Also in the galleries

PHYLLIS WIENER After more than 60 years of painting, Wiener, 86, has as sure a hand and keen an eye as many an artist half her age. Her show of recent abstract paintings and elegant wall-hung sculptures, at Grand Hand Gallery in St. Paul, is a handsome display of sophisticated design and stylish whimsey. Trained in the 1950s by the legendary Cameron Booth at the University of Minnesota, Wiener was a founding member of the Women's Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) in the 1970s. While she's a mentor and role model for many women, Wiener doesn't pluck her materials or imagery from the feminist canon. Instead she taps into classic abstract motifs and techniques in canvases stained with brilliant shades of vivid color -- tangerine, olive, yellow, azure -- and enlivened with capricious designs reminiscent of Paul Klee's circles, squiggles and checkerboard patterns. There's a bold, slightly ethnic look to her sculptures, which suggest slender totems in yellow and black, and biomorphic pods in red, white, black and blue. It's a tribute to Wiener's skill that these graceful designs look simple and easy to do. They aren't. (Ends Dec. 24. Free. Grand Hand Gallery, 619 Grand Av., St. Paul. 651-312-1122 or www.thegrandhand.com)
'NAKED WONDER' As Gallery Co. curator Colleen Sheehy drolly explained, "Naked Wonder" is not about nudity and "few people are wonders when naked anyway." Instead, the show assembles recent work by three contemporary artists -- Mark Dion, Christine Baeumler and Eleanor McGough -- inspired by the intersection of nature and art. A pop culture aficionado, Sheehy launches the show with a Bob Dylan quote painted on the entrance wall: "The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder." Nothing that follows is quite as electrifying as that memorable metaphor, but the show has its high points, chiefly Dion's grid of 20 photos stamped "Bureau of Remote Wildlife Surveillance." They are images of deer caught in the act of grazing by cameras triggered by motion-detectors. Deer are, by convention, the embodiment of innocence as these photos confirm in soft close-ups of damp noses and big ears, milky startled eyes, awkward ambles and shadowy bodies. The Pennsylvania artist has built his international reputation with installations that slyly parody or probe the workings of art and natural history museums, aviaries and archeological digs. Minnesota painters Baeumler and McGough combine naturalist observation with designer hues in an effort to draw attention to wonders of the natural world. Baeumler's images of gigantic pink and yellow eyes, spiny blue creatures and translucent forms derive from recent trips to the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands where she studied fantastic underwater sea life. McGough's designs resemble seaweed, plankton, tubers, reeds, seedpods and amoeba-like creatures adrift in watery environments. With their moody gray backgrounds and pastel hues, her designs evoke the garden as a fantastic emotional and psychological space rather than a physical paradise. (Ends Jan. 8, free. Gallery Co. 400 1st Av. N., Mpls. 612-332-5252 or www.galleryco.net) MARY ABBE