vaguely relate to the forms of Loucks’ creatures, fill the gallery floor.

Whatever else Loucks’ ambitious project might be, it’s a fine example of an artist intuitively following the trail of an idea, allowing it to define itself and evolve through collaboration.

In her art, Loucks is not one for pursuing established paths. Last year’s “trash totems,” ecological statements in an art context, were sculptural containers full of “found” art materials--that is, found in the trash heaps and on the byways of Ventura County.

With “Voices,” process is king. The conceptual germ was planted by Ventura composer Jeff Kaiser’s electro-acoustic piece, “Requiem,” put on last fall in the Oddfellows Hall. Loucks was inspired by the unorthodox use of voices in Kaiser’s piece and developed her concept involving her amorphous creatures--all neck and, most significantly, mouth.

Killian’s task was to produce a sound source involving the actual voices of participants in the Turning Point Foundation program, where Loucks has been involved as an art teacher.

Loucks’ stated intent is to make a plea for “unheard voices everywhere,” from ostracized members of society to endangered landscapes. This is all well and good.

But as serious as the intent might be, the exhibit really begins to soar once you view it with more of an eye for absurdist humor.

Clearly, these “voices” seem like descendants from the existential howl of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” but they have stronger bloodlines in cheesy sci-fi cinema. You can imagine them in an animated film--”Attack of the Killer Voices.”

Open-mouthed in exotic locales, they seem to be invading various points on the planet, producing a dizzying sound--like what we’re hearing in the gallery--aimed at hypnotizing the planet’s populace.

It’s not at all clear that this wry, ironic interpretation is appropriate. Killian’s soundtrack has a much darker quality than the imagery. It is like a somber aural wash. Lindhard’s contributions, while impressive in their own right, don’t necessarily contribute coherently to the conceptual whole.

Collaboration is a delicate process, in which divergent building blocks can either strengthen or undermine the end product. While “Voices” doesn’t, in the final rub, come together cohesively, its high levels of interaction and invention are admirable.

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SEX AND MYTH IN THE GARDEN: As might be guessed from the title of her graphite-on-rag-paper series, Jane McKinney’s “Stumbling in Eden” concerns itself with war and peace betwixt men and women. But, rest assured, her reference points are more in mythology and abstraction, rather than chic psychobabble.

Several of these images were featured in a group drawing show last year at the Momentum Gallery, but to see them solo in a series gives them needed breathing room.

Nude figures are literally entangled in the underbrush and other forms of vegetation; so much so that sometimes bodies merge with the garden. The lack of faces eliminates personal identity, and the interactive stance of the bodies is ambiguous, tinged with psychosexual stress.

Coyly, the titles refer to plant life, not the sexuality at hand; as if we care more about thistle, tulips or willows than the nude figures looming in the picture plane. Naturally, we read symbolic meaning into titles like “Dry Branches” and “Dead Stump.”

McKinney’s stark treatment of graphite on rag paper, with a cracked, veined surface, contributes to the aura of mystery and infers a kind of mock-antiquarian quality in her work.

Less effective than her “Eden” series is a more obvious and clumsily handled ode to Eve’s imbroglio, called “The Snake Has the Run of the House.”

McKinney also shows her fine and funny Fat Lady series, with a corpulent comic heroine acting up in various ways. Her “Polka Dot Boots” has a surreal whimsy and a mythic folk-tale ambience.

From the standpoint of thematic development and artistic focus, McKinney’s is one of the most provocative and engaging shows yet seen at the generally more staid Buenaventura Gallery.

Other notable images can be seen in the outer gallery.

Leslie Wright shows a plainly Edward Hopper-esque depiction of a downtown hotel’s backside. As with Hopper, the painting buzzes with the all-American romanticism of desolation.

Byron Wade’s coy “Smile” is a triptych rich with ironic nostalgia-baiting. The central image of a post-war coup seems to echo the forms flanking it, of manically grinning women on the outskirts of town.

The appeal of Yvonne Harvey’s “After the Frontier” is more straightforward. It’s a nearly super-realist painting of Western paraphernalia, taking pains to get it straight, right down to the gleam of gun metal and the crease of a well-worn cowboy hat.

* WHERE AND WHEN

* “Voices,” art by Kim Loucks, sound by Ted Killian, and sculpture by Paul Lindhard, through Sept. 26 at Art City II, 31 Peking St. in Ventura. For more information call 648-5241.

* “Stumbling in Eden,” paintings by Jane M. McKinney through Sept. 12 at the Buenaventura Gallery, 700 Santa Clara Ave. in Ventura. For more information call 654-1235.