In 1975, Susan Michod’s pattern painting was dense, claustrophobic and plotted out academically. In tension with the regular repetition of rectangular blocks were exceedingly detailed decorations—polka dots and her-ringbone twills. Off the stretcher and pinned directly to the wall, her new work seems freer, more spontaneous and quite poetic. Still relying upon basics of pattern—interchangeable figure-ground relationships and all-over, equal-stress structures—she has now entirely broken away from the previous dense regimentation.

Rather than analyzing flip flops, inversions and permutations on

Alice Shaddle’s work is not trendy, scientific, ostentatious or aggressive. It involves no fast changes, no social comment. Nothing juts out, there are no hard forms. She is not trying to make a point or prove herself. Her work is old-fashioned and feminine: just gently, diaphanously and quietly there.

Since 1967, Shaddle has made paper sculpture and reliefs in which the cut paper is folded and forms come out of the flat page. Collage drawings inside boxes fit together so that depending upon the point of view one drawing seems to become part of another; anthropomorphic heads that seem to change

Bill Conger’s new paintings consist of architectural sorts of motifs. They divide into windows, hallways, bridges, vents, crossbars and the like, making up fairly quiet, stable containers for a variety of amorphic shapes.

These frameworks contribute to an overall equilibrium in which, despite obliquenesses, concavities and bulbosities, very little seems to agitate. Static frames complement ambiguous shapes and everything seems happy where it “grows.” That’s a surprising equilibrium because Conger’s shapes often resemble functional coverings over some strange type of throbbing organ. Highlights