Flames of Inspiration : Art City show reflects on fires that devastated the complex a year ago.

Faced with snow, sleet, fire or war, art will generally prevail. That’s one of the underlying themes in the unusual exhibition currently at Art City II gallery.

Roughly equal parts documentary, emotional reaction and art exhibit, the show called “One Year Later . . . ,” deals with the two fires that befell the original Art City over a two-week period last December.

The fact that one of the fires was started by teenagers playing with matches adds, well, fuel to the flame of indignation.

Although the fire made front-page news last year, the full measure of the tragedy has largely been lost on the general public, partly because precious works were lost in the artists’ studios. Also, Art City II--with its decorative stone business and a spacious art gallery--is the more publicly trafficked of the two components of the “City.”

A series of photographs--taken within the compound and from an aerial perspective--offers trusty reportage of the damage.

The aerial shots show Art City next to an auto salvage yard, and the comparison of junked autos and damaged art contains a telling irony: Some of the Art City artists rely on “found objects” salvaged from everyday life.

Doug Lipton, for instance, has often found inspiration from castoff materials. Here, he shows rather elegant fire-altered sculptures made from scrap. “Firescreens” and “Requiem for a 12-foot extension ladder” give new meaning to common artifacts while paying tribute to a tragic event.

Fittingly, the effects of the fire on the art is illustrated in various ways in this show--both by actual effect of fire on art and by after-the-fact, considered artistic responses.

Paul Lindhard, the founder and so-called “mayor” of Art City, shows a sculpture, “Spectre of an Atomic Africa,” which he made in 1973, now reduced to a nearly abstract mass of charred, ashen wood.

Steve Aguilar’s “Resurrection” punches up the martyrdom angle a bit too blatantly, with a crucifix-shaped assemblage of photographs from the fire-wracked property and other shrine-suitable artifacts.

On the back wall, M.B. Hanrahan’s “I Just Left” is a large work on blackened paper, which works on a more personal level. It’s a white-outlined drawing of the artist as a nude figure chained at the wrist to a stone amid flames licking upward. A text describes her emotional reaction--numbness--at the time the fire destroyed her studio.

By contrast, Alexandra Morosco’s “What I did on my Christmas vacation . . . lesson incomplete” bubbles over with quiet, bitterly ironic rage aimed at the young perpetrators, who reportedly laughed as they left the scene of the growing fire.

The piece is an assemblage of found objects--two rusted and burnt metal chair frames hang on the wall, holding singed books and animal remnants, a nest of feathers and a bone.

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Nature and culture were victimized by the careless youths who accidentally started the blaze. Some of the actual, damaged artworks are also on view. Steve Gottlieb’s “Flowers of Yesteryear” is a mild-mannered floral subject, but the burnt edges instill an element of danger.

Likewise, Diana Chamberlain’s “Benjamin II” is a simple portrait of a child, but the charred wooden frame lends another reading. We think not of the art but of the flames that threatened its existence.

So it goes with the show. It’s not so much about art as it is about the survival of art, and of the artist’s ability in the face of tragedy to see transformation as a positive force. However potent and subversive art and creativity are, their physical manifestations are fragile. Last year’s Art City fires taught us that lesson, as do, on a global scale, continuing reports of looted and rerouted artworks during World War II.

In that saga, art was valued over human life. At Art City, the fires renewed appreciation of the importance and vulnerability of life and art, on a local level.

DETAILS

“One Year Later . . . ,” through Jan. 30 at Art City II, 34 Peking St. in Ventura. Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; 648-1690.