Forms That Frolic : From ‘lobsterlunch’ to microorganisms, show features sculptures both fun and fantastic.

BURBANK —  Some artists really know how to have fun. One can see it in their work.

At the Creative Arts Center Gallery in Burbank, sculpture by Dean A. Smith and Tari A. Brand in the exhibit “light and shadow” beams with the inventiveness of artists who are willing to romp while they make art.

The gallery is full of a swirling mix of the two Cal State Long Beach alumni’s unusual forms. Smith’s long, tall, abstract pieces of darkly finished steel weave among Brand’s robust floor assemblages and her beeswax-and-fiberglass constructions.

The assemblage “Madeline in Wonderfuland” resembles a large bouquet of flowers. Its copper-tubed base, which Brand found in a metal salvage yard, holds large, colorful wing-like forms amid curlicue shapes that rise up and out. The work represents the “complex, colorful, kind of crazy” personality of Madeline, her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Brand said.

Another floor piece, “B.A.M.B.R.S. (The beauty of the spirited),” stands tall and firm with silk flowers atop rigid beams. It symbolizes Addy, her 4 1/2-year-old daughter, who is “centered, but she’s got this great spirit,” Brand said. “For me, art and my kids and the surroundings of my life are one and the same.”

In contrast to her floor pieces, many of her container-like constructions are accompanied by a label that invites the viewer to open them up. This is a pleasure almost always unavailable to museum and gallery visitors, who are readily confronted with “Don’t Touch” signs.

“Most of these (works) come from the idea of being tactile. Kids always want to touch,” she said. “The outside is minimal. You open them up, there’s a whole story or scene that is incongruent to the exterior. I’m having a ball making them.”

The larger-than-life “Interior Woman (Self-Portrait)” contains everything from her dad’s baby shoe and photographs of herself to her children’s old pacifiers--accidentally burned to a crisp--a locket she made and a hammer she used in jewelry-making.

“I went from making jewelry to lockets that held things to larger forms that held things,” she said.

One can’t help but chuckle out loud at “lobsterlunch.” Inside, lobster claws surround an artist-eating lobster made of red clay. The artists are represented by small plastic figures sold in model-train stores for decorating train layouts.

The outside form of “apostrophedress” is that of an apostrophe next to a dress adorned with a skirt of red hearts. Inside, one finds headless dolls and pink doll clothes. Brand said this piece was inspired by finding a doll headless and floating in her swimming pool.

Whatever meaning this conjures for viewers is not necessarily intentional. “I don’t think I’m anything political. I’m just enjoying what I’m doing.”

So is Smith, though his work here often conveys more serious overtones than Brand’s, and comes out of a more studied meditation.

“I’m always looking,” he said. “I’m always intrigued by the natural forms that are all around.”

Like Brand, he too has been a jewelry-maker. He has adapted his experience with metals to the making of large abstract sculptures that suggest microorganisms of the aquatic world.

“I was raised in Long Beach. I’ve always been around the water and fascinated by the life,” Smith said. “I started to see microorganisms as forms. I take parts of natural forms I see and try to create something new with them.”

Smith heats the metal, making it especially malleable, and creates sinewy, elongated pieces. Some of his sharply pointed, almost scary projections cast eerie shadows on the wall. Other, more buoyant, joyful creatures, jut out and up from the wall or a pillar, defying gravity.

“I don’t try to imitate life, but there’s still that relationship, I think. By creating biomorphic abstractions which relate to human scale, I try to convey this feeling of mystery. (The work) relates to the mystery of life itself.”

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WHERE AND WHEN:

What: “light and shadow: Sculpture by Dean A. Smith and Tari A. Brand.”

Location: Creative Arts Center Gallery, 1100 W. Clark Ave., Burbank.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday. Ends Thursday.

Call: (818) 953-8763.