The XMAS Group Exhibition

Gallery Lombardi

They resemble humans, some of the creatures -- made of fired clay and fabric and hair and feathers by Toasty Ursin Hancock -- near the center of Gallery Lombardi's XMAS show. They resemble humans that you might see in tribal dreams, especially, and those dreams would be starkly lighted by Tim Wiens' nearby lamp construction (featuring a bulb caged by copper pipes, the cage suspended from a boldly jutting structure of wood). The lamp's light glows, in this dream made polyform flesh, upon the hands and eyes of Alejandra Almuelle's elegantly photo-printed bowls and tiles, upon each grinning phiz in Edmund Martinez's series of intricate and colorful ceramic devils. These devils hang on a wall across from, ironically enough, an angel. But this is no angel from the usual ranks of heaven: Colly Kreidler's Angel From La Costa extends the enormous wings of the seraphim, but this angel's an old and wheel-less truck, its bed piled with building materials, soaring through its portion of the gallery's generous space, the sculpture's ruddy metal carved and joined with an expert's torch. There are wings, too, on the single Marc Silva near the gallery's entrance: a mosquito rendered in precise pen and ink, centered before the embossed watercolors of his Stained Glass Window II. There are wings and there are flights of deep fancy in this varied and local show, with works by Jacqueline May (her Houston Still Life is heartbreaking), Donna Yarrell, Andy Coolquitt, and others, all seemingly presented as a means of ensuring that the gifts you buy this season are beyond the ordinary. At the very least, this eclectic gathering of artifice and wonder is an early present for your eyes and mind.

Through Jan 6. Hours: Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm; Sat, 11am-4pm. 910 W. Third. 480-9100. www.gallerylombardi.com. -- Wayne Alan Brenner



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