Sizing Up Art

When it comes to putting together a group show and finding a thematic link, complex intellectual premises are not always that effective. Sometimes, the simplest notions make for the clearest exhibition frameworks, as is the case with the current show at the Ojai Center for the Arts.

Called, plainly and truthfully, “The BIG/Little Show,” it celebrates the beauties of extreme scale, from epic canvases to pocket-sized creations. Naturally, the show is a study in contrast, given the differences between big and little works. But the show also serves to point out the contrasts in viewers’ perception of art: Our eyes may tend to graze over large paintings that lie before us, while we might fix our concentration more acutely on miniature works. Bigger is not necessarily better, or more commanding.

Along the way, the show also brings together an all-star cast of Ojai-based artists, some of whose work is rarely seen in this gallery but who may be familiar to those who have haunted the annual Ojai Studio Artists’ tour in the fall.

Alberta Fins, for example, remains one of the more provocative artists in the area. She flings together various media in ways that combine improvisational flair and conceptual determination. Her large piece here, “Immersion,” is typically enigmatic and open to interpretation, with vigorous waves of brushwork surrounding a vague photograph of shorts in water. We get a sense of being sucked under, taken in by a force of nature, and it’s not an entirely pleasant sensation.

Painter Mick Reinman, too, is a fine Ojai artist who rarely shows in town, and it’s a shame. As an artist whose works seem brash and big even when they’re small in scale, he is well-suited to this occasion. Reinman’s “Drinking Man #3” is simultaneously rough and cool, showing a lounging, liquored-up figure who seems fit to burst either with angst or with sheer intensity. The figure’s face is blackened and reminiscent of a Francis Bacon painting, eliciting a quality of festering agitation. This painting has a big personality.

Yet the citation for biggest of the big goes to Gayel Childress, whose raw, loosely rendered painting on unstretched canvas is called “With the Help of My Friends” and conveys the blithe spirit of an impromptu mural. Karen Lewis’ hefty painting “Table for ‘5’ ” is a gentle domestic pleasure, with its asymmetrical, oddly cropped vision of an interior lending a warm candor to the image.

Also on the big front, Nancy Whitman’s “Dance for Life” portrays a room full of dancing figures, gone slightly dizzy and melting around the edges. With “Just a Rock,” painter Susan Nahabedian finds visual poetry in the unlikely image of piled-up boulders, writ large on canvas.

On the other end of the spectrum we find wee, engaging pieces by artists such as Christine Brennan, whose tiny, boxed paintings lure us into the mythic, fairy-tale world of her unique devising. Marta Nelson’s small, unfussy watercolors of mysterious backwoods draw us in, as well, as do Cindy Pitou Burton’s small Polaroid transfer images of fruit. Burton’s art effectively blurs the line between photography and painting.

Bill Kaderly’s wrinkly faces are sculpted from decaying orange peels, in pieces splashed with whimsy and subject to organic processes. Polished landscape artist Bert Collins shows relaxed scenes small enough to double as postcards. With works like these, small scale helps to define their charm.

Much as the issue of scale governs the viewing experience in the gallery this month, there’s a perhaps more compelling subtext.

Generally, “The BIG/Little Show” is a clever curatorial vehicle through which the Ojai art community gets a decent forum for its varied and ample deposits of talent. To coin a phrase, it’s a big community within a little town.

BE THERE

“The BIG/Little Show,” through February at the Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 S. Montgomery St. in Ojai; 646-0117.