SIGHTS : Exhibit Ranges From Surreal to the Floral : ‘Three Women’ features watercolors by Phyllis Doyon, photographs by Carla Larson and monotypes by Silvia J.K. Simmons.

Gender and self-reliance are the determining factors behind “Three Women,” the current show at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery.

If there is an inspiring subplot, it has to do with the artists’ effort to make their own opportunities. These artists put on their own show from the ground up, right down to sweeping up and keeping watch over the gallery during operating hours. Art will find its way.

And there is art worth looking at. Watercolorist Phyllis Doyon traffics in fanciful floral subjects. Larger pieces tend to be frenetic, while the smaller images, with tighter focus, have an aura of floral portraiture. Deft in her medium, and relishing such details as dew drops, she gives florid a good name.

In another corner, photographer Carla Larson shows a wild cross-section of images. Some are suitable for an art gallery: the cryptic still life “Cymbidium,” the almost surreal nocturnal shot, “Ninth Hole.” Other pieces seem out of place here, such as cast photos from a production of “Song of Norway.”

Plainly, the most striking work comes from Silvia J.K. Simmons, a transplanted Korean and now a Moorpark resident. Her art represents a happy marriage of eastern and western art ideals. A restless, searching quality combines with an assured technical ability.

Much of the work here consists of monotypes, tending toward dark patinas and abstract schemes, with subtle gradations not visible to the casually observing eye.

Often, there seems to be a correlation to the rhythms and textures of music, made explicit in Simmons’ “Song for Britten,” built on the horizontal grid of a musical staff. A wisp of fabric flailing in the wind flaps from above into the picture frame of “Purple Wind,” a depiction of a natural element.

“Milagro” is a rustic relief piece based around a central crucifix, with materials including wood, metal and pennies.

Simmons’ work can be whimsical too. The sculpture “Wedding” stands lonely in the middle of the large gallery, with the happy couple in the form of a curving stick and another pole donning a wire wedding dress.

The centerpiece of Simmons’ section of the exhibit, and the show in general, is a multimedia work called “Credo.” Linen is sewn onto canvas with the crude seams offering a tactile element.

Various Asian characters--quoting Buddhist and Catholic prayers--serve linguistic and, to the non-comprehending viewer, graphic functions, supplying structural overlay to the impressionistic surface of the piece, which includes found natural objects.

A veneer of pre-industrial antiquity and personal reference gives the work a magnetic presence. The balance of intuition and a sense of order is what keeps it in check, communicating across cultures without ever announcing its intentions plainly. It speaks softly but firmly.

Ojai Eye Festival

Ojai was abuzz with the annual parade of Ojai Festival-goers last weekend. Some of that transient traffic actually ventured beyond the lure of merchandise and consumables to where the art was--not in the park, but in the Ojai Center for the Arts, which is showing some impressive work.

Ojai artist Alberta Fins, anything but a Sunday painter, makes a brand of multimedia art that seems to materialize only after being burned, scraped and smashed into shape. Her blurry references to religion and her patently unsentimental collage technique result in a compelling art clotted with pain, but also offer the signs of working through said pain and finding flashes of insight.

In stark contrast, Betty McDonald’s Joseph Cornell-like box assemblages come from a place of reworked nostalgia and homespun charm. If the work at times veers toward the too-cute (“Sweet Lips”), much of her work manages to be ambiguous without being pell mell, and anecdotal without relying on easy punch lines.

Venae Price’s show, “Mandorlas and Stuff,” has a certain surging energy on its side. Rough-hewn abstract works involve murky pools of color and biomorphic forms. These forms either vaporously overlap--a nod to Robert Delaunay and his Orphism--or they nudge each other nervously, like amorphous blobs in mating season.

The entertaining “God, the Moon and the Bottlecap” evokes a sense of dizzy motion, featuring a bottlecap-as-allegorical orb, and a surreal landscape suggested by a horizon line. A vertical band with film sprocket holes aligns “Encumbered Leap of Faith,” mediating the less linear elements--the bulbous organic forms, glinted with silver and copper shades.

In the best work here, Price maintains a delicate balance--or bemoans the repressive instinct to instill order--between form and formlessness.

In Your Face

Paulette Beakley’s photography show, “The View Up Close,” at the Buenaventura Gallery, gets right in your face, if only literally. Her images of nature, exotic birds and bottles, are seen at spitting distance, to the point where sometimes the recognizable almost bleeds into the abstract. Almost.

In “The Pond,” stalks, leaves and blossoms are seen in scrambled orders of importance. Images of thorny succulents have an increased sense of foreboding, with a jagged-edge sense of danger, and, in “Such a Bird”--despite the cornball title--a bird’s rainbow plumage turns into an engaging explosion of color.

Details

* DETAILS: “Three Women” through June 26 at Thousand Oaks Community Gallery, 2331-A Borchard Road, Newbury Park; 498-4390.

Alberta Fins, Betty McDonald and Venae Price, through June 27 at Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 S. Montgomery St., Ojai; 646-0117.

Paulette Beakley through June at the Buenaventura Gallery, 700 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura; 648-1235.