Strange Portals

Like artistic impulses themselves, ideas for art exhibitions are sometimes hatched in the strangest, albeit intuitive, ways. Take, for example, the current group show at G. Childress Gallery in Ojai.

A few Ojai-based artists, including Carmen Abelleira-White, Jan Sanchez and Lucy Harvey, have nurtured an active interest in “art cars”--vehicles transformed through being painted on and otherwise taken beyond just the monotonous, monochrome tradition of auto paint jobs.

Why not, Harvey wondered, present a number of artists with a common material--in this case, a Volkswagen car door--and see what happens? Voila, one of the odder delights on the local art scene of late, a show punningly dubbed “Adoorable U.”

All is not as frivolous as the title and the concept might seem--found objects and absurdist tactics being serious aspects of contemporary art thinking. And what better sculptural putty to draw on in Southern California, a geographical area so tethered to auto consciousness?

Fittingly, the door in the gallery window is the most car-obsessive of the lot: Ken Gerberick’s “Emblem Car” is covered with metal logos from every imaginable auto maker. It’s a subversive idea in this age of fierce brand-name recognition, smudging out corporate identity in favor of a more cross-brand ecumenical entity. (Or, contrarily, is the message here that merger mania could one day wipe out individuality?)

The materials are the same, but variety rules in this show.

Harvey’s own cheery splash of color validates the title “Wow,” while Venae Warner’s “Mom-Mobile” is gently smothered in references to domesticity. Frank Lauran’s “Szaja’s Door” is thickly textured with a bed of nails, a strangely appealing and imposing visual scheme, and Childress gets cheeky and mock-tropical with “The First Lei,” making the door figurative with a plastic “grass” skirt and a floral print “garment.”

An old hand at car-based art, Abelleira-White’s fancifully hand-painted autos have been seen tooling around town, and here she shows a colorful, kitschy door called “A Rocket Called Me.” A vaguely Southwestern motif guides its design, and a series of road-related anecdotes are hand-scrawled, like a running diary from her own personal path on the road.

Sanchez’s clever “Hot Rod” finds a door tinged with the aftereffects of fire, with tentacles of neon like spindly flames threaded through holes in the metal. Female nudes, their fleshy contours in a dog pile, are lavishly painted on Karen Lewis’ “Car Babes.”

John Farnham’s “Road Rage,” despite its title’s harsh suggestion, finds one of his rusty metal sculptures, a gangly, surreal plant form, sprouting out of a plain door like an unsanctioned energy force.

From a different end of the creative spectrum, the door that is the basis for Michael Gump’s “Unicorn Universe” is chock-full of handiwork, turned into an elaborate fantasy world of toys and childlike vignettes.

Political statements creep into the mix, if sparsely. Sylvia Raz’s “Detesto, Ergo Sum” (I Hate, Therefore I Am), is creepy and telling, with life-size gun-wielding dolls behind the door, which has a guerrilla-like shield quality. “Warning, Concerning Oil,” by Maudette Finck, is more a polemic than an artwork, its anti-oil statement in the form of newspaper clippings and ads plastered on the door.

Gretchen Greenberg’s “Moonlight Serenade” is freely decorated with blithe-looking dinosaurs, with metal scales attached to the door’s perimeter; and the “Millennium Nations” by Peter Stuart finds the metal door cut up, suggesting an infestation of lizards.

Do these pieces allude to the ultimate triumph of the animal world over man’s global destruction, after the apocalypse? Apart from the material reality of this show and its witty variations thereof, the underlying message is a more general one. Art, when approached with passion and invention, will out, regardless of the medium.

DETAILS

“Adoorable U,” through Jan. 31 at G. Childress Gallery, 319 E. El Roblar in Ojai. Hours: Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; 640-1387.

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