Chosen by Glynis Berry, director of Art Sites Gallery in Greenport, this juried show features 74 works on woodland themes, from individual trees to whole forests. In the gallery's project room, a series of handsome black-and-white photographs by Stuart McCallum covers the same territory. But among the juried works are a few that take off from their woodsy starting points and fly in unexpected directions.
That is literally true of Pat Moran's delicate reverse paintings on glass. "Up, Up and Away" features a shrub that has freed itself from the earth and skitters across the sky like a leafy cloud. In "Heading for the Hoedown," Mr. Moran's best-in-show award winner, a couple of levitating trees face off for an airborne square dance.
While most of the artists interpret the woods as romantic, inviting places filled with beautiful shapes and textures, some have emphasized their darker aspects. Compare the ethereal nymph in Gary Bartoloni's solarized photograph, "A Natural Scene," with the anorexic sleepwalker in Tom Lulevitch's "Woodland Maiden," a Gothic fantasy in which dead branches come to life as menacing creatures.
The misty sunlight that filters through the lush forest in Richard Gambino's c-print, "Shadows in the Sun," becomes a toxic miasma in Janet Culbertson's "Secret Places," a mixed-media work on paper. In "Pine Barrens Devastation," a third prize-winning monotype by H. Karin Barsalona, the forest is reduced to skeletal wasteland.
"Log On," a wall relief by Fran Roberts, reincarnates wood damaged by fire, insects and weather or cut for lumber. Using three simple elements, the artist has turned useless scraps into an attractive sculpture. Similarly, Marcia Widenor's "Abandoned Nest" creatively refashions twigs and string as a symbol of the natural life cycle.
Ms. Widenor is also among the 11 artists in this celebration of winter's signature color. Her "Fiber Samplers," lovely translucent squares of handmade paper and woven thread, are actually off-white, exploiting the inherent tonality of the materials. In fact, although white dominates the display, plenty of other colors make appearances.
Only Mary Mendoza limits herself to pure white. Her "Perugina" series of cast-plaster reliefs uses the forms from candy boxes as templates, turning them into ghost versions of the originals but otherwise adding nothing to their intrinsic sculptural quality. Myrna Turtletaub's mandala collages, on the other hand, rework commercial paint swatches as elegant geometric designs.
Judith Huttner's large gouaches, with latticeworks of white strokes that mask the colorful underpaint, play a chromatic version of hide and seek. Their busy abstract calligraphy recalls Mark Tobey's so-called white writing.
Sue Contessa's "Marked Voids," patterned with creamy dots that seem to hover above the canvas, also hinge on the figure-ground interplay. The bleached surfaces of Sylvia Harnick's "Erased Memory" paintings obscure and reveal multiple layers that symbolize the mind's murky recesses.
The warp and weft of fabric are the basis of the mesh-like linear imagery in Tawatchai Kerdkan's untitled paintings, in which white is one of many chromatic strands. Metallic pigment adds a glow to the paintings that enhances the ephemeral effect.
George D'Amato's five painted steel variations on the "Violation of the Square" theme use red to highlight his attacks on the white equilateral rectangle. Minimal sculpture is not usually amusing, but here the artist is having fun at geometry's expense.
This show marks the nonprofit gallery's 40th anniversary. The emphasis is on the environment, as interpreted by eight photographers.
Neil Scholl's panoramas survey Long Island's landscape, emphasizing flatness and tranquility, though the active sky over a Montauk beach promises a storm. His portraits of gnarled, mossy trees along the Carmans River glory in the contrast between sharp detail and blurred reflections, and his shot of an ivy-covered abandoned barn and water tower in Riverhead celebrates nature's power to reclaim what humanity has imposed on the land.
The remarkable intensity of Richard Nowicki's views of beaches and lakes stress the luminosity of light on water. His glowing portrait of Oseetah Lake in the Adirondacks, caught as the sun burns off the last bit of morning mist, is a tour de force of acute observation and formal complexity.
Tom Steele's sepia-tinted studies of rustic buildings strike a balance between the particular and the generic. Time seems to be working gently but inexorably against these fragile structures, bending and weathering them into harmony with their surroundings.
Conversely, the architecture in Ray Germann's classic details of New York City seems to defy change, asserting its sovereignty over unruly nature.
Other photographers take a more intimate approach. Barbara Roux imposes a poetic sensibility on cut and broken vegetation, adding words and objects that highlight the need to preserve what remains. Kathy Kennedy zeros in on bittersweet and brambles to reveal the subtleties that go unnoticed amid the profusion of undergrowth. Stuart McCallum, whose woodland pictures are in the East End Arts Council's project room, gets even closer to amaryllis and gladiolus details, focusing on their gracefully curving stems and budding flowers.
The most intimate of all is Barbara Perrino, whose "Small Book Series," a trio of tiny portfolios encasing miniature images, are like keepsakes designed to stir private recollections.