San Francisco

David Bennett and Durthen Kampman

Labaudt Gallery

Two youthful art­ists, David Bennett, 26 year old tapes­try maker, and Durthen Kampman, 21, sculptress, exhibit their recent work in a joint show. Mr. Bennett worked and studied at the looms of Aubusson, tra­ditional tapestry center of France. Miss Kampman is the daughter of an artistic German family. Both are skilled journey­men in their respective crafts, and the birds and beasts of cloth and clay share the same rooms happily. Bennett’s most ambitious hangings are Andromeda Nebula, a black and white vortex of stars with vibrant after-images playing across the black passages, and an Ocean of towering green waves rising to a rich brown sky. The others are of more modest subjects, quail among broken eggs, moths daring the candle flame, squirrel and pine cones, each woven in bold, bright yarns. In the modeling-versus-direct-cut argument, Miss Kampman refuses the gambit. Her marble figures and groups are flatten­ed and solid, her terracottas rangy and open, expressing the nature of the ma­terial rather than the dictates of style.

Knute Stiles