SIGHTS : Bashing Barriers at ‘Assembly of the Arts’ : Show at Ventura Museum of History and Art gives a general overview of the region’s scene.

Ventura County’s art scene is a relatively happy cosmos, in which familiar names spin and drift through various group shows and galleries show a rotating roster of artists. But, as per the human nature of cultural clannishness, it can also be a factional scene, one in which fringe-oriented art keeps to its own corner, decorative pretty pictures to another, academic art to another, and on and on.

Barrier-bashing is one of the virtues found in the “Assembly of the Arts” show, now at the Ventura Museum of History and Art through March 6. This manageably sized sampling of county-grown art, juried by art professionals from Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, offers a one-stop shopping trip for anyone in need of a general overview of art in the region.

Art-watchers may see many recurring names here, but the familiarity usually turns out to be a positive attribute, rather than an example of stasis or complacency. We’re allowed a sense of continuity and evolution by observing the subtle changes in the work and perspective of these artists.

Nothing hanging this year will arouse the controversy and/or bemusement of last year’s first-place-winning faux naif painting by Kyle Lynds. But there is enough diversity among the winners to stave off curatorial homogeneity.

And the official winners of this 12th annual show are. . . .

The first prize went to Christine Brennan’s “Untitled,” one of the Ojai artist’s trademark, enchanted nocturnal fantasies. Mutant mouthless creatures engage in romantic or metaphysical activities, as in a dream of life on the moon. Part surrealism, part childish charm, Brennan’s work spills from an imagination suitable for all ages.

Second place went to Mark Matthews, still pushing the limits of photography with his “Healing Waters.” Part documented assemblage, Matthews’ piece finds clay figures in a dramatic, surreally lit scenario. An ambiguous sense of dread and danger comes through in a scene in which a woman carries an inert figure down to the proverbial river.

In third place was “Turning Point,” by regular “Assembly” participant Richard Peterson. Like Peterson’s other socially charged work, his portrait of patients in the “Turning Point” program gives an empathetic human face to statistical suffering.

Although not officially honored in the awards, the piece that most challenges the sensibilities of the casual visitor, on the basis of its gritty materials, unsettling base of ideas and sheer scale, is Alberta Fins’ “Rites of Passage XII.” A multimedia triptych whose elements include swatches of fabric and plastic, murky photographs and massive smears of paint, the work is informed by a certain rawness of form and content, evident in smaller, more restrained doses in Fins’ earlier work.

Ruggedly constructed, and not at all smooth or seamless, Fins’ work looks as if it were created in a throes of a ritual. Photos of clothespins on the line and painted crosses echo her recurring interest in crucifix imagery. Turbulent and energetic, the work hums with religious questioning and a sense of catharsis through art-making.

On more purely sensuous terms, the most impressive painting in the gallery has to be “Picnic,” by Suzanne Schechter (another regular contributor to “Assembly” shows).

In this formally paradoxical painting, the irony begins with the title. We see an ample, indistinct woman under an umbrella at the beach, basking in Hopper-esque, all-American desolation. A picnic is in the mind of the beholder.

Aside from the atmosphere of exquisite emptiness, Schechter also dips into Hopper’s stylistic paint box, creating a realism that is rougher than it immediately appears.

The composition itself tells a story. The figure, a jumbled mass settled into her self-contained cocoon, consumes the left half, while the minimalistic bands of sand and sky, viewed from a slightly tilted perspective, take up the right half. Nature offers our heroine, more than anything, a pleasant moral vacuum.

An award for shameless levity should have been granted for Everett Kelley’s send-up of Manet’s “Olympia,” with a voluptuous banana in the place of the French temptress. Illusionistic rendering distinguishes Eva Riser-Roberts’ watercolor, “Crystal Harvest,” all shimmery transparent surfaces with a verisimilitude remarkable for the medium.

In one corner of the gallery, enigmatic visions of water hang side by side. Nicole Erd’s “Streams of Silence” is a palpable, dappled network of smudges that turn a river-side scene into the stuff of foggy dreams. John Charles Shippey’s quasi-folkish “Shallow Water Blackout” revels in its shallow space and flat-colored splash of brushwork.

Among the sculptures are Matt Harvey’s marble mass, “Bird-D,” and M. B. Hanrahan’s slab-like relief piece, “Damning Thieves,” imprinted with its ghostly skeletal image. Visitors are encouraged to touch the sinuous loopy form of Michelle Chapin’s “Continuous Line.”

Jennie K. Snyder’s “Winking Woman’s Mirror” is a mosaic of mirror and glass pieces that looks at once a shrine to vanity and, potentially, a dangerous object in the event of an earthquake.

Tucked into a corner shyly--and slyly--is Carolyn Russell’s wonderful “Hubcap Dream Green,” another of her pint-sized little jewels. Subjects normally considered to be sociocultural funk--a hubcap in a field, an old lawn chair, a boxy mobile home--are strewn on a romantically depicted piece of the proverbial boonies, the outskirts.

All of this fits on a round canvas the size of, well, a hubcap. Funny, dank charm is the result. In some strange way, although small, it’s also mighty.

Size, attitude and color schemes vary wildly in the “Assembly of the Arts,” and more’s the power for it. Pluralism is alive and well in Ventura County.

Details

* WHAT: Assembly of the Arts.

* WHEN: Through March 6.

* WHERE: Ventura Museum of History and Art, 100 E. Main St., Ventura.

* FYI: 653-0323.