Kirk Axtell, Terry Buckendorf, Robert Cuff, Fredrick Dalkey, Kurt Fishback, Dick Geer, Edward Rivera and Don Yee are represented by several paintings or sculptures each. Not enough pieces to really evaluate their works individually, since all are relatively unknown even in the burgeoning Northern California area.

It is not a promising show. Each artist is technically proficient, yet no one of them makes an independent statement. They do reveal, however, something of the varied approaches of their area: Cézannish landscapes, expressionistic landscapes, Ashcan genre, Bay Area figurative, and attempts at a personal symbolism.

Fishback’s sculpture, solid and well organized, relates to the wood constructions of San Francisco’s Arlo Acton, although his enclosed spaces, being generally cubic in volume, come closer to the Japanese esthetic. One work, of megasthenic proportions, assembled of notched and bolted railroad ties and titled, aptly, Big Four, is notable for an impressive use of scale. Fred Dalkey’s skilled and sensitive drawings have literary allusions, sometimes involving a rather morbid sentimentality, but one can not determine from this limited group if such is to be his direction. These artists are young and, like the embryonic chicken in Rivera’s Fowl Birth, any one of them could, with inspiration and intestinal fortitude, break through the confining shell of his super training and inexperience to become an artist rather than merely a good performer.

—E. M. Polley