Art and Artifice

You could say that, in the current group show at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, photography takes detours around tradition. Many alternative, nonconventional techniques are deployed, including hand tinting of black-and-white images, computer-manipulated imagery and the use of faux antiquing.

That said, a common theme here has less to do with cutting-edge art than work relying on unusual techniques to actually enhance romantic ends, making pretty pictures prettier. Then again, nobody should expect avant-garde elements in a show titled “Reminiscence: A Pictorial Journey.” Nostalgia and idle wanderlust are key here, not envelope pushing.

Hand tinting of photographs from exotic locales can bring about its own special blurring of media. In the work of Carol Luther, in places as disparate as Venice, Italy and old Philadelphia, her fastidious tinting work suggests a mutant strain of imagery, somewhere between painting and photography. Sherrie Burke, too, is enamored of hand tinting. At its best, the technique resonates with the photographic source, as in Burke’s “The Staircase,” in which the gray architectural formidability of an old European building is caught between the gray of its photograph and that of the tint.

By contrast, it’s nice to see the elegant formality of tones and lines in a straight black-and-white picture like Burke’s “Chinese Tea Room.”

Computer manipulation of the original photographic source is Joseph Montague’s recent interest. His images are from locales as far-flung as the Yucatan and as close to home--yet also mysterious--as a far corner of the Getty Center, peering down into the foggy city below. His views of skylines and rooftops in New Orleans, also seen in a show at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery several months ago, are strangely appealing, offering an objective perspective in contrast to the street-level imagery more commonly associated with the Crescent City.

More of the textured, paintinglike photographic effect can be seen in the popular practice of Polaroid transfers, as seen in Mary Elliott’s “Cottonwood Tree.” Here, a male nude figure sits casually, and cryptically, before the golden fluff of a towering cottonwood.

Still and all, some of the most striking photographs in this show are made the old-fashioned way, fresh from a darkroom. Among her many pieces here, Eloise Cohen basks in the cool whiteness of a snowy street scene in “Aspen Quiet,” but Cohen’s prize image is of the late pianist Dorothy Donegan, who performed in Thousand Oaks. It’s a nice, candid shot of the accomplished and underrated jazz musician, be-hatted and cutting the image of an elegant, tall drink of water behind a piano, a natural place to perch.

Jill Sattler, a photographer and painter from Santa Barbara, also has done photojournalist work. Some of that shows up in her corner of the show, as in a shot of Jeff and Susan Bridges, in the rustically affluent splendor of their Montecito home. She also shows images from the famed botanical wonder that is the Montecito-based Lotusland, and uses the terra chromada process to give her images a shamelessly romantic, sepia-toned atmosphere.

But Sattler’s most impressive and memorable image is a sympathetic portrait of the late matron saint of the Ojai art scene, Beatrice Wood. The legendary ceramist and multifaceted artist and character appears shortly before her death, looking serene and also bemused; she always seemed to know something the rest of us are still grappling with. She is draped in a shimmering silk sari and lavished in jewelry and is clasping a big shiny silver heart that appears on the verge of dropping from her hand. A metaphor for life passing?

DETAILS

“Reminiscence: A Pictorial Journey,” photography exhibition through May 13 at the halls of the Kavli Theater, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Open Monday, 9-11 a.m. and Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., or call for other viewing hours, 449-2743.