BOUNTIFUL -- The magic of an international festival is always the taste of the exotic that travels with it. The Bountiful/Davis Art Center (BDAC) is currently hosting an exhibit from now until Aug. 21 featuring work by the artists who will be part of the Artists in Action event on Aug. 8. Though the art all sprang from the minds of local artists, several of the pieces carry enough of the exotic to draw the eye.

First, BDAC has decorated the galleries with a sampling of its own international collection, including two dresses donated by the South Korean dance troupe that performed at Summerfest last year.

At a distance, each adds bright splashes of color -- red, blue, lime green, teal and hot pink -- to the room, while a closer look highlights the rich embroidery on the bodice of each dress.

An Indonesian puppet stands in another gallery, long black sticks designed to guide her gold hands through a series of serene, graceful gestures. Nearby, a far more friendly llama, made from authentic fur, stands guard over a traditional costume from the Phillipines.

This taste of the unique carries over into the art as well. Featured artist Eruera "Ed" Napia brings a taste of both New Zealand and the Northern Utes to Davis County; a pot of round, curling whale tails stands near taller, more slender pots made of trees or representations of Native American women.

His adopted brother, Radford Cuch, celebrates his Ute heritage in a delicate series of pen and ink sketches adorned with intricate, glowing beadwork. In some, the ink blends seamlessly into the beads, creating a larger garment or complicated pattern.

His portraits, on the other hand, need no beadwork, the subtle cross-hatching enough to imbue life and age to his figures.

Louise Shaw's photographs capture an old-world village in France and the nightlife of Rome, with the best seeming to draw the viewer into the heart of those distant worlds. One photograph, taken standing on a walkway of France's Cadoin Cloister, makes it almost possible to feel the ancient stone beneath your feet.

Even a new angle on a familiar world can bring with it a touch of the exotic, like the black tangles that transform into fighting ravens in Mara Brown Rohovit's Ravens on Beach.

In photographer Ron Brown's Reality TV, a businessman is tied to a cross of televisions that hover above the water. In Data World, colors stream out of a spinning planet that may have begun life as a simple globe.

Nora Del Murdock makes the color gray seem bright in her collage of a woman looking up at the heavens, the simple, bold shapes remarkably eye-catching despite being completely monochromatic. In Elise Beck's Last Supper, similar black lines create a table full of faces that seem to waver and shift on top of a sea of sunset colors.

The unusual stands out, however, only when audiences have the familiar to compare it to. Rebecca Mann's ethereal floral watercolors line an entire gallery wall at the exhibit, her paintings of roses, irises and lilac branches far more like the dreams of flowers than the reality.

Barbara Gustaveson's flowers, on the other hand, seem real enough to be growing right off the paper. In Springtime Garden, careful three-dimensional work allows the flowers to lean towards the viewer, almost as if inviting them to take a friendly sniff.

It's enough to turn even a simple flower garden into a new, almost exotic world.



jwardell@davisclipper.com