SIGHTS : It’s a Standout Month for New Public Sculpture in Ventura : There’s also still time to see the works of the winning local artists from the Merit Awards Show.

It’s a big month for new sculpture in Ventura’s public places, albeit public places off the beaten path.

Bill McEwen’s “Primary Triad I with Orange,” a dramatic relief sculpture, now graces the front wall of the Buenaventura Gallery on Santa Clara Street. And over at the Ventura County Government Center, Helle Scharling-Todd’s figurative sculpture “Inner Conversation” (see IT’S YOUR LIFE, Page 3) gently begs interpretation.

In McEwen’s art-about-art piece, bronze rods intersect with irregular cubes and planes of plastic. These have been richly lathered with paint-like pigment, referring to the practice and the realities of painting.

In part, the sculpture serves a practical function. For those who have driven by the gallery without noticing, McEwen’s asymmetrical construction serves to publicly announce the contents--and the intent--of the enterprise inside the small, well-utilized structure.

Through this weekend, the central gallery features the winners of the annual Merit Awards Show, a definitively mixed-bag of works with no common theme. Still, these group shows offer an opportunity to check in on the variety of work being done in the area.

Two of the artists here flex their own mediumistic variety. Jane M. McKinney shows both an ambiguously narrative pastel, “Second Question,” and the enigmatic rusty metal sculpture, “Blade.” Hanna Lee Hombordy’s densely modeled, and mottled, nude painting is the antithesis of her surreal sculptural objet d’art , “Mechanic’s Dream.”

Cynthia Bates’ “The Gamblers” depicts its skeletal scalawags in comical, “Dia de los Muertos” fashion, while Tina Atkins “Dancing Jaguar” is a fanciful, bejeweled multimedia affair. Joan Spencer’s “Departing Spirit” is a collagraph print sparsely sprinkled with black gestures on white, like waltzing microbes.

Betts Waite’s “The Blue Door” exudes an effectively lazy charm, with its idle gaze from a cool interior to a light-drenched garden on an immortal afternoon. Robert Wassell views Topa Topa landscape with dabbed skeins of paint, deceptively suggesting heightened detail.

Best of all, Sherry Loehr’s “Stone Fruit” seamlessly and yet enigmatically mixes sexual and Biblical metaphors, still-life rigor--sumptuously rendered peaches and regalia--and a veneer of abstraction. Close inspection reveals faint words, placed backward, reading “unlocking mysteries.” Encoding mysteries is more like it.

Details

* WHAT: Merit Award Show.

* WHEN: Through Saturday.

* WHERE: Buenaventura Gallery, 700 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 648-1235.