Many Means to Art

Through The White Gallery’s front windows you see the dress: white satin skirt, blue bodice, tiny Pippa Middleton buttons running down the back. Kate DeAngelis, who works in the White’s Great Barrington gallery and studied costume design, has now turned her talent to fashion. And the White’s Tino Galuzzo wants everyone to share his enthusiasm for her work. DeAngelis’s dress is one of the felicities — and surprises — in the White’s annual holiday exhibition, “An Artful Season.” Galuzzo has gathered 17 artists working in a variety of mediums for this celebratory show. Most are known in the area, some nationally. The show also benefits The Northwest Arts Council, which will receive a percentage of all sales. Marjory Reid’s “Woo” and “Away” command one front room with explosions of color and complicated designs overlaid with geometric shapes and emphatic lines. You seem to gaze down on her work from above, as if flying low over unspecified topography. The bold, overlaid circles of red in one picture might be part of an aiming grid for a bombing run. The pictures are alive, structurally interesting and meticulously painted. James Meyer’s four etchings on paper are from his Jungian archetype series. They are made of lines, dots and circles drawn on a plate covered in india ink. They have a faded, ghostly quality like depictions of constellations in the night sky. Best is “Shadow,” with its child and his tricycle. Meyer, who has long assisted Jasper Johns, is an always interesting artist. What can one say about the two Robert Kipniss mezzotints. They are refined, beautifully realized, controlled, elegant. With Kipniss, one of the country’s greatest printmakers, you always find depth and meaning under the perfect surface. They hang beside a single John Funt watercolor of a vase of peonies, color-drained in grays, black and white. Three small gouaches by Vint Lawrence, the former CIA agent turned cartoonist and artist, are charming pictures of reddish berries on leafless branches. And three determinedly color field landscapes from Alan McCord, whose little “Salmon Kill” etching in another room – almost pointillist in black and gray on paper – is a new and quite good departure for the artist. Warren Prindle’s simple, architectural “Cheyenne” is much better than the sentimental “Aspens.” John Lees’s two architectural watercolors are beautifully executed and detailed. His pictures — especially a wonderful rendering of Salisbury’s Congregational Church — avoid banality by conveying a sense of time and imperfection. His oil of “Three Cows in a Field” remarkably captures the bone structure and musculature of the animals. Janet Andre Block’s four little paintings of barns are unusual, oil covering acrylic, and border on the naïve. Joan Jardine’s “Laurel Ridge, Stormy Day” is a good example of her blurring line, here in lavender, mauve and dark blues, to achieve the emotion of landscape. Victor Leger’s “West Road Snow” oil is delicate, almost fragile. Joel Schapira contributed four mixed media wall collages. And Mary Close, whose Our Town show earlier in the year was very successful, is represented with three photo mosaics, including the terrific “Cheeseburger,” a flower print, and, happily for those who want to find themselves or friends in the work, signed posters of the original “Our Town” photo mosaic of hundreds of pictures of Salisbury residents. Finally, Galuzzo has included a display of Faith Hochberg’s stunning handmade costume jewelry. Hochberg combines one or more old items — a button, cameo, small brooch — with new beads and stones to make wonderfully clunky bracelets, necklaces and pendants. These are dramatic pieces that can be both admired as artistic craft and as adornments. “Artful Season” will continue at The White Gallery, 341 Main St. in Lakeville, through Jan. 27. Hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 860-435-1029 or go to www.thewhitegalleryart.com.