Opening a Window on Cuban Art

Art galleries pop up in the strangest places, and sometimes, the stranger the better.

Ventura’s newest entry in the gallery circuit is gallery one one one in a revamped structure, which was once the popular nightclub known as the Sidecar. A fading sign on one side of the building is a reminder of the venue’s past life.

Run by graphic designer Jim Nye and his wife, Cathi, the gallery opened in December and has proven a valuable addition to the area’s cultural resources. Their focus will be on a variety of art in various media, not necessarily from the area.

As galleries go, it is a pleasantly rambling space, or series of spaces, affording sizable exhibition potential.

The current show, “Framing Castro’s Cuba,” was culled from the collection of local photographer and teacher William Hendricks, who has collected art from underground sources in Cuba. In his recent travels there, Hendricks has discovered a fertile art scene rising out of repressive social circumstances.

This show features the stylistically divergent, yet complementary approaches of Angel Alonso and Justo Amable, a post-graffiti artist and a mythological image-maker, respectively.

Alonso works in acrylic on paper, which, in combination with guerrilla-art archetypes, gives his art poster-like immediacy and a funky charm. “Running to the Arms of America” is a plaintive refugee scenario, with a figure emanating rays of light, tilting toward skyscrapers that represent the American dream.

“Keith Haring and Me” reflects the quick-sketch, raw-spirited drawing attitude that the Cuban shares with the late graffiti artist. Loose, scratchy surfaces and street references abound in his art. “Words and Words” finds a giant spiral of visual energy spewing from the mouth of a tiny Fidel Castro in the center of the composition--the epicenter of seismic rhetoric.

No such quick-fix imagery appears in Amable’s work, which deals more with myths and Jungian archetypes. The artist merges sexual and spiritual attributes in scenes where genitalia is prone to transform into crucifixes and serpents.

Showering sprays of tiny drops--or are they seeds?--charge the pictorial space with mystery and unspecified power. Ambiguous relationships of humans to animals contribute to the general aura of metaphorical metamorphoses.

In this show, one artist keeps an ear to the ground, while the other drifts into myth. A happy balance is struck, giving at least a small glimpse of the artistic scene lurking in Cuba.

* “Framing Castro’s Cuba,” through Saturday at gallery one one one, 111 S. Dos Caminos Ave. in Ventura; 641-0111.

Wood Revisited: Protocol would allow that it’s appropriate to dwell on Beatrice Wood’s age by now. When one glides by the 100-year mark, each new number takes on an added luster of sagacity and, in Wood’s case, salacious charm. We find a fair amount of that quality in Wood’s show of drawings at the Ojai Center for the Arts, titled “Beatrice Wood CIII.”

The Roman numerals suggest a formality not contained in the pictures, many of them of females and felines. Wood has often cast a bemused eye on the business of the world’s oldest profession, as she does with the 1996 drawing, “A Business Meeting,” depicting men in suits flanked by women without a stitch on.

Elsewhere, Wood savors curvaceous and/or bulbous details of flesh, exerting her playfully sensuous imagination. Wood is 103 and seemingly rarin’ to go. Could it be the revitalizing effects of prolonged exposure to clay, that grounding element?

* “Beatrice Wood CIII” through March at Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 Montgomery St. in Ojai; 646-0117.

Art About Jazz About Art: A tacit and literal jazz spirit hums beneath the art of Arthur Secunda up at Wheeler Hot Springs. Jazz is a music in which the improvisational imperative allows for creative outbursts and freely associative connections. Secunda paints with a kind of jazz-minded riffing process.

The show is a wildly diverse stew of images, approaches and media. Wisps and faint suggestions of jazz musicians show up at times. Elsewhere, Secunda mixes up watercolor, collage and relief elements literally popping out from the picture plane. Natural elements--stones, bones and feathers are used as well. The pieces seem like variations in search of a theme.

In addition to his painting--which includes the well-known “Watts Series” of scenes from the Watts riots--Secunda has worked as a jazz pianist, TV producer and teacher, among other pursuits, which may help explain the meandering eclecticism of his approach. It’s one of those shows whose parts are stronger than the whole.

* Arthur Secunda, through March 31 at Wheeler Hot Springs, 16825 Maricopa Highway in Ojai; 646-8131.