Villa Meditation

  Fromnow through Sept. 14, the exhibit “Rituals & Meditations: Works by RichardBolingbroke & Imari Bowls from the Permanent Collection” provides a perfectpairing, similar to the colorful big bangs defining our night sky… without thebig bangs of course.

  Bolingbroke,a painter from San Francisco,was on-site during my review. Tall and slender, he’s a Zen kind of chap who hadmuch to say about his numerous watercolors (ranging from 60-by-40 inches anddownward). His paintings, brought to life from his studio still-lifearrangements (“a ritualized space for working,” he says), are carefullyconstructed and wildly colorful. Orchids and lemons, cranes, koi and kimonoscrowd the work, but never suffocate it. There are ample spaces left free formeditating, a discipline practiced frequently by the artist, who is a followerof Rumi, a Sufi mystic.

  Thework, both quiet and energetic, finds focus from the mandellas of India, wherethe artist lived for five years. Lining the hall on floor two are severalwatercolors depicting skulls, bones and thorny limbs from black locust trees.They reference pain and the loss of friends stricken with AIDS. One suchmemorial, the starkly simple Circle ofLife, says it all, and says it well in grayed-down tones. Rather than beingmaudlin, it’s hopeful.

  TheImari ware, embellished primarily in red, blue and gold, is almost incidentalto this show, but the pieces are modestly displayed and don’t duel with thelush paintings. As I exited via the hallway, I passed one simple bowl, Rice Bowl, embellished with a Dutchvessel under full sail. Bound for European markets from Imari, the Japaneseport that exported loads ofporcelains in the mid-1600s, the tiny vessel has a tale to tell.