ART REVIEW : Second ‘Nature’ No Match for First : New exhibition at the Irvine Arts Center has fewer rewards than a similarly themed show at Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton.

Oddly enough, “Nature Re(Contained),” a 30-artist group show at the Irvine Fine Arts Center through Nov. 5, is the second Orange County exhibition on a nature-related theme to open in recent weeks.

But the subject is so large and amorphous that it hardly would matter whether all the group shows for the next year were concerned with it. What really matters is the freshness and subtlety of the art.

Unfortunately for the Irvine center, that other show--”Confronting Nature: Silenced Voices,” which closed last weekend at Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton--had by far the more absorbing array of work.

Organized by center curator Dorrit Rawlins, “Nature Re(Contained)” contains an abundance of tired-looking organic imagery, a dose of didactic ecological hand-wringing, a sprinkling of flat-footed conceptual pieces and very few works really worth thinking about.

Chief among the latter is Cornelius O’Leary’s “Walden Greens” (displayed in finished form, it also can be dismantled and stored in its own “kit”).

This witty piece by the Santa Ana artist is a model of a tract-home development constructed on the inside of a fur coat--created, in other words, on the back of an animal skin turned into an expensive garment.

The lots are all marked, the tiny trees all “planted.” A cluster of homes nestled in the privacy of a sleeve all sport “sold” buttons. The ratty dark fur surrounding this cozy enclave is the only reminder of forces untamed by the bulldozer and the dollar.

And the name is perfect. “Walden Greens” combines references to Thoreau and golf, a marketing ploy reminiscent of, say, “Laguna Audubon.” The inference, of course, is that such developments root out native fauna to make sanitized, regulated dwelling places for people who can afford them.

But O’Leary’s striking piece goes beyond finger-wagging complaint by suggesting the complex interrelations involving the human drive to tame and reorganize the natural world and to acquire exclusive objects as a mark of caste, and the struggle for survival that (in one way or another) is shared by the entire the animal kingdom, bipeds and quadrupeds alike.

Suvan Geer’s “Mother’s Milk,” which approaches the show’s theme in quite a different way from any of the other pieces, deals with patterns of human behavior.

On a wooden table, powdered milk creates a delicate, evanescent doily design inscribed with words evoking sounds of disapproval: “tsk tsk,” “hiss.” A liquid resembling milk runs through a trough in the center of the table, dropping into an open drawer to recycle once again.

The milk and the emphasis on pattern (the doily), repetition (the continuous flow) and the effects of passing time (the impermanent dusting of powder) suggest the dual aspects of “nature” and “culture” that are said to influence a child’s development.

Do we acquire our patterns of behavior “with our mother’s milk,” so to speak? Or is it more a question of the constant repetition of certain speech patterns and physical responses that shape our mental and social development?

The piece, of course, does not answer this question, so endlessly debated by sociologists, linguists and others. Rather, it raises it anew in a fresh and immediate visual format, which is a much more exciting proposition.

It’s good to see Laurie Brown’s quietly observant black-and-white landscape photographs again (taking the long view, she compares bulldozed tract developments with the ruins of ancient civilizations). Anne Mudge’s untitled small, drooping, self-effacing objects--reminiscent of dried animal sacs--have a throwaway charm, as opposed to the ponderous quality of her larger, more obviously structural pieces in the show.

Finally, Michael Arata’s bread loaf installation, “Sugar and Fat,” has a sort of likable weirdness about it. Adorned with lettered chemical formulas and kiddie stickers spelling out the word fat , these loaves seem to be comparing the expansive quality of yeasted dough with human fears of thickening girth.

Even though the piece is conceptually rough around the edges, it demonstrates an idiosyncratic vision that too rarely surfaces elsewhere in the show.

* “Nature Re(Contained),” through Nov. 5 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine. Hours: Noon-9 p.m. Monday; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Free. (714) 724-6880. *

WELL-JUDGED WORKS: Betye Saar, the noted assemblage artist, was this year’s juror for the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art annual juried show, open to artists in the Western states. The strong showing in “Strictly Sculpture” is no doubt due in large part to the tendency of respected artist-judges to attract a higher level of work.

The most memorable pieces in the show are by Becca Frisch (daughter of center director Jeffrey Frisch), Carolyn Angleton and Karen Lee C. Akamine.

Frisch’s “Bridge for the Unknown Needleworkers” is both visually arresting and conceptually intriguing. It consists of hundreds of needles dangling like so many tiny legs from an aluminum-framed “bridge” lined with red thread netting.

Combining the color of blood with the small-scale precision of needlework and the image of a huge and helpless multitude within an architectural form symbolic of unity and friendship, the piece recalls the many immigrant needleworkers toiling in U.S. sweatshops.

Angleton’s “Homefront” is an arrangement of hard-to-categorize metal implements neatly spread out on a low-lying slate platform. Variously resembling cutlery, surgeons’ tools, thorny branches and car ornaments, these dangerous-looking implements quietly invoke the danger zones of everyday life.

Akamine’s “Yellow Forest” photo installation on a curtained window offers a softly elegiac look at the losses suffered in the U.S. internment camps for Japanese “aliens” during World War II.

A photo of one camp with a cutout figure and tree, and jigsaw puzzle pieces of scenery (some of which have fallen on the floor) recall anonymous individuals plucked from their environment like so many uprooted plants.

Among the gratifying number of other well-made pieces on view, Pat Cox’s assemblage, “Shelf Life/Wood Circle” is noteworthy for the subtly echoing qualities of its simple shapes and textures.

And then there is Robert Aitchison’s mysterious open box outfitted with a dangling dried insect and miniature Japanese lanterns. Intriguingly titled, “Diderot and the Last Luminaire” [or lights ], the piece refers to the 18th-Century French encyclopedist, whose writings helped shape the Enlightenment.

* “Strictly Sculpture,” through Oct. 20 at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, 3621 W. MacArthur Blvd., Space 111, Santa Ana. Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Free. (714) 549-4989.