Galleries: Dean Dass' abstract paintings borrow from the clouds

Anyone who has seen Dean Dass' paintings of mysterious, atmospheric landscapes in Lapland and Finland will recognize elements of them in his recent abstract paintings of hovering cloudlike shapes at Schmidt Dean Gallery.

Dass' distinctive palette of pale pinks, oranges, and blues in combination with darker, earthier colors - yellow ochre, siennas and umbers, and various greens - is still in evidence, though these paintings are made up of predominantly pastel colors. The cloud shapes and their protuberances echo some of the shapes in the compositions of his earlier paintings; his progression into abstraction seems an entirely natural one, in other words.

What's remarkable is the intensity of focus projected by these paintings, both individually and as a group, and that they seem so fully formed. You sense that the clouds were floating in Dass' mind for some time before he was able to articulate them.

Unlike the landscapes in his oil-on-linen paintings, the final images in these works are determined, to one degree or another, by Dass' materials, mediums (a professor of printmaking at the University of Virginia, he knows his mediums), and manipulations. Each work is a composite of several layers of delicate Japanese papers, between which he applies a slurry of kaolin, marble dust, titanium white paint, and colored inks. The inks flow and spread through the papers, and, presumably coerced by the artist, form the cloudlike shapes. At some point during this process, he mounts the sandwiched papers to a wood panel.

The less defined these paintings are, the better each functions as a whole. (Occasionally the protuberances from the clouds verge on the cartoonish, and once your eye detects a referential shape it's hard to dismiss.) Paintings such as Pale Cloud With Orange Memory, which looks like a recollection of a cloud and the color of the sky at dawn or dusk, with just the merest wisps of orange, or Spreading Blue Cloud, of a pale turquoise cloud shape that appears to be disintegrating, best express the ineffable sense of flux and expansiveness that characterizes these works.

Dass is also showing lovely whimsical line drawings that look like doodled daydreams.

If you can walk up four flights of stairs to go to a gallery that keeps somewhat unconventional hours (see below), you'll be rewarded by James Oliver Gallery's current show of paintings and works on paper by Cora Jane Glasser. (The gallery itself, which doubles as Oliver's home, is worth checking out, too.)

In her series "Query," Glasser, a New York artist, suggests monolithic urban structures, as well as the voids that can and do replace them.

Thickly painted in two or three contrasting colors or shades - black and red; red, white, and black - Glasser's oil-and-encaustic abstract paintings on Homasote panels or thick pieces of paper bring to mind skyscrapers, but also African masks and shields, Russian constructivists, and Richard Serra sculptures.

I was not surprised to see, on Glasser's website, that she earned a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology and art. It stands her in good stead.