From The Studio

ROSEC.S. SLIVKA

The sheer volume of "Wall to Wall" as an end-of-the-year comprehensive exhibit of artists of the East End - a salon-style presentation of no fewer than 95 painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, and a variety of other makers - would be overwhelming if it weren't on such a consistently high level.

Installed at East Hampton's Arlene Bujese gallery by Ms. Bujese herself, the show has the breadth and ambience of the bountiful, the beautiful, and the authentic.

It actually confirms the presence of our viable and vigorous artists' community, coming as it does after the season when visual experiences in the arts begin to go in one eye and out the other, when the discouraging slippage of surprise and newness begins to pall in the light of the celebrity comings and goings surrounding London Jewelers, East Hampton's new Parthenon on Main Street.

Faith In Art Restored

This art enthusiast, who needed boosting, is happy at last to finish 1997 on this note of restored faith.

The only thing wrong with this exhibit is that it's more fun for the critic to find fault, in trenchant and witty prose. On the other hand, the experience of looking at actual art inspires energy - tribal and individual, symbolic and spiritual.

Among the pieces that come to mind with special impact a day later - in no particular order or reasoning; if we were to do it again it would come out in a different order - is an untitled 1974 Conrad Marca-Relli collage, a sepia-ink drawing with cut shapes of newspapers on a ground of white: remote, intense, mysterious.

Treasure Small And Fine

Perle Fine's 1957 black and white ink with collaged metallic papers is a small treasure. I can see it at this minute.

And: a James Brooks 1970 lithograph, a poured and brushed abstraction called "Ashawagh." A 1947 figurative Alice Neel drawing in ink, hung close to a wonderful 1938 Balcomb Greene. A 1962 Will Barnet, an eloquent Lee Krasner abstract lithograph of wandering telegraphic lines, black and white.

Finding the last four hanging in a cluster is almost unnerving, when you think of how each of those artists went through the tensions of abstraction and figuration, back and forth, back and forth.

Pastel Master

Miriam Schapiro's goddess/doll-like figure "Hand Maiden," collaged with paper cutouts and painted decoratively with candy shapes and colors in birthday-cake forms, features a metallic fabric border.

Her husband, Paul Brach's, "30 Horses" is an acrylic on paper of riderless horses in dark and delicate colors.

Then there is an untitled abstract watercolor collage by the late Arnold Hoffmann Jr. and a gorgeous 1980 Fay Lansner still life of plants and blue bottle, in the pastel medium of which she is master.

Dragon And Ossorio

A memorable Ted Dragon needlepoint interlocks its yarn way in a narrow strip of varying colors on a ground of black, wandering down from the top in its adventure of improvisation, the artist plunging his needle over and over to make it up as he goes along in a lyrical yet structured river of moving color.

The late Alfonso Ossorio is represented by a 1951 configuration in his unique ink, wax, and watercolor technique, layered in webs yet at the same time flowing into itself as a circulatory system, forming one spiritualized body.

"Earth Sounds," by the late Bruce Rosen, a modest, deeply gifted painter, is a delicate gouache and pencil, a small abstraction of color imbued with a sense of light, weather, and the world - as mysterious as that.

Memorable

Memorable also is a black, white, and gray abstract drawing by Randall Rosenthal, rare and recent for this multitalented wood carver.

David Slater's concoction of poles is made from found wooden rods, beveled and turned, around which this playful narrative painter places a variety of objects and encircled papers, such as cigar-store rings.

Then there is the blessed David Porter, who at age 85 continues to produce fresh images. His present offering is one of a series he has been working on for the last few years on goddesses.

Leiber's "Model"

Vivid are the lashes of Gerson Leiber's "Model With Polka Dots," a cubistic abstraction in crayon and charcoal, a masterful drawing by a modest and wonderful painter.

Also: Margaret Kerr's "Uncaged," a cut-brick composition with surrounding colors of brick dust and brick juice, and Anthony Rosiello's exquisite, altogether startling "Folded Square," of tiny flips of paper compulsively cut in patterns on interwoven checkerboard paper strips. Amazing skill.

It can be compared to Paul Edlin's "Twin Dreams," made of a mosaic of cut-up postage stamps, the figures and design built with these tiny pieces.

A Must

Although the emerging composition and the delicate colors are extremely pleasant, the sheer complexity and the hours of close and compulsive work put Mr. Edlin's compositions more in the framework of acrobatics, where the acrobat becomes his own best exercise.

Clearly we could go on, with each object at such a peak of excellence. This exhibit is a must for all lovers of East End art.

It concludes on Dec. 28.