Crafty Creations

For several years now, Charles Borman has been a keeper of the art gallery flame in the small, almost bucolic town of Montrose on the southeastern fringe of the Valley. A teacher who retired after 25 years at Cal State Los Angeles, he is also an artist in his own right with a flexible attitude and impish humor.

Now showing in his Village Square Gallery, along with James Wills’ wall pieces, Borman’s basswood sculptures are pun-happy creations, blithe in spirit and neatly crafted. His clever mutant menagerie includes a buffalo with wings, a fish soaring over a rainbow and a flying reindeer.

The title states a self-evident truth in the gently absurd “A Fish With One Wing Can Only Fly in Circles,” its winged sea-life subject fitted with an antique leather pilot’s cap. “Golden Boy” is a gold-painted angel riding a fish, cleanly rendered. The punning instinct prevails again with “You’ve Gotta’ Have Heart,” in which a fish has been cross-sectioned to reveal a fly-fishing lure inside. It might sound too cute for comfort, but Borman applies enough care and unpretentious whimsy to make it work.

Also on view, Wills’ mixture of wax oil pastel and acrylics with a fluorescent palette suggest innocent, crayon-like surfaces. He likes to depict vehicles and architecture, from “Mayan Rockery” to the “Bank of California,” in bright, contrast-heavy hues. From a different architectural angle comes the humble “In/Out House,” a cheeky portrait of an al fresco relief station.

Across the Valley, at the Platt Gallery, two artists explore emotional and intellectual ideas through abstraction in a show titled “Contemplating the Sublime.”

Gilad Ben-Artzi, born in Israel and now an Angeleno, addresses the process of exploding the triangle as a basic geometric structure. Tall, metal sculptures, roughly the height of an adult, inherently suggest figurative and sometimes narrative qualities, even within an approach that is essentially abstract.

“Chai” involves a striking combination of elements with small pieces of I-beams in a heap wrapped loosely with barbed wire, a tall form rising from that base. It’s as if a figure is struggling to transcend the oppression or emotional baggage at its feet.

Elsewhere, the references are more objective and detached, as in “Skyscraper,” a lean construction sculpted with striations and indentations, or “Fountain” with its rounded ripples and blue stone surfaces alluding to water.

Channa Horwitz, in her finely detailed work, crosses the line between visual and musical expression with color and rhythmic design conveyed through elaborate, graph-like pieces. From a distance, the works in her “Sonakinatography” series--the title is a coinage meaning sound, motion and notation--have a pleasant tapestry-like effect, with colors woven into the designs.

With this work, she also crosses over from the realm of the static, fixed art object. It’s music for the eye, pleasant on the surface but built up with ornate details and notions.

Dion Macellari’s current exhibition at the Orlando Gallery, dubbed “Thought Crimes,” is an enjoyably harebrained trip, wild and cartoonish at times and more art-worldly at others. He mixes and matches imagery into a complex and fantastical stew of ideas, with no easy interpretive portal inside.

Which is not to say the art doesn’t titillate the eye and mind. “101 West 78th St.” and “The Light in Me” are kinetic yet fragile composites fit to burst with ideas and images.

The work of Myra Gantman, the other artist showing at the Orlando, was recently reviewed at the Century Gallery.

BE THERE

Charles Borman and James Wills, through Nov. 6 at the Village Square Gallery, 2418 Honolulu Ave., Suite C, Montrose. Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. (818) 541-9952. Gilad Ben-Artzi and Channa Horwitz, through Sunday at the Platt Gallery, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. Hours: Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; (310) 476-9777, Ext. 203. Dion Macellari and Myra Gantman, through Saturday at Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; (818) 789-6012.