Taking Chances Cooper Street Gallery's latest exhibit shows what three local artists are made of. by DAVID HALL new exhibit at Cooper Street Gallery is a good example of owner Jay Etkin's longstanding commitment to nurturing local contemporary artists' work. While many galleries handle very few local artists, and then only that of "significant" artists (e.g., those with tenure), Etkin takes chances on uninitiated and inexperienced artists who probably wouldn't get their work seen otherwise. Hell, many of the present darlings of the art community debuted their work at Etkin's Midtown gallery. Continuing in that vein, Etkin is featuring the work of three local artists who show a willingness to take some chances of their own. While their individual styles and subject matter are in contrast to one another, a key ingredient to all three painters' work is its emphasis on creating interesting surfaces. Pam Cobb's offering is inspired by an inquiry into her ancestry. The imagery is appropriated from "yellowed photographs and shreds of lettuce," remnants of an unknown family history. The images in the paintings are posterized by using an abbreviated value range, a graphic stylization which enables the artist to handle the picture's surface texture and color in a painterly manner. Certainly, this shorthanded manner of depiction is in large part due to the duplication of an already two-dimensional medium. But it also implies a remoteness from these disembodied figures from the past, kindling a feeling of nostalgia devoid of any sentimentality. This attribute is reinforced by the use of gold leaf, referencing both gilded objects and the patina of deteriorating artifacts. To this surface, Cobb applies colors which seem to be chosen for their emotive rather than their representational purpose. The limited palette conveys a sense of melancholy while also signifying the picture's monochromatic origin. For instance, the ephemeral image in the diptych Heroes of a WWII-era bomber crew's group portrait is rendered in asphaltum (the color of soy sauce) upon rows of gold leaf, with calligraphic strokes of the brush and flecks of purple-blue highlights. I was not as enamored of those works that mimicked envelopes and letters -- as in Artifacts -- mostly because of the gray-walled shadow boxes that house them, but also because of the manner in which they were arranged in the frame to appear as a random sack of old letters, jumbled in an obviously contrived way. That said, Cobb is to be commended for her bold experimentation even in these works, as she has always taken risks in the development of her art. The title of Deborah Brown's new series "Points of Entry" is in reference to her artist's statement which succinctly states that her paintings are "fragments of thought to allow a person a point of entry to then continue a thought or emotion wherever it may take them." To fulfill this end, the artist combines various found objects such as frayed cloth, hinges, rusted metal, and scraps of veneer with vignettes of figurative imagery, most often an isolated detail of the human figure. The effect of these seemingly incongruous elements together creates a dreamlike visual interplay of tactile surfaces and illusionistic naturalism. Brown's figurative elements are rendered from life, although I and another attendee at the opening initially thought they were copied from some old master because the images are archetypal in their monumentality. Like Cobb, Brown uses metal leaf for a textural ingredient that, in some cases, obscures the figurative portion of the picture. A case in point is #3, in which squares of leaf are placed over the image of a seated figure. The use of leaf is more successfully integrated into the composition of #5, in which a more organic application of the gilt, combined with the beautiful depiction of a tree, creates a perfect marriage of figurative and abstracted elements. One of the most compelling works in the series is #9 because of its simple composition and straightforward depiction of hands, and because it seems more deliberate in its execution. Brown is relatively new to exhibiting her work at Cooper Street Gallery, and it is exciting to see such gutsy work coming from an unfamiliar source. The biggest criticism I have is that the installation of the work is a little crowded. The imagery and texture are so rich that it would better to selectively exhibit fewer works, which would strengthen their impact. Jane Flowers is not new to Cooper Street Gallery, but her "Delta Series" sure is. In the past, I haven't gotten very jazzed about Flowers' paintings because they seemed awkward and somewhat aimless. These eight paintings represent a real breakthrough in the artist's development as a painter, which is no small feat considering how utterly boring the Delta landscape is. Generally speaking, all eight compositions depict a distant horizon that breaks up the picture plane into horizontal bands. This kind of composition has a flattening effect since all its lines run parallel to the picture plane. Flowers playfully exploits this fact by either reinforcing the plane with horizontal and/or vertical strokes, or as in #8, filling the lower band (a field of wheat?) with wavy diagonal lines. My favorite work was #3, the smallest work in the bunch. The painting consists of horizontal swaths of semi-mixed color, then vertical strokes pull the swaths into one another, which practically renders this landscape into an abstract painting. Another really wonderful painting is #7 because layers of color are scraped or sanded away in a manner that uncovers previous layers of paint, creating one of the liveliest and most complex surfaces Flowers has ever exhibited. This exhibit, while not flawless, is well worth seeing. Don't miss it.