Diverse Imagery Helps Voice Personal Change

In the first official exhibition at Sylmar’s Century Gallery for the fall, the subject is change. “Transformation: From the Cherished to the Extraordinary” consists of artworks by six very different artists whose work has somehow changed or evolved. Often, they turn found objects into the stuff of art, rely on collage techniques or use other processes to arrive at new imagery.

Such tactics are hardly revolutionary at this point in the 20th century, the epoch of high art scavenging. In fact, if anything, the show may suffer from a touch of curatorial looseness, spanning, as it does, as many different approaches as there are artists. Strong work can be found here, but the overall impact of the show might have benefited from a tighter focus.

The boldest emotional charge comes from the work of Annemarie Rawlinson, who was a sickly child in Austria during World War II, and who either refers to her personal history or else concocts scenes of life during wartime. Rawlinson seems keenly aware of the power of concrete objects and memorabilia to trigger feelings of nostalgia and, in this case, anti-war sentiments.

Suffering, and the personal transformation that comes of it, is Rawlinson’s main theme here, acutely expressed in a piece with a baby strapped to a bed of railroad spikes, a caged butterfly trapped in its chest. The piece stems from memories of her own childhood hospitalization.

Further sad details of her past surface, as in “After the Wedding,” featuring a black wedding dress and conveying resentment toward her mother’s second marriage, which transpired after the war.

“How Pain Helps Us” is a grim tableaux set into an upturned dresser drawer. An atmosphere of shattered innocence arises from the mixture of a child mannequin’s arm, a sepia-toned photo of bombed-out Frankfurt and bullets.

She also shows unorthodox variations, from scrappy pieces of wood or rusty metal, on the crucifix theme--depicting suffering on a spiritual scale as well as the physical. Rawlinson is not out to make pretty scenes, but she manages to fling together assemblage works of poetic electricity.

Uni Lee Amey’s delicate pieces consist of personally significant found objects, but to a more benign end than Rawlinson’s loaded art. Amey’s works evoke a sense of longing for roots and a reverence for family. Hers is a refined, wistful art that makes an impact without announcing its intentions in loud declarations.

Free-spirited collage is the genre of Bob Gino, who, as co-owner of the Orlando Gallery in Sherman Oaks, more often deals with others’ art than shows his own. In these examples, Gino demonstrates a good eye for complementary images, including asymmetrical cutouts, a plastic army tank and religious imagery in the visual mix.

In her search for art materials, Lois Ramirez frequents thrift stores and finds chairs ripe for the altering. She adorns them along literal lines, and, unfortunately, the artistic process is theme-driven to a fault. Silliness prevails. We even find a piece called (block that pun) “Musical Chairs,” lined with music manuscript paper, while cowboy motifs are slathered all over “Broncobuster.”

When the artist tries to venture a serious socio-historical commentary about the genocide of Native Americans in “More Than a Backrest,” the frivolous setting makes it all too slight and condescending. The work is too cute for comfort.

Robert Wollard represents the computer contingent in the show. Antique postcards of young girls, from his own collection, are subtly computer-altered and embellished. This is an effective modern treatment of an old source material, a way to personalize a series of fetish-like images.

The transformational aspect for M. Helsenrott Hochhauser is two-fold: She takes the tradition of Japanese papermaking into her own hands and adapts this art form into something unique. The resulting pieces resemble pulpy paper sculptures that have been folded, punctured and creased--sometimes suggesting Navaho textiles, but avoiding any specific references.

Implicit in these pieces is the transformational effect of time on life’s surfaces--from weathered fabric to withered flesh. With this and other art in the gallery, objects, and their newfound identities, are the message.

* “Transformation: From the Cherished to the Extraordinary,” through Nov. 6 at Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. Saturday; (818) 362-3220.

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75 and Counting: The artists organization known as Women Artists West is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, reason enough to present its wares. A sizable lot of the work is hanging at Creative Arts Center Gallery in Burbank, in an exhibit that ends today, and the operative words are diversity and innocuousness.

Alice Broome’s painting, “Meter Boxes,” is a lyrical bit of urban observation. It depicts the back of an apartment building in all its funky gracefulness, basking in late-afternoon light. A patiently rendered watercolor still-life is the stuff of Rose Odow’s “Onion Sweet.”

At the left end of the stylistic range--in a show that veers strongly toward the right--Virginia Sandler’s “Cave Wall” is a mixed-media concoction with a complex tactile surface, alternately smooth and coarse, and flecked with faux primitive markings.

With “Golden Spudnick,” Gerri Willging latches onto a thematic abstraction, with nonrepresentational gestures woven in with snippets of burlap potato bags. Funk art rears its head, ever so gently.

* Women Artists West, today at Creative Arts Center, 1100 W. Clark Ave. in Burbank. Gallery hours: 9 a.m.-9 p.m., ends today. (818) 238-5397.