Old Jail Site Opens Doors to Art

To find the most spacious and view-endowed gallery in Ventura, head up the hill to City Hall and then climb the stairs above the floors where official business transpires.

Here, in an unused area that once served as the jail, a copious collection of art competes with bird’s-eye views of the town below and blue sea beyond.

Temporarily, this unpolished gem of a space has been taken over by the Ventura Artists Coalition, an ecumenical gathering of arts groups in town. Because of the differing aesthetic agendas of the organizations--the Buenaventura Art Assn., Studio 83, the Goldcoast Watercolor Society and the Ventura Artists’ Union--the art here covers a wide gamut, from the decorative to the provocative, the slick to the raw.

Aimee French’s “Flux” is a good example of her unique painted silk works, while Gerd Koch’s “Mother Earth” is mythic and muscular. Lisa Kelly flexes a photo-realist approach and a frenetic compositional design in painting the madhouse that is the “World of Magic” in Santa Barbara.

Some of the most memorable pieces convey unforced charm and deceptive simplicity, from Kitty Botke’s eerie etching of the Santa Ynez Mountains to Ernesto Seco’s charcoal rendering of “Artist’s Boots” to Chris Higgins’ luminous portrait of a woman gazing forlornly out a window on a pastoral scene.

Sherry Loehr shows her signature skill in grafting still-life elements, and Hiroko Yoshimoto deftly combines forms that refer to nature and pure design, simultaneously.

Off in a far corner sits the most unsettling work of the lot: Julie Knudsen’s “Ave Maria” is an assemblage, a mud-caked effigy of a child’s body, strapped--crucifix-like--on a spinning wheel. Taken from a larger installation dealing with hell-bound, unbaptized children, Knudsen’s work stirs up harsh, controversial issues about religious doctrine.

On lighter turf, for Ginger Moore-Maxwell, the subject is the sexes and the poetic depiction thereof. “Cling” finds large interlaced shapes in yellow and red, respectively, suggesting the union of muscle and blossom, a boy-meets-girl scenario.

There is no curatorial point to be drawn here, other than the satisfaction of seeing art in a comfortable, rambling space sanctioned by the city fathers. It would be a nice place to be incarcerated, if one had to be, and is a lovely place to view a varietal sampler of Ventura art.

* Ventura City Hall, third floor, exhibition by the Ventura Artists Coalition, through June 14, 500 Poli St., Ventura.