Outside Influences

Tapping into cultures not one’s own has become a hallmark of the 20th century artist. The long, meandering path of artistic sophistication has been charted by those who yearn for the simplicity, purity and mysticism of folk-art traditions far from the art world’s domain. It’s a paradox of the times.

Calabasas-based artist Debra Gordon, whose mixed-media work is in the Upstairs Gallery of Natalie’s Fine Threads in Ventura, is one such artist. She draws on rough figurative imagery that recalls the primitive directness of African or pre-Columbian models, and gives her work a visceral and tactile energy by layering different materials. Nothing in her collage-informed work functions in a straight, predictable line.

In “Lady With a Blue Face,” for instance, pieces of cardboard are laid on canvas with other crumpled bits of material applied on top. Scattered fragments of decorative images create a fizzy, visual surface, and the blue-faced woman of the title is portrayed on top of the happy complex of ideas.

Mexican Day of the Dead mythology surfaces in pieces such as her two “Altars,” replete with Lucifer figures in a hum of visual activity, and “Casa de Tortuga,” with its sense of interacting forces from the spirit world and the world of flesh and bones.

“Toreador” is a three-dimensional relief piece behind plexiglass, depicting a bullfighter and his quarry. That central subject is, oddly, surrounded by protruding mounds, which could be viewed as purely decorative touches, or as breasts or little pyres.

The sum effect of Gordon’s art is vigorous and deceptively slapdash, mated to an ongoing intrigue with art of other cultures. The trick with such an aesthetic lies in finding a seamless link between the artist’s own culture and the other, coveted culture, and, to that end, Gordon is on her way.

* Debra Gordon, through Feb. 21 at Natalie’s Fine Threads, Upstairs Gallery, 596 E. Main St., Ventura. Hours: 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; noon-4 p.m., Sunday; 643-8854.

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Gleams in the Group: Art City II boasts one of the nicer and more funky gallery spaces in town, with exposed rafters and a broad wooden floor. And the group shows there, fueled, as they are by a grass-roots energy, often suit the venue. Invariably, you can find pieces of interest, even when thematic thread and consistency of quality are of the loose-fit variety.

The current show, “In the Light,” offers work by many local artists who don’t normally exhibit here, along with familiar names. There are several stone sculptures on display, fitting in Art City, which proffers hunks of stone to artists and other humans by day.

The pieces that stand out are the quirky ones, like Phillip Flynn’s “Alien,” portraying the unlikely image of a classic amorphous alien face--something you’d expect to find in plastic, in a toy store, rather than fashioned in alabaster in a gallery. Chris Provenzano’s “Madame Chair” is an odd charmer, a woman with eyes closed reflectively, and wind-swept hair, literally etched in stone.

Dale Dreiling is an inventive, cheeky sort of sculptor, showing his “Mother of Invention,” a wire sculpture of a female figure cradling a nine-volt battery. And when he addresses stone, he does so with a visual pun. “Heart of Stone” is precisely that, the organ, not the metaphor. Hearts show up again on the wall in Michael Helms’ stone fragments, “Assorted Hearts, Broken and Otherwise.”

Some recognizable artists pepper the exhibition with their comfortably engaging work. Alan Sailer shows “Bent Assumption,” one of his close-up nude studies that manages to be explicitly erotic and surreal.

Ojai-based artist Bill Kaderly’s “Tongue in Cheek” is another of his precious tiny sculptures made from fruit peels, subject to the gradual, inevitable process of decay. As such, it is naturally ephemeral art, made from an unusual brand of material.

* “In the Light,” group show, through Feb. 12 at Art City II, 34 Peking St., Ventura. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesday.-Sunday; 648-1690.