Ventura County Weekend : SIGHTS : Exhibit Plugs Into Energy of Area’s Artists

The annual Thousand Oaks Art Assn. group show, at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery through the weekend, is an expectedly diverse affair--so diverse, in fact, that its title is slightly invalidated.

How do we justify the presence of Ross Waldberg’s neon piece in a show called “TOAA Unplugged”? Of course, unplugged can be a state of mind as well as current.

Quibbles aside, the show gives a good indication of the artistic energies in the area. On the back wall, Aimee French’s large “Do Not Disturb” languishes in fluid abstraction with her unique paint-on-silk technique.

Other painters take to their separate stylistic corners, from Mary Ana Panopoulos’ photo realist scenes, Patricia Legnon’s paintings--more about qualities of shadow and light than the buildings they depict--to the powerful, tapestry-like mysteries of one of the area’s finest artists, Sylvia Simmons.

Photography is well represented, including the color-sensitive Cibachrome work of Michael Appuliese, Deborah Davis’ study of a dilapidated, varicolored building, and Carla Larson’s “Chiapas,” an idyllic slice of life in a political danger zone. Jurgen Kuschnik’s black and white nudes are formal riddles nicely posed.

Catherine Sasso’s “Choices,” an image that is clearly anti-abortion agitprop, is a rare work of commentary in an otherwise innocent art-for-art’s-sake exhibition. Susan Perret’s “L.A. Times,” a collage using scraps of newsprint slathered with paint, proves the old adage that newspapers are good for something.

Meanwhile, back on the subject of the title, Gene Schklar’s “Art Unplugged” is a crude Oldenburg-ish relief sculpture celebrating the quotidian beauty of a plug.

* “TOAA Unplugged,” through Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery, 2331-A Borchard Road, Newbury Park; 498-4390.