Positively Provincial

Any self-respecting museum sits on a self-defined treasure, in the form of a collection that grows and develops a life of its own, and it behooves an institution to show its own wares now and again.

At the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, they’ve gone down into the proverbial vaults and come up with a show of works from the permanent collection. “Celebrating Ventura County Artists: Selections From the Museum’s Art Collection” manages to live up to the promise of the show’s title by revealing deposits of both local art and history.

Ventura County has its fair share of local art heroes, as well as artists who have made an impact far and wide, and many of them are represented in the collection.

In the entryway of the gallery, a small but mighty photograph by the late Ojai-based Horace Bristol provides a fine introduction.

The famed photojournalist showed his work fairly extensively in the area, and beyond, in the last several years of his life. But this single image, “Threshing Lima Beans,” is unfamiliar, at least to these eyes, and it’s a wonderful example of Bristol’s gift for artful reportage. Workmen are seen in an ambiguous agricultural scene, its composition an enigmatic convergence of lines and limbs.

We find several fine examples of the late Beatrice Wood’s ceramic vessels, as well as one of her ceramic sculptures, “He Just Left,” depicting a lonely woman in a bed. In other internationally known ceramic news, lustrous pieces by the Ojai-based Heinos--Otto and the late Vivika--are accounted for.

Aptly enough, the Botke name figures prominently in the show. The Santa Paula-based artists, Cornelius and Jessie Arms Botke, were among the first important artists from the county, very much involved in establishing the local art scene while venturing into the world.

The museum boasts a solid collection of their work, including Cornelius’ admiring and rustic paintings of the regional environs, as in “Wheeler Canyon, Santa Paula,” where the Botkes lived. More impressive are Jessie Arms Botke’s exotic, plumage-filled paintings of birds, which could be overly busy or florid but somehow manage to be sensuous and graceful.

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Among the larger works in the show are Norma Krahn’s bold, slightly odd painting “East Lake, West Lake,” a big, blue diptych of a swimming pool lined with palm trees and lounge chairs. It’s a scene cut straight out of the archetype of the Southern Californian good life, but, strangely, minus any poolside revelers or human presence at all. The underlying subject could be leisure in suspension.

Hiroko Yoshimoto’s “Lemon, Orange, and a Rose” is a yet-larger piece, a triptych energized by its study-in-contrast. A small still life painting, described by the title, is enveloped by a gray panel on the left, next to a more florid explosion of colors, and a third panel filled with swirling yellow brushwork. The whole reads like a deconstructive analysis of the elements contained within the still life.

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Local color comes in many tints and perspectives, including the crude, folk-like angles in Dickens Chang’s “Sunset of Ventura” or Frances Hofsess’ brightly stylized “Thacher View,” a nearly abstracted view of familiar terrain. A certain desolate agrarian beauty emerges in Gail Pidducks’ “Beasley Barn” or Meredith Brooks Abbott’s view of a farmhouse, “As the Crow Flies,” with its stretch of brown earth in the foreground looking like a narrative pretext.

Landscape painting takes other turns, as well. Henry Chapman Ford’s brooding natural vision comes through in his painting “Forest Interior,” and Jane McKinney’s “Pawley’s Island” embodies her penchant for creating landscapes flecked with personal and metaphorical qualities.

What emerges out of this glimpse into the museum’s holdings is, however intentionally, a portrait of a place, as defined by several of its finer artists.

If there is a subplot to the exhibition, it might be that, if Ventura County is still viewed by the outside world as that large, rambling stretch of earth north of Los Angeles, there are plenty of riches here, artwise, landscapewise and otherwise.

DETAILS

“Celebrating Ventura County Artists: Selections From the Museum’s Art Collection,” through Sept. 5 at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, 100 E. Main St., in Ventura. Hours: Tue.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; 653-0323.

* Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.