Artistic Diversity

The Thousand Oaks Community Gallery is one of those spaces that takes the term “community” seriously. Usually the sizable gallery hosts communal group shows, maintained and sponsored by artists engaged in a collective effort.

So it’s hard to get a sense, sometimes, of who’s running the place, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Call it democracy in action. On the downside, the quality can be erratic.

This month the gallery hosts one of its more reliably worthy traditions: the Annual Juried Show of the Thousand Oaks Art Assn. These exhibitions are, inherently, eclectic events, which always contain some intriguing art alongside less-accomplished work.

The quality is higher this year, and that could have to do with the resident muse, but also the eye of the juror, Tim Schiffer, curator of the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. As the person responsible for the annual Assembly of the Arts show at the Ventura museum, Schiffer knows about the tricky balancing act in putting together a show bound less by curatorial concepts than by a discerning eye.

Diversity abounds and carves out its own logic. We can admire David Tinnon’s “Blue Ridge Shadow,” a simple impressionistic landscape with details roughed up to reveal nearly abstract forms basking in light and shadow.

Next to it on the gallery wall, and coming from another artistic attitude entirely, hangs Lisa Kelly’s large canvas, “Mexico City Cathedral,” ostensibly a photo-realist’s view of tourists mugging for a camera in front of a sprawling cathedral.

Images go from super-real to surreal in the periphery, though, as historical figures make ghostly appearances, along with a toreador and skeleton hidden in the crowd. The casual tourist reality merges with sociocultural residue.

There’s no clear artistic link, apart from the regional proximity of the artists, between Elsbeth Mason’s etching “Rites,” a composition with two corn cobs as protagonists, and Lynn Morley’s “Tulips,” an effectively moody pastel floral study.

Hy Farber shows a large, laminated plywood sculpture, “The Bass Player,” perched conspicuously in the middle of the gallery. The subject is reduced to a Cubist-influenced assembly of forms and facets, an entangled design that also seems to be a manifestation of the improvisational jazz spirit.

Another sculpture, Lois Ramirez’ “Corporate Ladder,” is the show’s most shameless visual pun: an actual ladder caked in financial news and doubling as a tie rack. It’s an eye-roller. Betsy Milligan represents the collage faction quite nicely with her fastidious, energized paste-ups, such as “The Jungle Out There.”

Wink-wink humor and art-historical reference converge in Eve Riser-Roberts’ “Famous Artists’ Cats Series,” from which she shows a piece called “Braque’s Violin Concerto.” Music manuscript paper, violin and a writhing feline are tucked cozily into the composition.

Mary Ann Panopoulos’ “Sunlit Windows” is an oblique figure study, with two people viewed from behind an empty room--in an almost voyeuristic way--and gently flecked in sunlight coming in through picture windows.

Photography has a strong, varied showing here. Tom Gamache’s color photograph, of autumnal leaves against the craggy texture of mountain terrain, goes by the song-related title “Variation (b)-Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise.”

One of the best photographers in the area, Jurgen Kuschnik, shows manipulated, wavy-surfaced Polaroids, mysteriously cropped images of shoes and other trivial bric-a-brac rendered visually meaningful. In Marie Chantal’s “Pieta,” a nude figure appears mystical and aloof, behind gauzy fabric and with eyes closed.

Architectural subjects are accounted for, as well. Peter Kelly’s pristine interior shot of the Bradbury Building, a Los Angeles historical landmark, becomes a study of intricately laced geometry and line. The complexity found there is in contrast to the stark simplicity of Frank Holwicz’ “Aztec National Monument, Kiva Detail.” Here, sun rays stream through tiny paneless windows in the otherwise dark and mysterious, spiritually charged space of a kiva.

Another piece that stands apart in the show is Justine Bruner’s “Figure on a Couch,” a fine graphite nude study that conveys delicacy despite its large scale. The subject of the title is faithfully represented, but with a surprising airiness and grace, with its white spaces utilized to poetic effect.

Somehow, the spirit of the Thousand Oaks art community comes through this naturally broad sampler. It’s a community with multiple viewpoints enjoying a peaceful coexistence.

BE THERE

Annual Juried show of the Thousand Oaks Art Assn., through February at Thousand Oaks Community Gallery, 2331-A Borchard Road, Newbury Park. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Thursday-Sunday; 498-4390.