Demons, Silks & Polar Bears

[October 25th, 2006] Eighty-eight-year-old Jack McLarty has had a distinguished career, with an exhibition history stretching back to the 1940s and artworks housed in collections such as the Smithsonian Institution's. His paintings this month at Broderick show evidence of his fascination with Central and South America. A riot of tropicalia, The Garden of Good and Evil is all parrots, crucifixes, Dia de los Muertos skulls and anacondas wrapped around naked women's legs. The best of McLarty's works have a kooky exuberance, executed with a neo-Impressionist technique and a folk artist's naivetÉ. The best painting in the show is the nightmarish Dark Rider, which depicts a Buddha-bellied demon riding a wild boar. We happen to like demons that ride wild boars. If we were a demon, we would ride wild boars. If we were a wild boar, we would make a point to be ridden by demons. Therefore, we like Jack McLarty and hope he continues to paint for many years to come. 814 SW 1st Ave., 224-4020. Closes Oct. 31.

San Francisco artist Jen Pack returns to Pulliam Deffenbaugh with lustrous works from the intersection of fine art and fabric. Pack stretches strips of silk chiffon onto rectangular and rhomboid panels, creating jewel-like compositions that couldn't be cuter if they tried. Some of the works have conceptual ambitions—hanging sculpturally from the ceiling, like Monolith, or puddling down onto the floor, Rapunzel-like, like Harriet. 929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665. Closes Oct. 28.

Miles Cleveland Goodwin is a student at PNCA with a bright future. His paintings at Mark Woolley are thematically uneven but show a promising, neo-Flemish technique and a facility in eerie, narrative storytelling. Meanwhile, Rachel Denny evolves nicely, building on her signature multimedia collages with some promising installation work. Denny's sculptural vignettes portray polar bears and moose in snowy landscapes, betraying the increasingly pervasive influence that Bruce Conkle-style eco-whimsy is having on a new generation of local artists. 120 NW 9th Ave., Suite 210, 224-5475. Closes Oct. 31.