IMAGES: PAST, PRESENT

At Cal State Long Beach’s University Museum, “Centric 13: Susan Rothenberg--Works on Paper” presents prints, drawings, unique editions and paintings on paper by the New York artist. The exhibition surveys Rothenberg’s work from the late 1970s to the present through 22 works, assembled from collections across the United States.

Rothenberg’s work received much critical attention since she introduced her mysterious horse drawings and paintings in the mid-’70s. Since 1981 she has used a new vocabulary of images--boats, trees or portions of the figure.

Concurrently, “Centric 12: Stephanie Weber” features 10 large-scale, mixed-media paintings and a site-specific wall installation by the Bay Area artist. Weber integrates various painting processes with photocopy images, creating fluid organic shapes that float and move with vigorous, pulsating energy.

A third show, “Centric 14: Rita Yokoi--Voyage in Search of Your Soul,” is an environmental installation designed as a metaphor for the artist’s personal journey.

All three shows close April 21.

UC Santa Barbara’s University Art Museum hosts a light and color installation titled “North Wall Curving South” by Bart Wasserman and “Gifford Myers: Real Estart, Multiple Listings,” a show of sculptural ceramic facades of houses, alluding to homes as investment. Both shows run through April 28.

A first look at paintings by Charles Griffin Farr in Southern California can be had at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum through April 7.

Nineteen oil and tempera landscapes, still lifes and portraits, dated 1937 to 1984, represent the painter’s work in an exhibition selected by artist Stephanie Sanchez, who is a member of CAF’s board of directors.

She says, “Farr’s realistic consummate painting is part of the honored American mainstream tradition from Harnett to Leslie, though Farr has remained in relative obscurity for most of his 74 years. He is, as critic Charles Shere wrote, one of the unsung grand old men on the Bay Area art scene.”

Farr was born in Alabama, grew up in Tennessee and studied in New York with George Bridgman and George Luks and in Paris with Jean Despujols. During the Depression, he worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art restoring ancient pottery as part of a WPA program.

In 1948 he settled in San Francisco and taught at the California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1959 to 1967.

His first one-man show came as late as 1981, at the Charles Campbell Gallery in San Francisco. In 1984, the Oakland Museum organized a traveling retrospective of his work.

Drawings by Farr are also on view at UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies gallery.

Upcoming competitive exhibitions: New York art dealer Andre Emmerich will select the 1985 “American Annual Works On Paper Exhibition” billed as “a yearly survey of the best works on paper by artists across the nation.”

Entries, to be submitted in slide form, may be two- and three-dimensional works, including photography. For prospectus, write: Zaner Gallery, 302 N. Goodman St., Rochester, N.Y. 14607, or call (716) 442-6560. Deadline for arrival of submissions is April 26.

BC Space Gallery and the Western Regional Office of Ilford Inc., will sponsor a juried photographic exhibition titled “BCibachrome,” set for May 18 to June 15.

Designated jurors are Charles Demarais, director of the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside, and John Upton, chair of the Photography Department at Orange Coast College. A total of $2,250 is available for three purchase awards and five honorable mentions.

Deadline for arrival of entries is May 4. For more information, contact the gallery, Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at (714) 497-1880.