A Matter of Scale

A funny thing happens in a show like the Small Images Competition at Ventura College, where artists have consciously stuffed their ideas into modest packages. Small images can lure viewers in and bring them up-close differently than larger artworks. You’re forced to appreciate the art, squinty-eyed and speculative of mind.

Juried by the venerable Los Angeles art-world figure Josine Ianco Starrels, this exhibition represents one of the few occasions when art culled from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and outlying areas finds its way into the Ventura College gallery space, which is often reserved for visiting artists from farther afield. As such, it is inspiring on more than one level, with a number of impressive individual works, and a general quality level that bodes well for local artistic activity.

The best of show award goes to Michael Hankin’s “Origin of Flight (Homage to the Wright Bros.),” a clever bipolar assemblage piece. Half the work alludes to the rational leaps of science, represented by the letter “W,” flanked by blueprint-like linear markings. The other half mirrors the letter with the outstretched wings of a butterfly, emblem of the real origin of flight. The piece is almost too schematic in its conception, but impressive.

A visual pun taken to heart, Gay Marie’s “By Heart” is a stoneware sculpture of an open book with a life-size heart attached. Michael Blaha’s “Amulet” is subtler in its convoluted range of references, with its image of wood pieces configured into a cross, painted on a grainy wood panel. Wood rules.

The art of things small and also cryptic gives Rollin Fortier’s “27 Objects” its weird zing. In a display case, Fortier shows a group of crudely fashioned cast bronze objects that look like bracelet charms from another planet. The function of the pieces is unclear, though they are masquerading as meaningful objects.

Bill Woolway’s “Beyond Malibu” is a rough-hewn, folk-art-like image of figures bending over and touching the ground, whether in agricultural toil or aerobic exercise is unclear. Woolway, who has two other similar paintings in the show, has an engagingly loose, expressive style of painting, translating well in the realm of the small.

Small paintings--from postcard size to about a foot square--can convey a special charm, when ideas thoughtfully meet scale. And often, the success of an image, its medium and its scale, come together unexpectedly in ways that are hard to explain or duplicate.

What is it, for instance, about Pamela Zwehl-Burke’s “Hinder,” a scruffy little bunny painting, that stops the roving eye? What is it about Donna Clark’s postcard-size watercolor of a barn, with its strange monolithic presence, or the simple, effective and understated pieces of Charlene Miller and Suzanne Schechter that come together so well?

Part of the answer is the power of the subjective eye, which led this particular juror to select this particular group of pieces--10% of the total submitted, she tells us in a statement. The subtext of subjectivity is all the more apparent in a show in which a large number of diverse, small pieces are packed under one roof.

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Inner Outdoor Art: Over in the New Media gallery, a show with the broad title of “Inner Visions” loosely connects three artists with different ideas and mediums. Two work in delicate pencil on paper, the other in ceramic sculpture. What they share is an interest in expressing the influence of nature in personal ways. Also, the artists train their focus on recurring images, exploring an idea to a logical aesthetic conclusion.

For sculptor Melody Cooper, the recurring form--unruly vertical pieces built from irregular stacks of ceramic hoops--refers to a range of things found in nature, including the human form. A twisting vertical shape is given specific form in “Problem Child,” and the regal shape of “Nefertiti” gives the impression of an Egyptian queen in ceramic. “Tsunami” and “Nine Lives” suggest more geological forms and geothermal forces.

Compared to Cooper’s imposing constructions, Janice Nakashima works on a subtler level, using colored pencils. Delicately modulated panels of color appear like layered screens, giving a sense of sky or landscapes, but in an appealingly unfinished way.

Nature, once or twice removed, also makes its way into the work of New Mexico-based artist Dara Mark. In her “Storm Clearing” series, glimpses of sky are caught in the nucleus of compositions framed by ragged, turbulent perimeters. These centerpieces are like tiny bursts of clarity amid the darkness and chaos.

* Small Images Competition and “Inner Visions: Melody Cooper, Janice Nakashima and Dara Mark,” through Feb. 26 at Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura; call for hours: 648-8974.