'Adventures in La Land'

Through Sat/23, !hey! Gallery

SIT DOWN IN the middle of Suzanne Husky's flower garden and feel like Alice in Wonderland. Standing upright about a foot or two high, Husky's flowers are voluptuously puffy, made out of shiny fabric, and adorned with all kinds of beads, sparkles, and fur. Their colors are rich and deep: magenta, emerald, royal blue, and others. Each is different from the rest, and every one is completely decadent with ornamentation. Husky thinks of her flowers as very feminine, partly because their decorations are made out of women's or girl's jewelry and partly because the flowers look strikingly like female sexual organs – soft parts opening up to reveal other, hidden soft parts. Sometimes the flowers seem a little threatening, like Venus flytraps lying in wait, hoping you'll stick your face too close. Other times they seem very innocent, like pretty stuffed animals for children to play with. Their large size (relative to most real flowers) makes even a grown-up feel a bit like a kid sitting in a fantasy garden. The gallery walls surrounding the flowers are decorated with more than a dozen of Amy Morrell's paintings. Morrell describes this series of works as a narrative of her life journey. They tell the story, she says, of how she grew up, experienced all kinds of human emotions, then became psychically intertwined with another person, and eventually learned to travel through time and space. Most of her pieces are flat paintings on wood, except for one remarkable sculptural work that looks like a multicolored mushroom garden growing sideways out of the wall. If it had a face, it would be wide-eyed and happy, like its title: The morning is shining like a red rubber ball. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m., 4920B Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 428-2349. (Lindsey Westbrook)