BEST BETS Saturday 1/20

IRVINE

7-9 p.m.

Art

The Irvine Fine Arts Center will host a reception for three Los Angeles-based artists who are featured in separate solo exhibitions. Merion Estes’ new paintings use a variety of techniques, including collage and decorative stenciling to create complex compositions. Joyce Lightbody will present works from 1994 to 1999. Her works are small and delicate, collaged, drawn and painted with intricate details that appear as musical scores or symbolic languages. Her art also is more sculptural than two-dimensional. Keith Sklar, who paints in a large format, often has a narrative component with bold images of famous people he revered as a child. These images are hidden in a dense mix of painted and cast elements.

* Three solo exhibitions featuring art by Merion Estes, Joyce Lightbody and Keith Sklar, Irvine Fine Arts Center, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine. Mondays-Thursdays, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fridays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sundays, 1-5 p.m. One-time reception with artists, Saturday, 7-9 p.m. Exhibitions end Feb. 25. (949) 724-6880.

ANAHEIM

8 p.m.

Pop Music

The annual National Assn. of Music Merchants convention in Anaheim this weekend always means that scores of musicians, well-known and unknown, are in town. NAMM Party 2001 brings ex-Guns N’ Roses guitar ace Slash and his band, Slash’s Snakepit, to the Sun Theatre in a show that also features one of the godfathers of punk rock, Dee Dee Ramone.

* NAMM Party 2001, Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. With Glam Nation. 8 p.m. $15. (714) 712-2700.