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One by land, one by sea

Two artists showing at the Arts Center reference nature in different ways.

ST. PETERSBURG - "Garden of Dreams" is a somewhat misleading title for an exhibition of new work by Neverne Covington and Rachael Simmons at the Arts Center. Neither artist presents us with anything remotely resembling a garden, though the natural world is a commanding presence in their prints and drawings. It's a world closely observed then reinvented in their imaginations, which are prodigious.

And sometimes dark.

The artists' work, separated by a wall in the center's east gallery, are complementary. Covington's mostly black and white prints and drawings are more recognizable as landscapes; Simmons' prints, washed with films of watery color, are more abstract and resemble the paramecia and other one-cell critters you would see under a microscope.

It's all beautiful, evocative work, plumbing depths that are more emotional than physical.

Half of Covington's titles include a gerund, a verbal noun used to convey continuing action: Landscape of Longing, Landscape of Yearning, Working with the Ghost, The Growing, The Knowing, The Swelling. The subjects - plant materials such as the dead crowns of palm trees (I think) are presented more as life moving from one stage to another, of becoming rather than decomposing.

But Covington's lush treatment in spare monotones celebrates the organic glory of life observed close up. Landscapes bathed in black, illuminated by mysterious, stark lighting, are an implicit acknowledgement that life is in a continuous process of decomposition from the moment of conception.

Working with the Ghost is a double entendre, alluding to that life-death conundrum and also the artistic process. It's a monotype, a paler version of another monotype, Mi Cora'zon. A monotype is a painting made on a hard surface - William Blake liked copper, for example - that is pressed onto paper. It creates a more embedded spread of color than a simple watercolor or ink drawing. Sometimes enough ink or paint is left for a second "ghost" print. Covington's monotypes, washed in red and brown, are of dead fronds embracing what appears to be a portion of a tree trunk resembling a bivalved human heart. In another related pair, From the Dream Floor and Shells Dance Across the Floor, conch shells lie scattered on a white sand floor. The background composition suggests a black box more than a vast underwater scene, as if the shells are entombed. Two more shell monotypes are lighter of heart, the shells and other bottom dwellers drawn more abstractly, then bathed in red and blue-green washes.

The largest and most fully realized work is Treeswept, a multipanel charcoal drawing that is gorgeously lush, even in shades of black and gray, flowing fronds that seem to bloom even in death.

In comparison, Simmons' work is cerebral, though her strange shapes, almost recognizable things we've seen somewhere, perhaps, are infused with interpretative possibilities beyond physical examination. She studied with the gifted printmaker Tanja Softic, and that artist's influence is apparent. Most of these groupings of xerographic prints - a form of lithography - are titled Symbiosis, a word, she says in her artist's statement, meaning a state of balance between mutually dependent organisms.

Symbiosis No. 1 is a wall installation of 32 sheets of rice paper washed in luminous colors that produce the shifting effect of light moving over water. The almost-square panels are grounded by drawings of jellyfish, sometimes as cross sections, and other vaguely aquatic creatures she makes up, along with pods and other objects she finds on beaches. Nos. 4, 5 and 6 are smaller groupings composed more complexly, but they have the same overall, fuguelike unity of vision and purpose.

The theme and technique are extended in Irukandji Syndrome. It's a large work with Simmons' signature water creatures washed with ocean colors. The title refers to a small, deadly jellyfish found off the Australian coast, with a lethal sting victims say is hardly noticeable. Serious symptoms, clustered together as the Irukandji Syndrome, manifest hours later, sometimes when a person is beyond treatment. The ethereal renderings of the jellyfish are counterposed with images of nets, torn or bunched up ineffectually in knots. The rice paper is overlayed with mostly illegible text. (One readable portion: "No net is fine enough to keep out these revenge seekers, these fragile but deadly Irukandji. . . .") It lays the implied metaphors of the other work on the table, personalizing the threat of "otherness" and the dangers of trespass in a foreign world.

-- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

"Garden of Dreams," new works by Neverne Covington and Rachael Simmons, at the Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, through Aug. 20. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Free admission. (727) 822-7872.