In Search of a Theme

The Finegood Gallery, upstairs at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Center in West Hills, is one of those spaces in the Valley that can be counted on for a few good shows each year.

The current show is not one of them.

“Art of Our Generation,” an annual group exhibition in its ninth year, is a well-meaning gathering of work by a broad selection of artists. But with levels of artistic caliber and skill so disparate, it’s hard to get a handle on what the show is about.

However, several pieces demand closer attention. Seymour Kaplan’s lithographs project a social conscience. They are examples of artful reportage from the societal fringes where the homeless dwell. In “Helter Shelter,” a family reads aloud from a book amid rows of simple cots.

Several watercolorists demonstrate fluid skills in the medium without having anything particularly striking to say. Mel Wolf’s watercolors are among the most memorable of the lot.

Of the photography contingent, often grounded in travelogue sightings, the most alluring is Sondra L. Cohen’s Venice triptych. She captures the wild and warm color schemes of the canal-side structures, dealing with an enchanted reality in an insightful way.

One of the more commanding pieces in the show sits comfortably between art and craft modes. The Hamish Amish Quilters present “Ellis Island Quilt,” a collage of archival photographs and images that refer to the famed immigrant way station. The emotional texture wavers between idealism and chilliness, as in the image of a buttonhook with text reading, “Sometimes, inspectors used a buttonhook to peel back eyelids and check for disease.”

Abstraction doesn’t rear its head much in this show, making the tranquil visual investigations by m. Rheuban all the more impressive. In the artist’s mixed-media piece “Haze,” intimations of architectural space are obscured by a fog, and the tension between implied order and essential abstraction supplies its poetic identity.

In another artistic niche, Ed Krimston’s appealingly eccentric painting “Chicken Lady” hangs on the back wall and murmurs loudly for attention. A garish, quasi-Cubist portrait of a poultry-bearing peasant woman, the piece is witty and enthusiastic, an enlightened oddball at a fairly sedate party.

BE THERE

“Art of Our Generation,” through Aug. 22 at the Finegood Art Gallery, Bernard Milken Jewish Community Center, 22622 Vanowen St., West Hills. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. (818) 716-1773.