ART/SNEAK PEEK : VALDEZ ON INSPIRATION FOR `PRIVATE LANDSCAPES'.

Byline: - Reed Johnson 

It's a room Martha Stewart might envy, a shrine to the virtues of do-it-yourself domesticity.

Its loudly colored walls are lined with miniature sombreros and doll-size Southwestern throw rugs. A blue-skinned Indian god hangs from the ceiling. A tall cabinet bristles with electric candles, a copy of Man Ray's photograph ``Tears'' and other trinkets scavenged from the Olvera Street Market - all of them arranged with a quasi-religious reverence that belies their whimsicality. A chiming clock marks time, one imagines, for some cozy household ritual yet to occur.

Artist Pattsi Valdez smiles faintly as she explains the inspiration behind her mixed-media installation, ``The Living Room,'' the centerpiece of her just-opened exhibition, ``Private Landscapes 1988-1997,'' at the CSUN Art Gallery.

``The whole theory behind that was, I'd be at K mart and I'd see all these Latina women buying their Martha Stewart paint,'' Valdez says, referring to a popular brand marketed by the queen of low-budget chic.

``I thought, well, you can be poor but you can still have beauty. And you don't have to spend a lot of money. I learned how to invent things from junk. That's the whole intention of this room ... like, stuff that I bought from a second-hand store.''

Valdez hastens to add that she's not saying Martha Stewart ``is perfect or anything,'' but she does admire Stewart's gift for creating highly personal environments out of thrift-shop parts and mix-and-match iconography.

To an extent, that aesthetic defines Valdez's own art.

A painter, installation artist and set and costume designer, Valdez has exhibited internationally and worked with the Mark Taper Forum (``Diva L.A.,'' ``Carpa Clash'') and as a consultant for the Francis Ford Coppola-produced film ``Mi Familia.''

A few years ago she began turning her attention to painting. Her early works are pervaded with strong primary colors and influences ranging from Frida Kahlo to Max Beckmann, the German expressionist painter whose portrait appears in the corner of one work, ``The Purple Couch.''

``That's just some artist I admired,'' Valdez remarks slyly. ``I made a joke some years ago that all the men I love are dead.''

Magic and surreal mystery also permeate Valdez's imagery. In many of her paintings, ordinary household objects seem to be guided by hidden apparitions. Scarfs float out of drawers with restless energy. Cramped geometric surfaces induce a claustrophobic unease. Tension flows between her interior and exterior spaces, creating works that are heavy with dramatic potential despite having few human figures.

In ``Red Room'' (1993) a letter opener - or is it a knife? - hovers in a state of agitation, as if trapped in its own infernal atmosphere. In ``Room on the Verge,'' on loan to the exhibition by actor-comic Cheech Marin, three brooms glide and dance like the ones in ``The Sorcerer's Apprentice'' sequence from Disney's ``Fantasia.''

Calmly, Valdez describes her early works as ``naive.'' See, she points out, in her more recent paintings she's branching out into more subdued colors, and experimenting with long, vertical canvases. Her objects, too - hobby horses, masks - have grown less menacing, ``a little lighter, a little more innocent. They're calming down.''

But signs of trouble still emerge in such paintings as ``Little Girl in Yellow'' (1995), which depicts a roly-poly child standing on a chipped sidewalk, her body tipped as precariously as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

``That's me when I was 5, or maybe I was 4,'' says Valdez, who was born and raised in East L.A. ``Well, her world is starting to fall apart a little bit, her whole life. Her aura is still around her, but the ground is starting to crack.''

If Valdez's art is more peaceful these days, part of the reason could be her new neighborhood. When she started painting she lived near MacArthur Park, where her apartment looked out on a gray industrial landscape.

``Up to the minute I got out of that neighborhood I was searching for a tree. So the quest was a tree.''

She now lives near Elysian Park, where the grass is greener in her latest private landscape.

Valdez is sharing the CSUN Art Dome with friend and fellow artist Christina Fernandez, whose installations and tableaux of photographs and text examine family histories and personal stories within a socio-political framework. See this space next week for more on Fernandez's work.

The joint exhibition runs through Feb. 28 at the CSUN Art Dome, 18111 Nordhoff St., corner of Lindley, in Northridge. Admission is free. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. Mondays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays. For information, call [phone].

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Photo

Photo: ``Room With Masks,'' circa 1996, is included in artist Pattsi Valdez's ``Private Landscapes 1988-1997,'' at the CSUN Art Gallery.