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Tribune/TODAY Tuesday, February 3, 1981 C-3 Fine prints featured in fresh new art space By Charles Shere Tribute Art Critic The offices and gallery of the Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program have been cleaned, painted and set in order. The result is a bright, fresh new art space at 1214 Webster St. — not exactly a posh neighborhood, but then that's not what a gallery really needs. The space is comfortable, with high-ceilings, nicely daylit through the skylights. It isn't big enough for really large paintings, but it encourages the sort of viewing appropriate for the current two-man show of prints by Eric Rauscher and Lilibet Dewey. Wisely, the gallery direction has decided to make the work of three other printmakers available only in a print bin; the walls here can only accommodate so many. All five artists are associated with Kala Institute, the impressive printmaking facility now housed in the third floor of the old Heinz building in Berkeley. Kala offers studio space and equipment to printmakers in a variety of media: lithography, etching and letterset presses; an acid room for etching; a photography studio for photoetching as well as traditional photographic techniques; and papermaking facilities as well. The mood at Kala is quiet, well-lit, open and professional, and the prints on view at ACNAP seem to convey those qualities. Eric Rauscher's etching, printed on paper he has made a Kala, contrasts geometric formalism with deep black grounds and the soft, nebulous papers. It's easy to prefer the more immediately appealing work, especially "Five-year-old drawing in 13," with its gold paint and lively drawing; but the grids and arbitrariness of the untitled pieces, while chiefly decretive on first sight, grow on continued viewing. The balance between compulsively repeated gesture and soft, luminous black background calms and lifts the viewer. Two of his pieces compose these calming visual mantras into large, painterly pieces. "Porta Aurea" is particularly successful at turning them into a landscape of the mind. Lilibet Dewey's intaglio prints seem less exalted, more anecdotal. The grid is present again — will printmakers ever escape it? — but the imagery grows out of the separate boxes it suggests, threatening in some pieces to turn into a large single-statement image. "Modular Landscapes" seem more integrated, more specific than the "Modular Clouds": clouds and structure are hard to make work in one another's terms. In that print bin, there are some especially coherent, rather elegant lithographs by Jayne Pagnucco, who allows short, fine lines to swarm over her places with a vitality and energy whose calligraphy stands up with the best of her sort (Sol LeWitt, for example). Rita Thivierge's expressionistic monoprints are theatrical, strong, occasionally (as especially in "Lueur abyssale") hauntingly evocative. And monoprints by Christy Carleton, color etchings by Rebecca Fogg round out the show with a high degree of professionalism. The ACNAP gallery is open weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The show runs through Feb. 20. [[page break]] Kala itself has a gallery worth taking seriously. Its current show offers work with handmade paper by four artists associated with the Institute, including Zarina, who is teaching paper-casting and -making techniques. Her work is very formal, relying heavily on the grid; unfortunately, the deep, sensuous surfaces and the intense but soft colors of her paper are swamped by the relentlessly compulsive composition. If Lilibet Dewey's work seems tentative at the ACNAP Gallery, here it is perfectly assured. Four prints are on view, each combining etched plates with handmade paper whose torn outlines, colored and textured in the pulp, are designed for the specific plate. Everything is beautifully inte- [[image]] 'Memory of Bangkok' on cast paper grated: drawing, texture, color, form. A pair of "Horizontal Scrolls" in Kala's vestibule are hardly less successful. Diana Marto proves that even blind embossed prints, with no color at all, can be elevated beyond the category of kitsch in "Heart," and that paper can combine with calligraphy in an integrated manner in "In Beauty it is Finished." (Kala should investigate a project combining artists working in paper with poets.) And Ricki Kimball shows some small sculpture using handmade paper. Small detail tends to make them a little fussy, interfering with the structural integrity, but the promise of "Still Running" and the first of the "Dwelling" pieces is clear enough. Kala is offering a number of techniques whose equipment it provides. A new list has just appeared and can be picked up in the offices. Kala is located at 1060 Heinz St., Berkeley. The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
