It’s Your Life / People, Places and Things to do. : ART SHOW : A Teaser Before the Ojai Studio Tour

A hallmark of the Ventura County art calendar every autumn is the Ojai Studio Artists tour, a self-guided excursion through the studios of the many who make the Ojai Valley so art rich. For the full experience, you’ll have to wait until Oct. 12 and 13, but a teasing glimpse of the goods is now hanging at the Childress Gallery.

Twenty-eight artists are represented here. Most are not strangers to this gallery, an important window on the Ojai art scene, where group shows are often presented. But it is refreshing to see the diversity of work under this one roof, from within this charmed town.

The variety runs from Chris Brennan’s ever-enticing whimsy to the unsettled evocations of “Addiction Two,” which suitably represents Alberta Fins’ turbulent collage method, juxtaposing found images with scruffy painting passages.

Artists around these parts sometimes switch-hit with media. Jan Sanchez shows both a canny nude painting, “Appointment at the Embassy,” and a typically wry sculpture/chair. Mary Christie, who has shown fine paintings in this gallery, shows her elaborate ceramic Romeo and Juliet chess set.

Frank Kirk specializes in a slightly skewed sense of draftsmanship, evoking a pre-World War II Social Realist art attitude. With her “Blue Fortune,” Sherry Loehr finds a fortuitous path through and around realism and still-life conventions. Cindy Pitou Burton, meanwhile, nudges photography toward the domain of painting with her Polaroid transfer works.

See their work in small bites and get a main meal in October.

* Ojai Studio Artists, through Aug. 17 at the Childress Gallery, 310 El Roblar Drive in Ojai; 640-1387.