ART : Catch the Spirit : George Carlson prefers to do sketches, sculptures and other works on location. More than 140 pieces are on exhibit.

It’s not so unusual for a painter to work at the scene rather than in a studio to capture the light and atmosphere. However, one does not often come across a contemporary artist who sculpts on location.

George Carlson prefers to do his work, whether it’s sketches or sculptures, whether the subject is Indians in Mexico or ballet dancers in New York City, in the presence of the subjects and their surroundings.

“I want to catch the vitality that’s going on at the moment. At home, I’m too removed from everything. What I enjoy is bringing in all my senses, the tactile-ness, even the smell of a place,” Carlson said. He was at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum to install an exhibit of more than 140 of his works that opened last weekend. The show, “George Carlson: Dignity in Art,” contains bronze sculptures, pastels, paintings, drawings and serigraphs dating from the 1960s to the present.

“This is the first show at our museum that features the work of an individual contemporary artist,” said James Nottage, chief curator at the museum. Since it opened in November, 1988, the museum has presented exhibits focusing on the history and art of the West. Nottage said several members of the museum’s staff had been aware of Carlson’s work.

The title of the show comes from the artist’s philosophy about life and art.

“Art is being in touch with humanity,” he said. “What I find in most of my subjects is a sense of being alive, of having a respect for life. Dignity is a feeling of how deep a human being you are.”

In the 1960s, after a couple of years as a self-professed ski bum, Carlson began to spend time on Indian reservations in the United States. It was then that he starting sculpting his small, poignant portraits such as “Santa Clara Woman.”

After years among various native peoples in the United States, including the Hopi, Navajo and Taos Indians, he made his first trip to live among the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico in 1973. Unlike Indians on reservations here, the Tarahumara are an indigenous people still living at that time much as their ancestors had in the 1800s. Since then, though, a highway has been built in their area, bringing tourist buses and altering their way of life.

By 1980, Carlson had made five trips there, each about two months long.

“I felt I was artistically recording this people, and I wanted to be honest in recording how they were living,” he said. “For me, art has to have a heartfelt sentiment without being sweet or cloying.”

There is nothing cloying about “Augustina” (1980), a girl suffering from malnutrition and the complications of tuberculosis, a result of food shortages that these Indians often endured at the end of winter. One can’t help but think of the children of Somalia when looking at her likeness. Carlson said Augustina did indeed survive.

“What drew me was the spirit of the girl who the Catholic priest told me would survive from tuberculosis. She could smile once or twice a day. The spirit was coming back to her. The piece is very hopeful,” he said.

Carlson has also captured Tarahumara dancers, drummers and shamans in his sculptures.

“What’s important for me, when I develop a piece of sculpture, are the shape and textural relationships. I orchestrate a piece to have a flow of the viewer’s eye,” he said.

In his pastel works of the Tarahumara, such as “Dancing Patterns” (1988) or “Firelight” (1984), it is not only the shapes and textures but also the patterns of intense colors that draw in the viewer.

Carlson has also devoted a significant portion of this show to his series of sculptures of draft horses. Instead of sleek thoroughbreds, he prefers to concentrate on the Clydesdales and Percherons.

“I like their volume and weight and mass,” he said.

Carlson chose to sculpt the 1982 “Percheron,” of the horse biting its own shoulder, because he liked the curvature of the neck. “Frivole” (1983) presents a jaunty, happy horse that also caught his eye because of the flow of its back.

“Sometimes I just like the line that’s in a form,” he said.

Among his more recent works are a few early sculptures from his new series on ballet. Over the past three years, he has been hanging out at the School of American Ballet in New York and with the company of New York City Ballet.

And there is in the show what one would consider a very large portrait sculpture of Paul Robeson (1990).

“I wanted to show that he was a powerful person, a statesman, a leader. He was a monumental man of great dignity,” Carlson said.

This 39-inch portrait turned out to be only a maquette for a six-foot portrait that now stands at Central State University in Wilbur Force, Ohio.

Where and When What: “George Carlson: Dignity in Art.” Location: Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Griffith Park adjacent to the Los Angeles Zoo at 4700 Western Heritage Way. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Mondays through March 28. Parking is free. Price: $6 for adults, $4.50 for senior citizens and students with I.D., $2.50 for children ages 2 through 12. Call: (213) 667-2000.