Natural Affinity

In many avenues of modern media and culture, images and concepts are thrown out in a blur, like a fast and fragmented storm front that never quite ends. Against this backdrop of excessive stimuli, some artists take extra care to emphasize the importance of slowing down and considering the deeper values of roots, in culture and nature.

Slowing down can be a beautiful, restorative thing.

That contemplative strain is the common thread connecting two artists currently showing at the Ventura College galleries. For Betsy Lohrer Hall, exhibiting in Gallery Two, sculpture and painting are means of expressing what she calls, in her artist’s statement, “a deep reverence for nature and natural processes.”

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Meanwhile, the New Media Gallery shows the gently ritualistic assemblage work of Loraine Veeck’s “Legacy Series,” drawing on diverse materials to suggest cultural lineage and time’s passage.

Hall’s sculptures, which fill the gallery with a kind of gritty grace and curious drama, show an obvious affinity for nature, molding physical objects that suggest--without directly imitating--forms found in nature. “Requiem,” of sticks, mud, string and wire, is a shrine-like construction, a framework of sticks cradling a swirl of twigs, which could be viewed either as a nest or a spirit having flown.

“Maya” and “Inwit” present forms that look like mutant chrysalises, a hard exterior harboring tender life forms poised to burst forth. “Hirsute” could be some crustacean, beached and with its hair-lined outer edge showing.

“Eve’s Three Pockets” entails a string, dangled from the ceiling, with organic-looking encasements. The provocative title leads us to interpret the piece as a reflection on original sin and original motherhood. “Thoughts in Vestige” comprises a dozen pieces hanging from the ceiling, again suggesting seed pods or chrysalises, or even, perhaps, cosmic eggs. They are forms in transition.

Transition is the operative word, too, in Hall’s two-dimensional pieces, which appear in all their ragged glory, with torn, non-rectangular edges and hints of fossil life, all within a basically abstract style. Larger works like “Marriage” and “Atonement” play off shapes evocative of fruit, figures or cellular life, rising through the milky, heavily reworked surface.

It’s as if, with this work, Hall is digging around in her own psyche, as well as some set of archeological truths in search of the juncture between nature, personal nature and art.

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An air of archeological interest, along with anthropology, is also evident in Veeck’s “Legacy Series.” As she explains, the work can be seen as a contemporary artist’s expansion on the idea of “ancient tribal altar pieces” and is intended “to give the illusion of the stresses of time.”

Time and history do play a role, however subtle. These assemblages are modest in scale and orderly in their compositional approach, but are also densely packed. Painted imagery blends with assorted “junk”--rusted metal pieces and other objects--fabric from various cultures, and, often, an archival photographic portrait.

By instinct, we first view these anonymous human subjects as the main event, but they are actually just part of the larger design. Veeck seeks to create an artistic statement in which layers of history, heritage and texture all cohere into carefully wrought compositions. They bow to tribal culture and the collage idiom but also speak on their private visual terms.

DETAILS

Sculpture and painting by Betsy Lohrer Hall, Loraine Veeck’s “Legacy Series,” through March 26 at Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road in Ventura. Call gallery for hours; 648-8974.

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