It was certainly dramatic. This show, taken as a whole, formed a visually powerful totality, what with the dozen or so life-sized spectral sentries encountered upon first entering, and the rather flamboyant paintings they accompanied.

 “Myth and Ritual,” the collective title of the identical life-sized, free-standing humanoid figures, seemed a bit generic for such haunting work. Fash­ioned from burlap and fiberglass, these body -castings were taken from the same female model, resulting in a kind of roughly variegated uniformity. Hollow like corn husks removed intact, these shrouded forms reveal gaping black, charred-looking cavities where face and abdomen would be. With a rough outer finish derived from sawdust and compost materials, all this gives them aburned-out, encrusted look, like the products of some ancient fiery ritual, long buried, but recently unearthed. Seemingly familiar, but opaque, they are poised as the boundary between beauty and horror.

Equally theatrical, in some cases more so, are the paintings, actually painted wood constructions, These are generally bold and colorful, and work well as an installation, everything complementing everything else. Viewed as individual works, however, some­times less is more.

For instance, an untitled 13" x 16" work re­sembled some sort of revisionist Byzantine icon. Painted, gold-leafed wood, freestanding, with hinged doors, this vision of a vaguely Botticelli female be­nignly embracing (and being embraced by) an enormous green snake, evokes an ancient lost-society mythos, the metaphysics of fertility, perhaps some­thing out of The Golden Bough. The worn finish and cracked surfaces contribute to the overall aura, not so much a replication of antiquity as an allusive evoca­tion of a temporally shrouded mystery.

Banishment and Knowledge shares the dramatic lighting that is found in all Gay’s painted works, but which seems especially effective in her landscapes. A luminist tropical forest arising from the banks of a sun-burnished river reveals the convincing pyrotechnically flamboyance of 19th century land­scape painters of the Frederick Church variety,

especially in their hyper-romantic tropical oeuvre. Almost half the nearly four-foot width of this work, however, is occupied by a dull lead plate, set in the middle of which is a vertical glassed-in compartment, like a heavy-metal industrial reliquary, containing a large snake skin.

Other such constructions employ similar strate­gies. For instance, Cycles features a luminist primeval sunset flanked by a lead panel encasing bird skulls and so forth. The dolorously industrial nature of the metal contrasts sharply with the theatrically pristine natu­ralism, ultimately convoluting several layers of meta­phor into a statement both giddy and deadpan, lush, hut peripherally chilling.

The presence of this leaden component perhaps inadvertently becomes a metaphor for gravity's essen­tiality in life. Some of the larger works without this component of heavy dullness, Lilith’s Temple, for instance, end up looking almost like Italian opera stage sets—much theatricality but without the myste­riously convincing contrasts.
That much said, this must still be regarded, in toto, as an especially intriguing show. Dixie Friend Gay is originally from Oklahoma, and has lived in New York and Houston, but her work looked at home in the Gasperi, which seemingly tends to the visionary. Her work, at its best, focuses a visionary sensibility and technical virtuosity on the nuances of nature, myth, and society—in ways uniquely effective and compelling.