by Garrison Frost

Outer space and its otherworldly palette of stars, galaxies and rocket ships is perfect subject matter for art because it is so much like art. The two are alike for two reasons. On the one hand, people would have us believe that both are comprehensible through science and education. But the reality is that both engage our psyche well outside the realm of knowledge and capture our imaginations best when viewed only from the standpoint of wonder. Which is a complicated way of saying that both are sometimes just cool to look at.

"Exploring the Cosmos," a new exhibit running through March 8 at the Palos Verdes Art Center's Beckstrand Gallery, is at its best when it makes the most of this latter quality, when it builds on the wondrous palette of the nighttime sky. Where it lags — and it doesn't do this often — is when it tries too hard to make sense, to use these cosmic elements to tell us something tangible about ourselves and the natural world.

Far and away our favorite artist in the exhibit is Russell Crotty, who has depicted the nighttime sky in giant pen and ink drawings. While at first one might think this medium, with its linear crosshatching, might be the worst possible for depicting the intense uniform blackness of space, but in Crotty's hands the medium opens up an entirely new way of perceiving the subject matter. His "Mysterious Travelers, 2001," which shows a comet blasting across an evening landscape, might be the highlight of the entire show.

Lita Albuquerque also provides some excellent pieces, particularly those which juxtapose the unknowable aspects of space with our all-too-human attempts to understand and contain it. Her series of glass boxes containing pigment with silk-screened maps and writing were particularly engaging in this respect.

Where Albuquerque is content to merely gesture toward man's awkward attempts to come to grips with unknowable space, Sarah Perry enters more risky ground by trying to use these kinds of juxtapositions to make statements about nature, space and ourselves.

For instance, in her "Waiting by the Moon," we see a group of small birds wrapped in twine against a cold lunar landscape. While we don't know exactly what she's up to, we can only suspect that she's trying to force us to think about concepts of flight, earth-bound life and the coldness of infinite space. The problem with this piece is that the viewer has already walked down this road as far as he wants just by entering the gallery, making "Waiting by the Moon" come off a bit redundant and preachy. Perry's "Bound for Glory" is a little closer to the mark. It shows a crow wrapped tightly in twine, so tightly that the wrapping forms the shape of a stylized rocket ship. The message here is the same as "Waiting for the Moon" but the overall effect is less specific and more fanciful.

Perry's contributions are key to the exhibit because her work tests the possibilities of the subject matter. If it can be said that she overreaches a bit with the above works, she is dead-on with "Beasts of Burden, 2001," a giant sculpture in the shape of a rocket ship constructed entirely of animals bones screwed together. Some people will hate this piece and some will love it, but no one will argue that it does not have the loudest voice of the all the work present. (Jan. 26, 2003)

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