Art exhibition presents layers of Mexican American culture.

It might seem, to a casual viewer, that the current show at the Ojai Center for the Arts is a pleasant splash of color, an entertainment for the eye. And it is, but it’s also much more. There are layers of cultural history, perhaps stemming from the fact that both artists, Xavier Montes and Virginia Ashby Valdez, are important in the Latino community.

Their art, in different ways, reflects a celebration of and an investigation into their cultural heritage. Montes has been the force behind the annual “De Colores” exhibition at the Union Oil Museum in Santa Paula, where he was born and now lives. Valdez, intrigued by the influences of Mexican folk art and other cultural traditions, has taught papier-mache workshops at the Inlakech Cultural Center in Oxnard as well as at the renowned Self-Help Graphics in East L.A.

Together, they present a show that gives much-needed time to Latino culture, in a corner of Ventura County not always prone to representing it. Touching on Mexican and Mayan themes and the travails of farm workers, the exhibition appeals directly to the eye and engages the mind.

Valdez’s obvious passion and skill with papier-mache extend to her respect for the work by the well-known Lunares family in Mexico City. She also paints with irrepressible flair, with the vivid colors, raw energy and mythic airs of folk art. “The Mother Tree” depicts a symbolic tree with a surreal palette, alluding to the cycle of life and death accented by the saying, printed carefully against gold, “Death is not extinguishing the light, it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”

Masks are a key interest for Valdez, as with the “Teotihuacan Masks,” multicolored relief pieces that suggest the interplay of Modernism and ancient artistic wisdom. Tiny, giddy images of Lucifer line up in a row in “Devils of a Different Color.”

“Golden Mask from Tomb 7” shows an ornate Mayan image, flanked by typically jolly skeleton masks, reflecting the view of death represented by Dia de Los Muertos. Skeletal characters appear again, dancing or swinging a lasso while on horseback, framing a mirror in “Calaveras Oaxquenas.” These figures--calaveras--at leisure playfully mock us, mere mortals peering into the mirror, with their toothy grins. Or are they grimaces? The ambiguity is part of their tragicomic charm.

Prankster ghouls also appear in one of the more disarmingly powerful images in the gallery of Montes’ work. The painting called, with mordant humor, “Pesticide Party,” shows farm workers toiling in a field, while some calaveras lounge about. Skulls scattered in the soil, amid the produce, suggest the dangers of farm labor.

“Los Okies” and “Mui Trabajadora” are simpler paeans to farm workers, their hunched-over images flecked with hyperbolic colors, paying tribute to this locally relevant culture of labor. Sociopolitical themes emerge in paintings like “Viva Los Zapatistas” and “Che,” rendered with freely superimposed imagery suggesting a swirl of ideas.

Pre-Columbian references are scattered throughout Montes’ work, as well. In “Cabeza Olmeca,” a Mayan deity hiding in the underbrush seems to signify the deep, subliminal cultural influence of pre-Cortez life in Mexico. “Classical Mayan” portrays a Mayan sculptural bust floating, again like an icon or an emblem of collective memory, against sky and water.

Closer to home, “Guadalupe Church, Santa Paula” is a romantic vision of a church perched like a haven in a bare field, a hill behind and a stormy yet dreamy sky above. “Viva la Fiesta” is a self-portrait of the artist as a harpist during the Ojai Fiesta last year. Sparkles of fireworks dance around the Ojai Post Office, that imposing and sentimental local landmark.

This is an exhibition worth taking a close look at. It has stories to tell, pictures to convey and a broad sense of local color, extending from Ventura County to the Yucatan.

DETAILS

“Dos Artistas,” by Xavier Montes and Virginia Ashby Valdez, through Feb. 28 at the Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 S. Montgomery St., in Ojai. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Tue.-Sun.; 646-0117.

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