An Array of Angels

Christmas is the time of year when spiritual nature cozies up to secular merriment, when Christian ideology and Santa Claus dance around each other, and frictions are more or less forgiven.

So it comes as no big surprise to find an art show about angels at the Childress Gallery, a nondenominational, multicultural gathering. In “Angels, In Paradise and Out,” the perspectives are inherently diverse--reverence mingles with irreverence, cultures collide, styles are both cheeky and serious, in a big, happy party of opposites.

The unofficial mascot of the show could be Sharry Rose’s “Art Angel,” in which assorted materials have been haphazardly splashed onto a sculpture of a woman’s head. Carole Tapolian’s “Dark Angel” is another of the photographer’s staged, quixotic scenarios, in which a fleeting image of a woman and a sinister silhouette establish an aura of unexplained tension and intrigue.

Adrien Mahl’s sculptural piece, “Fossils Seraphic,” finds a hunk of rock indented by a tracing of a bony figure, with feathers passing for wings. With this piece, the archeological and the celestial seem to make an unlikely convergence. Despite its title, Charles Baptiste’s painting “Angel of Death” is peopled with whimsical skeletons, in a celebratory atmosphere correlating with “Dia de los Muertos” imagery.

Rubber chickens are not typical stand-ins for angel imagery. But they appear as the martyred, haloed subjects of Sylvia Raz’s “K.F.C. Angels.”

Stepping away from holiday froth is Seco’s painting “Into the Abyss,” a brooding abstract scheme blending with a vague landscape reference. A figure--a falling angel?--decomposing in a manner reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s art, plunges downward, either burning or bleeding, or both.

A leering sort of humor creeps into Xavier Montes’ painting “Oh, No,” in which a harpist eyes a lithe, scantily clad femme fatale. A similar theme, merging earthly desire and celestial detachment, shows up in Aura de la Fuente’s painting “Burning Wings of Desire.” Here, flames rising from the chest of a horizontal man singe the wings of a nude angel.

On the lighter side, Nancy Whitman’s giddy painting “Celebrate” depicts angels armed with musical instruments, swimming in bubbly bursts of flowers and soft colors. Gretchen Greenberg’s “Blue Woman” is a lean, lithe form alluding to the humility and grace of a hooded Madonna figure.

That piece is as sleek as Ronda La Rue’s assemblage, “Women in Sheep’s Clothing,” is charmingly funky. Found objects are gathered into a work that breathes in nostalgia and suggests time’s passage, through its rusty metal, weathered wood and old doll’s head wearing an oil funnel for a chapeau. It takes all kinds of angels to make a seraphic group show.

DETAILS

“Angels, In Paradise and Out,” through Dec. 30 at the G. Childress Gallery, 319 E. El Roblar, in Ojai. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Mon.-Sat.; 640-1387.

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