Reviews

Sunday December 21, 1997          Rockland Journal News/Gannet Newspapers ART SCENE  /  MELISSA POLITES MYERS SMALL WORKS ACHIEVE GREAT SIGNIFICANCE
The manipulation of scale is frequently used to enlarge and exaggerate, like a Claes Oldenburg baseball mitt large enough for a person to fit in the glove's pocket. In the reverse, small works become personal and intimate. You view them at a shorter distance, you experience the full frame in one gaze, and you wish you could just slip them into your pocket. At the Richard Diebenkorn retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, I was charmed by the paintings he created on cigar box lids as gifts for friends. The small scale seemed inconsequential because the light and space of Diebenkorn's abstract content-is, so expansive. The Holiday Small Works Exhibition at the Piermont Flywheel Gallery evokes similar thoughts. Immense and dramatic subject matter, such as land and seascapes or an erupting volcano, is tackled. Abstract ideas, such as Annegret Wolf Rice's "Meditation" series of gouache and acrylic works on tile, are brought to a human dimension.	The annual exhibition, which opened Thursday, uses the common denominator of scale to unite the various styles and media of 22 member artists. But, while the scale of these works may not be grand, the content certainly is. Eugene Powell's three works of acrylic on paper offer wonderful texture, dimension and wit. The stark combination or the unspoiled and the decayed is found in Sally Spivack's four cibachrome prints of red and white roses laid on rocks and fallen leaves. Win Zibeon uses a trompe l'oeil technique to create landscapes with surreal perspectives, one framed by the jarred glass of a broken window, or another where the image of a cigarette has burned a looking-glass hole in the placid image,
The gallery is at 233 Ash St. in Piermont. Hours: Thursdays and Sundays, I-6 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 1-9 p.m.