This year’s annual gallery crawl in the Vista was one of the best in a long time. There are strong exhibits in at least four of the area’s galleries as well as plenty of venues for emerging artists; the evening also featured dance and music performances. Official participants included City Art, Vista Studios/Gallery 80808, The Gallery at DuPRE, Carol Saunders Gallery, if ART Gallery, Lewis+Clark, The Gallery at Nonnah’s, S.C. State Museum, 701 Center for Contemporary Art, One Eared Cow Glass, Wink Gallery, Watermark and the Columbia Music Festival Association’s ArtSpace.

While one venue, I. Pinkney Simmons Gallery, has left the Vista, several new ones like 701 CCA have joined the lineup. CMFA’s ArtSpace is far from new, but it has turned over its black box theatre space for a photography exhibit by Brett Flashnick, Symbology. This is a great space for temporary exhibitions and is utilized well here.

Carl Blair’s Flora and Fauna at if ART introduces Columbia viewers to Blair’s sculpture within the context of a large body of new paintings and prints.

David Campbell, Logan & Holy Ghost, on view at City Art

View from the Studios features Vista Studio resident artists Susan Lenz, Stephen Chesley, Don Zurlo, Laura Spong, Pat Gilmartin, Sharon Collings Licata, Pat Callahan, Ethel Brody, David Yaghjian, Michel McNinch and Jeff Donovan. This is another strong exhibit from these artists, but a few pieces look so similar to ones shown in the past that it may be time to put them away. Donovan has been focusing primarily on ceramic sculptures for some time, but has a new series of paintings that are closely related. Yaghjian’s Sleep is on a new, large scale. The roughly 4-by-5-foot painting depicts a figure stretched out on a table with arms crossed on his chest. The pose and extreme angle recall Masaccio’s series of paintings of the dead Christ. The link between death and sleep are palpable.

Elizabeth Foster’s paintings at Carol Saunders Gallery use imagery of birds to not only spark a connection with the natural world, but also to also provide metaphors for more complex abstract ideas about social structures and the relationship of the individual to the collective. Foster’s works are beautifully painted even if at times they carry a wistful quality in their message for an ordered society that may never have existed.

City Art’s Perceptual Painters: The Collective, curated by artist Brian Rego, is one of the strongest exhibits the gallery has put on in a long time. As would be expected of a show of painters selected for their connection to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts — one of the top programs in the country — these people can move paint. The exhibit features Dave Campbell, Matt Klos, John Lee, Aaron Lubrick, Scott Noel, Brian Rego and Andrew Patterson-Tutschka.

Rego’s own Off the Deck and Two Chairs epitomize the group’s concerns with light, color and direct painting from life. In a very limited series of receding planes, Rego creates a defined space in Two Chairs through his use of overlapping simplified shapes and warm/cool, light/dark color relationships. At the same time, he’s able to capture a strong sense of place.

Campbell’s paintings are just quirky enough to be a bit different from the rest. His Attack on Lake Mattahwamba uses deceptively simple shapes and dramatic light to create an eerie night scene with ominous overtones.

Scott Noel’s figurative work focuses on abstract forms and colors, but does it with a concern for the interconnectedness of the people that is reminiscent of the somewhat anti-modern Polish painter Balthus. There is a sculptural, monumentality to the figurative forms in Victoria and Tim that echoes Balthus, as does the intimate dialogue between the figures.

If you missed the event last Thursday, the performers are gone, but the art isn’t. Most of the exhibits will continue to be on view through at least part of May. 

Mary Bentz Gilkerson is the S.C. Press Association’s 2008 first-place winner for critical writing (All Weekly Division). Let us know what you think: Email editor@free-times.com.