Odd couple

Peter Petraglia's and Jill Victor's opposite attractions

by Leon Nigrosh

PETER PETRAGLIA/JILL VICTOR At the Douglas Arts Common, 274 Main Street, Douglas, through June 7.

The current exhibition at the Douglas Arts Common is a study in opposites. Pennsylvania artist Peter Petraglia works in two dimensions on paper and canvas, while Maine sculptor Jill Victor makes three-dimensional objects in glass. With nearly 50 works on the walls, Petraglia's production is diverse and prolific. Because of her choice of materials and time-consuming construction technique, Victor has but eight modest pieces on display. Petraglia employs copious amounts of color in his compositions, Victor builds her forms with clear beveled glass only. And the differences continue.

Petraglia is the retired executive of a dynamic advertising agency, and a man of tireless energy and eclectic tastes. The variety of mediums and subject matter that he has on display provides ample evidence for both of these traits. His tiny abstract ink drawing Jazz is bursting with energy barely contained in its circular mat. Petraglia's quick slashing strokes evoke the pulsating rhythms inherent in contemporary jazz.

Shifting gears, he also explores the world of geometric abstraction with several oil pastel drawings. Sometimes starting with lines, Petraglia develops compositions like Open Structure, which he then fills in with vibrant colors. In pieces like his blocky Borders, the colors go down on paper first and are kept in place by Petraglia's judicious use of line.

As his works increase in scale, so does the intensity of both surface design and color. Mid-size drawings such as Mardi Gras are covered from edge to edge with tiny color lines that increase the complexity of a simple facial image. Within the mask-like face, Petraglia has drawn images of fireworks, birds, and fanciful creatures that add to the holiday atmosphere of the work. His acrylic and oil pastel painting Wellspring juxtaposes large, graphically controlled areas of flowing color with expanses of fidgety squiggles to create an oddly harmonious vignette.

Petraglia continually moves back and forth between representation and abstraction. His painting Terra Nostra appears to have been plucked from a dream as a head and mountains float airily and peacefully, through the atmosphere. In Spheroids, three large red and green globes also seem suspended in space, anchored only by the surrounding color planes. The calm symmetry of composition is disturbed when a tiny triangle finally registers. Could it be a miniscule rendition of a sailboat? And if so, what are we really looking at?

Although the 2x4 inch quick sketches in his Acadia series are delightful microcosmic landscapes, Petraglia's latest painting really begins to attack the notion of scale. The subject is an accurately rendered green pear, only it's about four feet tall.

On the other hand, Victor's sculptural works seem contained and introspective. The clear glass forms grew out of her earlier studies in stained glass at an adult-education course. Dissatisfied with the two-dimensional window approach to glass, Victor began to make free-standing forms by soldering the copper foil caming while rotating the sculptures in her lap -- a difficult, and somewhat dangerous, process. She soon discarded the colored glass in favor of small beveled prisms because she "didn't want to add to the colors that are already there.''

If this sounds slightly New Age, it may well be. Victor found that when sunlight filtered through her glass shapes the rays exploded throughout a room, playing brilliant rainbows over walls and ceilings. As time passed, the light shapes actually moved and changed form. In addition, this effect appears to have a calming quality that Victor finds helpful for many of the people involved in her hospice work.

Whether it is any one of her small Variations on a Theme or her larger Spiral, there is something magical to the way the natural light passes through the numerically patterned glass chips to create an ever-changing color spectrum throughout a room. Victor's work is less about the simple glass forms as sculpture and more about the naturally occurring light show produced by their mere presence in the sun.

Within the parameters of this exhibition the greatest contrast of all is obviously the way each artist manipulates color. Petraglia develops his work by placing a profusion of hues into each of his drawings and paintings, while Victor lets the vagaries of nature produce the color from within her works. Each method is a feast for the eyes, and together they produce a colorfully pleasant and uplifting experience.

The Douglas Arts Common is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 476-7082.