TEST YOUR APHORISM

Robert Pine of Mendocino, California, overheard this one during his recent trip through Connecticut and wonders who said it first. "The telephone made conversation trivial. Television makes it impossible."

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  DON'T GIVE IT A THOUGHT

Cogito ergo sum
Doesn't work for everyone.
Is a tiger in the mating season
Apt to give much thought to reason?
Yet both in his look and in his name
He remains a tiger just the same.
Now run along as you've been taught
Lest you become his food for thought.
Rick Lyttle 6/23/04

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  RAVE REVIEWS

There was a man in Central Europe
Who began to comb his hair with syrup.
Why, you ask, would he ever start it?
Well, you see it helped him part it,
And artists praised him to the skies
For his skill at drawing flies.
Rick Lyttle 6/21/04

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  CRITICS

Emily had unkind views
About the folks who write reviews.
She wondered why, through all the years,
Their views failed to jibe with hers.
She thought their muse must be no less
Than Miss Dire Gastric Distress.
Or driven by a tortured mind
A critic couldn't help but be unkind.
But then an editor she questioned said,
"The kind review, my Dear, goes unread."
Rick Lyttle

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  AT THE GALLERIES

Zea Morvitz and Betty Woolfolk

Zea Morvitz's dramatic graphite drawings, now showing at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes station, bristle with dynamic energy, The large ones, some six feet high and four feet wide, are especially stunning.

The dense, black forms, made with repeated strokes of the graphite, on chalk-white paper establish the ultimate contrast with feathered strokes providing the intermediate values. It's significant that these large drawings conform with human stature, because each line speaks of a shift in weight, a turn of the torso, a flexed knee or the sweep of the arm. In this kinetic sense you could define these as abstract figure drawings.

Several smaller drawings, about 20 by 16 inches, are displayed together as a large grid, and provide an effective contrast with the larger format. Many of these smaller drawings have a thin wash of color.

A horizontal drawing, about 14 by 90 inches has an intriguing shift in structure. Abstract objects on the left seem to float in space, but forms on the right are firmly anchored with depth and perspective and a solid foundation.

There is also a pleat-fold book with more high contrast, dynamic creations. The exhibit includes a display case with several of the artist's sketch books and the graphite tools she uses, including graphite sticks and coarse graphite powder.

The show continues through July 25.

In the gallery Annex, you will find Betty Woolfolk's fascinating assemblages. I always think of her as having a Rube Goldberg genius for whimsey, but in this show, which she calls "The Museum of Curious Thought/New Biology" she is protesting the intrusion into our everyday lives of technology with its genetic engineering, pesticides, chemical fertilizer and so on.

So, while individual pieces might make you laugh, they also make you think and perhaps make you share some of Woolfolk's anger.

One of my favorites is "Oranglastic Juicer," a lathe-like machine that is torturing an orange into thin spirals. The dials, tubes and elaborate machinery does indeed make you wonder why the fruit has to be subjected to so much processing, packaging and marketing before it ends up in your refrigerator. It's one of the excesses of modern life.

Another structure, looking like it might have come from Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, is meant to show what hair dye does to the human brain. You might not want to look at this one too closely.

Simpler, but just as effective, are three apples on a shelf with the question: "Which apple is real?" At least Eve didn't have to face that issue.

Woolfolk makes effective use of see-through plastic purses. I particularly liked her "Portable Designer Garden Purse."

As small a space as the Annex is, you cannot take in this show quickly. The "Gene Bean Machine", "Unknown Prehistoric Insects" and other creations demand close study.

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