SIGHTS : Energy of Group Shows Helps Set Gallery Apart : Current exhibit, combined with artists’ photographs, offers some insight into the unique offerings of Art City II.

In the world according to Art City II, alternative, non-commercial perspectives come with the territory. Routes less traveled and themes and materials less-used often find their way into this invitingly unpretentious art space on the western fringe of Ventura.

In the current exhibition, coinciding with photographer Donna Granata’s audiovisual documentary “The World of Art City,” a warm sense of familiarity hovers over the art. Here, we find a cornucopia of art and artifacts that will surprise no one who has paid attention to Art City II over the last couple of years: This is a stock-taking, mini overview of what this unique enclave is all about.

Group shows, such as the current sampler, are not uncommon in this gallery. But what makes this one special is that it gives a sense of the activities and products of Art City II. Apart from the day-to-day function of the facility as a place to work--especially for sculptors working with stone--Art City is a rare haven and a crucible for artistic energy in the area.

Granata displays her portraits of the artists along with appropriate materials to convey each subject’s interests. Thus, we have a well-used plastic painting tray for muralist M. B. Hanrahan.

Hanrahan, in collaboration with Michael Mora, shows preliminary sketches for a forthcoming public art project commemorating Tortilla Flats, an area of Ventura lost in the ‘50s with the reckoning encroachment of the Ventura Freeway.

Photographer Kakine is depicted in an inset portrait against one of her own dramatic images, and one that relates to this stone-minded property: She depicts a New Mexico travertine quarry as a monolithic rock formation under brooding, clouded skies.

On the far wall of the gallery is the work of a more openly manipulative photographer, John Forbes, who pushes and treats the palette of his Cibachrome images to surreal effect. Through his treatment, a shot of Hearst Castle suddenly looks ghastly and garish, something out of a not necessarily good dream.

Eric Richards, prone to fashioning wry or socially charged figures from scrap--metal, that is--is portrayed by Granata with a photo on an amorphous blob of aluminum. Richards’ works reflect his figurative menagerie of humanity and other animals, made from lowly and often rusty metals.

Doug Layman, too, is fond of junk. His mutant creatures seem to lurk on the floor, giving the gallery a sense of a quirky insect-like invasion.

In a contextual corner of his own is the inimitable sTeVe Knauff, who has used the iconography and metaphor of a television-saturated society in his work. But he doesn’t fight fire with fire: There is something determinedly organic and low-tech in the makeshift TV-studded assemblage, “This Is Yer’ Brain.”

Sculpture, naturally, has a bold presence in this show, in various forms and aesthetic directions. Michelle Chapin deals with smooth, sinuous and sometimes vaguely intestinal stone forms. Joanne Duby, too, favors sumptuous, flowing forms, soft to the touch and the eye.

Meanwhile, Paul Lindhard, the sculptor and founder / mayor of Art City, heads down divergent paths. The blunt, swerving geometric torso sculptures celebrate their own massive, reductive simplicity, while he lavishly stitches together biblical irreverence and mixed materials in his tableau “First Joke (Hello, it’s not me again, want another apple?)”

Obviously, from Lindhard’s diverse and evolving artistic directions, remaining in place or chasing down complacent formula is out of the question. The same could be said about Art City II, a valuable little subcultural burg down by the river.

VERNAL VERITIES: Nicole Erd’s show at Ventura County National Bank, 500 E. Esplanade Drive, Oxnard, goes by the deceptively mild title of “Spring Impressions.” Lest you would conjure up visions of things frilly and frivolous, think again.

Erd likes to work with a dark patina, creating dense skeins of dabbed brushwork--something like a bad apple cousin to pointillism. She seems to view the world of nature as something slightly beautiful, and slightly sinister, as if the world were a thicket rather than a spring sing.

“Drop of Life II” appears like a pathway into an unexplained vortex of shrubbery, while the rabbit of “Touch Me Hare” looks more like a furtive rodent than a cuddly bunny. A sense of scorching, invasive heat is the very subject of “Desert Heat,” and Erd’s landscape painting of Anacapa Island suggests a primitive terrain.

Details

* WHAT: “The World of Art City.”

* WHEN: Through Tuesday.

* WHERE: Art City II, 31 Peking St., Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 648-1690.