If you truly want to see the entire new exhibition at California Center for the Arts in Escondido, then wear clothing you won’t mind getting a little dirty because to see one of the artworks you need to crawl around on your knees to experience it fully. The exhibition entitled Leveled: An Interactive Experiment in Art features four large-scale installations that relate to the concept of the word green.

The four artists responsible for the installations are Doris Bittar, Wes Bruce, Ingram Ober and Marisol Rendon, and all of the works were created to physically interact with the viewer. Touching the art is definitely allowed in this exhibit because viewers are supposed to rearrange, ride, crawl over, and sit on various parts of the artworks. Tara Smith, who wanted an exhibit that would involve the public in the creation of the works, curated the exhibition.

After the initial staging of the installations by the artists, the public is invited to alter the artworks until November 7. Then, the artists will revisit the museum and make their own final alterations to the works, which will complete the making process of the installations.

Suspended over your head and scattered around a gallery are enormous fruits and vegetables by artist Marisol Rendon in her installation entitled “Esperanto.” Sitting on the floor are bodacious furniture-sized broccoli, colossal cauliflower, and a mighty slice of melon. The vegetable furnishings are made of padded felt fabric and their soft appearance invites you to sit on them. More spectacular is an enormous circular vinyl covered plate, which is actually a huge couch.

Upon the plate are a few prodigious peas the size of throw pillows. Viewers may remove their shoes and any sharp objects from their pockets so they can crawl over the huge plate rim to sit on the white circular plate/couch. Focused in the center of the plate/couch, down from the ceiling a white beam of light projects the image of a black line slowly drawing slices of mushrooms, tomatoes, and other vegetables. When sitting on the plate/couch, one feels feel terribly small. As you watch the projection slowly drawing vegetables all over yourself and the plate, the effect is both mesmerizing and strangely sensuous. There are also clipboards with paper and pencils attached because viewers are invited to draw their own images of food and then submit them to be potentially selected to be printed on t-shirts, which will be sold with the profits to go to a charity. Unfortunately, the clipboards become distractions to the installation and seem superfluous.

Wes Bruce; Detail: "The Secrets Surrounding the

Mysterious Life & Psychology of Ms. Augustine

Greane", 2010. Installation; life size.

Copyright © 2010 Wes Bruce.

^{Courtesyartist and California Center for the Arts Museum}

In Ingram Ober’s installation entitled “The Green Century,” a tricycle sports a horse head pump that spreads green ink over the tricycle’s wheels. As a viewers ride the tricycle its wheels leave a green ink trail on large canvas tarps that lay on the gallery floor. Mr. Ober also converted a shopping cart into a contraption to lay ink trails over the large canvases. While the tricycle and the shopping cart themselves are fascinating, the images resulting from moving them around are much less so. In the artist’s written statement for the artwork, Ober writes that the use of green ink “comments on the environmental movement and the importance of being communally aware of the consumption of natural resources.” The statement invests a far too specific meaning into the work because neither the work’s construction and installation nor how the artwork is activated supports such a specific reading of the artwork.

The most elaborate and detailed work in the exhibition is Wes Bruce’s installation “The Secrets Surrounding the Mysterious Life & Psychology of Ms. Augustine Greane.” Discarded wooden cargo palettes and old windows make up the structure’s maze of walls and tunnels. A viewer must crawl--at times on all fours--through much of the low ceilinged tunnels that lead to dead-ends filled with straw or secret rooms lined with old quilts. Each corridor is also filled with other numerous small objects. As you move through the installation, one becomes a wondrous, big-eyed child as you experience the endless numbers of letters, photographs, and other trinkets from old paint tubes and toys, to obsolete audio and astronomy equipment. Everything inside can be touched or picked up to better examined it. A person could spend hours viewing the installation and the value of experiencing the work is itself worth the price of admission. The detail and complexity of this installation deserves its long, complicated title.

The fourth installation with an onomatopoeia title “Tec Tang Tarab” is credited to Doris Bittar. It is actually a collaborative effort between Bittar, poet Diane Gage, and musician Jonathan Glasier. The installation consists of a wall of frames that may be arranged by the public. Another wall features a series of small plaques, each bearing a different word that can also be arranged to create a free form word poem.

A third wall in Bittar’s installation features a movable gate, ornamented with a Middle Eastern-like design. The back and forth sliding motion of the gate strums a large stringed instrument mounted on the wall. The whole installation is supposed to bring together three cultural influences—Aztec, Chinese, and Indo-European—that have contributed to the Americas. Although, a viewer might have difficulty identifying how the three specified cultural influences are part of the installation. It also seems more like three different artworks with a common thread of writing rather than a single unified installation, which makes it the least successful of the four installations in the museum.

The exhibition is very friendly. One might find college students hiding in one Wes Bruce’s secret rooms or children romping on giant carrot slices in Marisol Rendon’s installation. Less agile adults may have difficulty crawling through parts of Bruce’s installation, but one can view enough of it without needing to get down on all fours.