ART : Group Effort Blends Trio of Talents : ‘Three Women Two’ is the artists’ second collaborative show at New Canyon Gallery.

They’re together again for the second time at New Canyon Gallery. Rebecca Andrews, Connie Mississippi and Ann Robbins had such a good time organizing an exhibit last year in this 5-year-old cooperative gallery in Topanga, they decided to do it again.

Their current show, “Three Women Two,” present Andrews’ ceramics, Mississippi’s sculpture and Robbins’ paintings.

“It was such a positive experience the first time,” Robbins said. Suggesting that the solitariness of making art can use some counterbalancing, she added, “It’s nice to work in a group.”

Robbins has known Mississippi since 1974, when they worked together at the Craft and Folk Art Museum. All three artists belong to a women’s support group that Mississippi started 2 1/2 years ago. Group members come from various creative fields and range from women in their 30s with young children to grandmothers in their 60s.

“The support of the other women is very important,” Mississippi said. “It doesn’t just happen during the show. It happens all year long.”

Mississippi’s finely made, elegant turned wood pieces--some of them painted, some with carvings--employ geometric shapes precariously positioned on laminated plywood bases to convey various sensations of life.

“This is a different direction for me,” Mississippi said. “I’m becoming more concerned with shape rather than surface.”

“And I Will Never Grow So Old Again” perches a carved, ball-shaped birch piece, painted black with lacquer, on the edge of an unpainted Baltic birch plywood base.

“When we are most despondent, that’s when we feel our oldest,” Mississippi said. “Chronological age is not all that important.”

Three California red cedar sculptures--”Wound,” “Scar” and “Hope”--hang near one another. Each piece was turned on Mississippi’s custom lathe, which allows her to make works up to 47 inches in diameter and eight feet long. Most lathes restrict an artist to a 12-inch diameter.

Mississippi first saw the cedar in the back of a Santa Monica city dump truck. Attracted by the wood’s beauty and concerned about its fate, she followed the truck and purchased the wood.

“Scar” was created around the lengthy, natural scar in the wood. “Wound” was formed around a smaller, round injury. “Hope” embodies its name in its dynamic shape and lack of blemishes.

The surface of Mississippi’s “Tombstone,” made in collaboration with Steve Ernsdorf, is covered in a mosaic of colorful ceramic tile pieces made by Andrews. She began her own tile factory in Topanga in 1980.

Andrews has surrounded many of her ceramic masks with tile mosaics. “Last year, I did just masks. Then, after the earthquake, having a tile business, I decided that mosaics were the way to go,” she said. Although her primary interest is in creating faces, incorporating a face into a mosaic “puts it into a whole context,” she said.

Andrews’ 27-year-old daughter, Serena, is the inspiration for “Isis’ ” sweet but also mysterious face. “Seine,” a mask without mosaic, is a self-portrait. The fanciful “Gandalf” comes alive with his mosaic turban. “Eve’s” face emerges from earth-like colored tiles.

“Who’s to say that Eve didn’t come from a rock,” Andrews said.

Robbins focuses on the shape of our contemporary universe through the tangible object of an envelope. Her oil on canvas “Letter” paintings depict images of envelopes with ambiguous, stream-of-consciousness words scrawled about.

“The letters are very mysterious--you can’t quite read them,” Mississippi said.

“Envelope shapes are structural, rhythmic,” Robbins said. “I hope the paintings have some feelings that something has been exchanged with the viewer, as there would be with words or letters.”

Where and When

What: “Three Women Two.”

Location: New Canyon Gallery, 129 S. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 2.

Call: (310) 455-3923.