Brave, New Millennium

What to do when you have a gallery of modest proportions and a desire to make a splash for the new millennium? The answer: small images.

Village Square Gallery in Montrose is a nicely outfitted, fully functional art nook north of Glendale. For the current show, called “The Millennium Exhibit,” owner Charles Borman has managed to squeeze more than 30 works into the space, and it’s a rich sampler.

Thankfully, though, not all the pieces here address the M-word.

Ellen Grim supplies bumper sticker wisdom in her ironic, Ed Ruscha-like paintings, bearing messages such as “in the new millennium, change will be a given, not an option.”

In Roy Walden’s whimsical assemblage “10 Decades to the Millennium,” a tiny mirrored disco ball falls down a pole, past 20th century milestones, from World War I to the World Trade Organization protests in December, an unwitting finale to a turbulent century.

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Meredith Olson’s “Buffalo Flag 2000” is a Jasper Johns-like concoction.

Borman’s own mixed media works, cheekily dubbed the “Rock in the Millennium” series, play off the built-in designs on actual stones. Tiny landscape paintings extend the stone’s natural vein-like markings, a modest merger of nature and culture.

More such cross-media trickery pops up, coincidentally, in Lee Wexler’s “Happy New Year Fara, Happy New Year Honey, Good Night Jesse,” in which a simple night sky image is enhanced by a glass covering that has been scratched from behind with multiple fractures that suggest twinkling stars. In this trompe l’oeil piece, double takes are in order.

For local-cum-historical interest, and also comic relief, Walter Askin’s self-explanatory painting, “George Washington Crossing Silver Lake” exerts a dry, surreal charm. Zolita Sverdlove’s oil on wood paintings are small, gutsy and roughhewn, capturing the spirit of place without fussy attention to detail. For her part, Angela Hernandez envisions a sense of place with her abstractionist rendering of a golf course, that haven for geometric expanses of green.

Janet Olenik’s “One of Forty” series depicts local landmarks, such as a Melrose coffee shop and a funky storefront called “The Bargain Saver” that we might take for granted.

Amid the louder imagery, Mika Cho’s dark-hued abstractions are refreshingly cool and meditative.

In the sculpture department, Cecilia Miquez’s “An Edition of Nine,” a pair of svelte and sensuous female figures, bald and nude, convey a rigor and beauty that transcends their miniature stature.

The Village Square’s first show of the new millennium is a diverse gathering of artists heading bravely into a new era. Or continuing on individual journeys toward self-expression, already well in progress.

BE THERE

“The Millennium Exhibit,” through Feb. 6 at Village Square Gallery, 2418 Honolulu Ave., Suite C, Montrose. Gallery hours: 1-5 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. (818) 244-4257.