Three reasons to visit Dunedin Fine Art Center: weirdly wonderful art, a tribute to oceans, and jewelry with stories

DUNEDIN

Lots to be curious about at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, which has not one but three delightful exhibitions curated by Catherine Bergmann. The lead one, "The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities," plays off that sense of inquiry most provocatively and conceptually, so let's start with it.

The title may ring a bell: It's close to that of a boxed set of CDs by alt-rockers Jane's Addiction, released in April. And a 2002 mystery thriller by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

But this show picks up much older echoes of the practice of the titled and wealthy, beginning in the Renaissance, to stuff rooms (called cabinets) with strange and wondrous creatures and things gathered from around the known world, dried, stuffed and mounted or pickled in bottles. They were the earliest, private versions of today's natural history museums. This show specifically references 18th century pharmacist Albertus Seba's collection, which he documented with sublimely beautiful and eccentric illustrations that were reprinted by the publisher Taschen in a huge, heavy book, The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, some years ago that became a bestseller even at $200.

The "cabinet" at the Dunedin Fine Art Center is free. Here it's a gallery but, in keeping with its venerable lineage, the art is often beautiful and decidedly eccentric. To say that Tanja Softic's haunting, head-scratchingly cryptic prints and paintings are among the most conservative offerings says something.

Unlike those in cabinets of old, these objects are born of the human hand, but they sometimes inspire no less wonder in their conception. Lanny Bergner's forms of mesh and wire that he contorts into pods that look like alien transplants are weirdly marvelous. Like all the artists represented, he seems of the obsessive type. He coils, twists and knots his fine-gauge material into meticulous constructions with mysterious layers that hint at inner worlds.

Bergner's work suggests creatures from other worlds; Timothy Horn's massive silicone rubber sculpture, suspended from the ceiling, looks as if a full-blown invasion is in progress. And yet its gracefully curving legs invoke the delicate lines of Thomas Chippendale's furniture and, if upended, the sculpture could even resemble a monochromatic prototype for a Dale Chihuly glass construction.

Deon Blackwell's clay and salt forms suspended on long cords glancingly resemble a giant wind chime. A closer look reveals odd glazes and a strange tangle of red on the floor beneath, clay shaped and colored to look like a bloody mass. Blackwell is forthright in his intentions, telling us in the wall text that this series arose out of grief over the death of loved ones, detailing how adding salt to the clay, which causes it to deteriorate, is a metaphor for the way cancer inhabits and eats away at a body. He goes on to refer to these works as "zombie organs." Okay. Maybe too much information, but they are still cool.

The quiet elegance of Ladislav Hanka's mushroom etchings, accompanied by a wood carving of one, is almost trumped by his eloquent artist's statement. I am normally not a fan of them; they tend to be so obtuse and overwrought. Not this one. He could be a novelist. But I hope he continues etching.

The most literal connection to the cabinet of curiosities tradition is in Adrienne Outlaw's sculptures attached to the wall, fitted with lenses and mirrors, and functioning as viewfinders and microscopes. Their external appearances are a funky range that includes industrial pipe, animal horn, crochet, feathers, plastic and glass. Look inside each little eyehole and a surprise greets you. It could be your own eye, a cluster of barnacles, nuts, fur or insect wings. They're precious little microcosms.

Shihoko Amano and Yuka Saito are jewelers. Amano fashions rounded forms from various materials to emulate those found in nature, large seed pods, for example, in a group of stick pins. Saito chooses the artificial industrial material polypropylene as the main component in designs that also mimic or invoke nature. The necklaces and earrings are composed of layers and drifts of it, cut into delicate shapes, the toughness of the thermoplastic polymer belied by the jewelry's fragile appearance.

"Wonders of the Sea," another show, also confronts the natural world. Artist Rachel Simmons does not sacrifice beauty to didacticism in her photographs, paintings and prints, but her message is clear: Stop messing with the oceans, people!

Her visual exhortations take several forms. On large, lush digital prints of the watery void, she writes letters using journals and accounts of voyages from long-ago sailors. On other photographic prints, she paints white webs and swirls onto coral reefs as suffocating killers. A wall of paintings of sea creatures is formally arranged like a Victorian family portrait gallery against wallpaper in one of these fussy overall prints we associate with the 19th century. Look closer and the print has marine motifs. The painting's frames are ornate and painted a glossy, funeral black. Another wall holds a second portrait gallery, this one arranged in a contemporary manner, its small mixed-media works unframed and pinned to the surface. In these two installations, we find no direct connections between the individual subjects, and that's the point about the ties that bind us together in a vast organic web.

The third exhibition, "Critters God Left on the Drawing Board," is connected to the Dunedin Fine Art Center's educational mission, which includes exhibiting works by students who take classes there. In this case, the long, wide hallway usually reserved for such shows (called the Center Gallery) is lined with cases of jewelry made by Susan Maxon and her students. I don't usually review student shows, even adult ones, and I'm not going to do so here. The reason I spent a good bit of time looking at it is the organizing principle behind it, which gives the jewelry so much conceptual integrity.

Two years ago, Maxon's class decided to pick a theme for each to interpret in jewelry. The majority seemed interested in considering designs that humans have adapted from nature, and those that do not occur in the natural world (the wheel, for example). The ensuing discussions they had sound fascinating. On one side of the gallery are the objects the class created in 2007. On the other are the more recent ones from 2008, with much more refinement and sophistication. Some of the pieces have professional polish; some are obviously amateurish. But read the wall texts and you see that that kind of judgment doesn't really matter. Each student named the piece of jewelry and, of course, listed its materials. But each also wrote a reason it's a "Critter God (gender varying by writer) Left on the Drawing Board." I read every one, proving the point that there is always more than one way to appreciate art.

And though it's not an art exhibition, the David L. Mason Children's Art Museum in the building has terrific new interactive stations designed by Todd Still that complement the "Cabinet" exhibition.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at lennie@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8293.