Downtown exhibit bursts with blooms, from literal to abstract

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	Meditation on Petals/Flowers of Spring Invitational Group Art Exhibit Through May 30 Open during business hours Mondays-Saturdays 1132 Bishop St. Upper lobby level gallery 599-5009

The artworks range in size from the tiny 4.5- by six-inch garden "Untitled" (oil on wood) by Maia Palmer to the 60- by 50-inch abstract "In My Garden Drinking pu erh cha" (oil on canvas) by Karen Lee.

The 86 two- and three-dimensional works comprise the largest show that gallery director David Behlke has collected for this space. Included are three of his own watercolors. One, "Flowers for Ricky," was painted in memory of his brother, one aspect of the language of flowers.

Another memorial is Snowden Hodges' realistic still life of a stack of books and a single floating rose, "The Final Chapter — Remembering Gardner McKay" (oil on canvas), which honors the writer.

Two paintings by Tomi Kobara, "Bay Window" and "Shoji Window" (oil on canvas), hang in the window and seem luminous and electric with the sunlight shining through them.

Noe Tanigawa's "Indigo Lotus Suite No. 4" (oil, wax and charcoal on Lutrador), with an abstracted figure and lotus — also in a window, with a garden behind it — is illuminated by the natural light glowing through.

Three-dimensional pieces by Lori Y. Uyehara ("Twilight Bloom," various hard and soft woods), Johannette Rowley ("Peace Offering," porcelain), Margo Mitchell ("For Dylan Thomas," arctic white stoneware) and Lucille Cooper ("White Torch Ginger," ceramic) evoke the perfume of flowers that one can smell only with the eyes.

Abstract paintings by Alan Leitner (mixed media), Janet Bond (acrylic and oil on canvas), George Woollard (monotype) and Kimberly M. Chai (collagraph, monotype and relief) address the flower form metaphorically to express a balance of contrasting colors and design elements.

Flowers, leaves and petals reign supreme in the work of watercolorists Jacqueline Chun, Annie Irons, Roger Whitlock and Erin Yamada, as well as oil painters Mark Kadota and Tom Smith, and in the large bright acrylic paintings of Paul Levitt.

Flower power punctuates the dandelion-seed-puff-in-a-gun-barrel painting "Wish" (oil, pencil, graphite, alkyd) by Jodi Endicott and Sabra Feldstein's "Flowers of War," a sculptural work assembled from a pair of cowboy boots painted with the U.S. and Iraqi flags and filled with plastic roses.

"Enter the Dragon" and "Brewing Narcissus Blossoms," a separable diptych by Karen Lee (oil on canvas), incorporates flowers as a minor, visible but strongly suggested part of the painting's narrative.

Bernard Moriaz and his wife Tina are creating and continually changing the live floral arrangements that accompany the exhibit.