An Island of Art

A strange sense of tranquillity hovers over the sprawling compound that was Camarillo State Hospital and will, this time next year, be Cal State University Channel Islands. The grounds, dotted with Mission Revival buildings, sit amid an expanse of agricultural acreage, against a gently craggy hillside, far from urban or suburban realities.

Especially in this interim period, as the institution slowly changes its identity and function, the place seems like a contemplative escape zone. Partly because of that, it’s a perfect locale for a new art space.

And space is the operative word here. The entity calling itself the Studio Channel Islands Arts Center has settled into a sizable section of the former hospital--aptly enough, the area once given over to art therapy. A public gallery space is just the beginning, leading into hallways and large rooms-cum-galleries, as well as ample studio space, a sculpture garden and areas planned for classes and workshops.

Visiting the new center can also be a bit wistful of an experience for anyone who was involved in the hospital’s art therapy program or who benefited from the often startling exhibitions of art by patients.

The annual art exhibitions at the hospital were cherished local events, extolling aesthetic and human feats by artists with refreshing outlooks.

It’s fitting that the art pulse continues here. Other shows have been staged, but, in a way, the current group exhibit, the First Fine Arts Exhibition, is the dazzling kickoff to what could be one of Ventura County’s brightest art venues.

In the gallery, locals have donated materials and time to buff up the place and refurbish what had fallen into institutional neglect.

Gerd Koch, a fine painter who recently retired from teaching at Ventura College, has taken over as director, and the show is largely the result of his appeals to artists he has known and/or studied with.

The list and the work are quite impressive, including local artists who normally don’t show much in the region.

Chief among that group is Ojai-based Michael Dvortcsak, a painter of no uncertain strengths, who shows in various urban outposts around the world and whose work has been creeping into local viewing spaces. Here we find his “Male Torso #5,” a study of light and sinew, at once contemporary and classical in dimension.

We don’t see enough of realist painter John Nava either, and his two pieces here stand apart, in different ways. “Single Orange” is a dramatic little still-life, a palpable citrus portrait, while “Screen Kiss” basks in narrative intensity. The title defines the central action of a couple, while a film crew, in muted light, envelops them and a fire in the distance gives a sense of love amid the ruins. But it’s all done with a certain melancholic detachment and an awareness of the artificiality at hand.

Ron Robertson, a distinctive assemblage artist who teaches at Santa Barbara City College, makes a rare appearance in Ventura County, showing “Five Elements,” made from stacked cubes dealing with the natural elements, with the green surface of a bronze patina suggesting age and natural processes at work.

Priscilla Bender-Shore, another Santa Barbara artist--slated to have a solo show here this fall--shows two of her provocative pieces.

The tall photo-realistic painting “Spring Fall” by Connie Jenkins manages to portray its gushing, watery subject with a cool eye, projecting a mood both idyllic and objective. Eric R. Richards, no stranger to the transforming properties of metal and found objects, shows “African Lion,” its subject implied through the unlikely material of twisting steel rods.

Hiroko Yoshimoto, another artist with a link to Ventura College as a teacher, shows two abstract paintings in her “Lines and Signs,” at once free in gesture and orderly in structure. Nancy Whitman’s “Lady at Nordstrom,” awash in pinks and throbbing with warmth, has almost a voyeuristic subplot, as if the unclad woman in a dressing room is a “found nude” for the artist.

Photographer William Hendricks shows a photography collage with the cyber-cheeky title www.y2k.megabyte-me.com. (Web surfers who rush to find new URLs will come up blank on this one, which doesn’t exist except as a physical artwork.)

And for local color, Susan Petty’s “Saticoy Palms” depicts a barren street in that small town, with looming palms standing like sentinels over silence.

No particular point of view, from a curatorial perspective, emerges from all this art. But it adds up to a fine how-do-you-do for a space well worth our attention in the coming months, and, with luck, years.

DETAILS

First Invitational Fine Arts Exhibition, at Studio Channel Islands Art Center on the CSU Northridge at Channel Islands campus in Camarillo. Hours: noon-3 p.m., Thursday-Saturday; 383-1368.

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