Outside is the first of three shows to be exhibited at the Atkinson Gallery this semester. The exhibition features six California artists who use a broad range of media and personal experience to reference the outside. Ultimately, the show culminates in a fluid arrangement of diverse works which span both age and time.

Glance across the gallery and Robert Dycus pieces tend to grasp one’s gaze instantly. His paintings rich pinks, browns, reds, and aquamarines seem to pay homage to the classic pictures of the American West. The canyons and rock formations he depicts are grand and monumental. The several pieces are unframed, and this gives the viewer the sense the painting itself expands beyond the borders of the canvas. In his piece titled “Elephant Feet” 2010 from Blaze Series Navajo Nation, a large rock formation emerges from the foreground in beautiful earth and sunset colors. Dycus’s use of light captures his subjects as the old tested monuments that they are.

On the other hand, across the way from Dycus is Gail Pine’s work. Though it is less colorful, her pieces are just as powerful and intriguing. Pine’s new series, “The Black Pictures”, uses a unique technique in order to create the images. She takes found photographs from antique and thrift stores and presses them onto contact paper in a dark room. Then, she shines light through the back of the image so the result is a sort of a reverse image of light and dark. The result is one that is mysterious and surreal, but also poignant. In her piece “A Twofold Silence,” a house on a hill is illuminated, as well as a figure standing near it. Pine brings new light to people’s memory of places. Each photograph becomes a window into a place and time that once was.

Madeline Tonzi, a former City College student and Santa Fe native, often draws upon the relationship between memory and place in her work. Here she uses screen-printing, plywood, gauche, and other mixed media to create a scene of nature across one of the walls. Tonzi’s clean crisp drawings of hummingbirds and flora cover the grey-blue background behind them setting them afloat.

Pamela Zwhel-Burke’s observational drawings bring large-scale drawings of plants in her Santa Ynez backyard to life. Meticulously executed, Zwhel-Burke’s attention to detail and skills are at the forefront of each piece begging the viewer to come closer.

The vibrant acrylic paintings by artist Rick Stitch display geometric paintings of light on water. Life-Long surfer, Stitch draws on the pattern of light on water. His brushstrokes mimic what he sees in the water and strong color choice brings a sense of warmth and unity to the pieces.

The geometry and colors of Rick Stitch’s pieces are echoed in Kim Yasuda’s sculpture “Domestic Bathymetry.” Yasuda’s piece uses blankets, a familiar icon of the home, and layers them to make a Bathymetric map of Crater Lake. Layer upon layer of different colored blankets are meticulously cut out and overlapped on the floor of the exhibition to make the 3D map.

Overall the show is thought provoking. It asks the viewer to question all those images we hold about the world around us. The show will run from January 24-February 17 2011.