Bodies and Buildings Give Rise to Constructive Imagery

Photographer Jurgen Kuschnik, a Ventura County resident by way of Germany, brings a distinctive, modernist spin to the familiar turf of “Classic Images,” in the Upstairs Gallery at Natalie’s Fine Threads. The show might seem to be evenly split between nudes and architectural subjects, but Kuschnik brings both ends toward the middle, focusing on the form common to both.

He doesn’t approach the venerable tradition of nudes head-on, particularly in the centerpiece of the show, images from his “Box Works: The Figure Contained.” Here, a female nude’s form is encased in an actual box. The frame-within-a-frame device becomes a playful commentary on the “boxing” aspect of nude portraiture, contained as they are in a frame and frozen in time. It’s almost disarming to see a figure’s feet outside the box, violating the frame.

Other nude images steer to the left of conventional, whether with a very pregnant woman or a rough shot of a nude inside an art gallery, as if taken quickly, on the sly.

A similar, selective eye informs Kuschnik’s architectural photography, spanning his wide-ranging travels. The rounded edges of a church in Taos, N.M., or the ornate white carvings on a door in Vienna are fair game to a sharp, wandering eye. On a more personal note, he goes home again with images from his native town of Braunschweig, Germany. In one striking image, he shoots from an oblique overhead view of coffee drinkers in “Kaffee Pause,” inspired, he says, by Bauhaus artist Umbo, otherwise known as Otto Umbehr.

Kuschnik also shows a deceptively casual image of the unceremonious front of the humble apartment building where he grew up. By reading the accompanying text, we get the sense of a lot more emotional baggage behind the cool, objective surface.

* Jurgen Kuschnik’s “Classic Images,” Natalie’s Fine Threads, Upstairs Gallery, 596 E. Main St. Ends Saturday. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. (805) 643-8854.

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Giving Voice: The discography of John Biggs, the acclaimed Ventura-based composer, has just grown by two titles. Biggs’ Consort Press label recently released compilations of the composer’s choral and vocal music, culled from many years of his writings. They’re available through the Web site www.consort press.com. On a poignant personal note, each CD package features still-life paintings by Biggs’ wife, Carol Rosenak, who passed away recently.

Collectively, “A Vocal Bouquet” and “A Choral Bouquet” nicely showcase Biggs’ seamless way with writing for voice. His musical language tends to be abidingly tonal and melodic, with some digressions into more dissonant terrain (as with the mournful “Canto Sobre la Muerte de Silvestre,” written in honor of the late, great Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas).

That piece, from “A Vocal Bouquet,” comes in the midst of varied musical landscapes, framed by the whimsical opener, “Eccentricities,” and the emotionally probing, multilingual closer Songs for Baritone and Cello. Recorded in the Ojai Presbyterian Church in 2000, in a moving performance by baritone James Kenny and cellist Virginia Kron, this Biggs work is a strong, recent field report from his musical mind.

“A Choral Bouquet” runs a gamut from his ambitious 1990 work “Mass for Our Time” to two chorales on poems of Oscar Wilde, to an affecting new setting of lyrics to “Silent Night.”

The CD ends with his chipper, Copland-esque “Auction Cries,” its bubbly Americana-tinged text drawn from auction ads from the Emporia (Kan.) Gazette.

Let it not be said that Biggs, despite his resistance to contemporary schools of musical thought, isn’t a composer with open eyes and mind. His intriguing creative saga continues.