Artists Bring "Other Worlds" to Art Sites

Surrealism was on display on Saturday as four artists showcased their works at the opening of 'Other Worlds,' an exhibition at Art Sites in Riverhead.

Artist Micheline Gingras, born in Quebec City and now of Brooklyn Heights, uses pages from The New York Times and with tempera paint transforms popular images: ads for movies, TV shows, pictures of soldiers, houses. Gingras imposes long beaks emerging downward from all the male figures, and duck-like bills from females. While surreal, she notes their distinct purpose is rooted in an all-too-real economic climate many people have become harshly familiar with.

"It all started with the economic crash two years ago," Gingras said. "Suddenly I was very attentive to all the manifestations of the economy, and seeing something more in ads. We had been told so many lies. I thought of Pinocchio, the nose growing long. Then the long beaks became the phallic for the male and the smaller beaks or duckbills of the female—and children—well, they were sitting ducks."

She added, "To me it's cynicism versus innocence. I am making bridges. Though I'm not always sure myself what is being said."

Sylvia Newman of Orient find objects, whether from nature or manmade, and adds to them. "To change perspective, the way we see them," she said.

A long, vertical piece of driftwood—that looks like some futuristic ruin of a skyscraper—bears a tiny, Monopoly-size house in one of its crannies. It's titled "I'll Always Be Waiting For You." Another piece of driftwood, a horizontal block that appears a sort of cliff face, has a small golden metal ball on top of the weathered surface.

In other works, such as a small black box divided into nine squares, Newman places disparate objects—glass, dice, metal—that give the feeling of parallel universes ambiguously joined. "Bite, Bite, Bite," another "box-type" creation, has a child's plastic dinosaur centered against a "fabric of dreamy, swampy design," as the artist put it.

It might seem contradictory that Greenport's Scott McIntire says of his black and white pencil drawings—of white birches. "The subject that interests me is color," he said.

But McIntire continued, drawing the worlds of black and white together: "It's a value scale—there is not just one type of black. There are warm blacks, cool blacks. I use a silver pencil as well as a metallic graphite pencil."

McIntire's work is both subtle and sharp. At a second look, the viewer begins to see things on the bark of the trees. In "Anonymous Birch" a face emerges. In other work, an eye. In another gathering of birches, there seems a young girl with pigtails—along with, on another tree, graffiti.

As McIntire says, "You find things going on in the tree; it's just a matter of seeing it."

Judith Robinson-Cox of Gloucester, Massachusetts, who was not at the opening, presented her "Lilliputian Landscapes." The viewer sees the interior of a vegetable or the head of a sunflower as a larger world, with figures placed in them—such as a man climbing the inside of a pepper and people playing golf on a terrain of vegetables. Most striking was a bound male doll, aswarm with tiny women: "Lilliputian Women's Revenge."

The exhibit runs through Dec. 19. Gallery hours are Thurs. -Sun., noon-5 p.m.