01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 16, 2006

Paintings inspired by Providence mill buildings, mixed-media works inspired by movies and poetry, and a glassmaker's musings on the nature of language are among the offerings at local galleries this month.

At AS220, Stephen Brownell's paintings celebrate both the beauty and variety of local mill buildings, including the newly renovated Monohasset Mill complex on Eagle Street and the former National Worsted Mill (now Rising Sun Mills) on Valley Street.

Yet even as he calls attention to these icons of Rhode Island's industrial past, Brownell also mourns the loss of other mill buildings -- notably the former Valley Worsted Mill complex in Olneyville.

Built in 1866, the Valley Worsted Mill was torn down in 2001 to make way for the controversial Shaw's shopping plaza at Eagle Square. Among other things, the Shaw's project meant the end of Fort Thunder, the now-legendary artists' space that occupied one of the mill's largest buildings.

Still, it's the architecture, not the history, that seems to be driving force behind Brownell's work. Several paintings, for example, focus on the towers that often give mill buildings their distinctive "skylines."

In Monohasset Mill, a single tower is bathed in late afternoon sun, leaving one side brightly lit while plunging the adjacent side into deep shadow. The result is a nearly abstract composition, in which the usual distinctions between solid and void, background and foreground virtually disappear.

At the same time, the raking light that falls on one side of the tower allows Brownell to pick out some of the structure's architectural details, including a small arched window and a strip of diamond-pattern brickwork along the cornice.

Another painting depicts the American Atlantic Company, a now-demolished mill complex whose entrance was flanked by a pair of elegant neo-Gothic towers. In Brownell's version, the mill's twin towers are shown from the side, a perspective that highlight's the building's cathedral-like look.

One of Brownell's favorite subjects is the American Screw Company, a sprawling mill complex that once straddled North Main Street and Charles Street near Moshassuck Square. From about 1870 to 1900, the huge plant was considered the world's largest manufacturer of metal screws.

In 1971, most of the complex was destroyed in a spectacular fire.

Brownell, who often bases his work on vintage photographs, has several views of the American Screw Company campus. One shows a pair of tall towers with gracefully chamfered corners. Another shows a house-like building with a sloping mansard roof and large dormer windows.

Like the show's other paintings, these works strike a deft balance between old and new. On the one hand, they celebrate -- and in some cases commemorate -- Rhode Island's industrial past. On the other hand, their clean lines and crisply minimalistic style adds a decidedly contemporary note.

The results should appeal to art lovers, who can enjoy Brownell's work for its stylistic flair, and to local architecture buffs, who can savor his depictions of historic mill buildings.

Then again, why not do both?

Through March 31 in the AS220 Upstairs Gallery, 115 Empire St., Providence. Hours: Mon.-Fri. noon-6 p.m. Phone: (401) 831-9327.

Lane at CCRI

For the past few weeks, students at the Community College of Rhode Island's Lincoln campus have been flocking to the school's makeshift art gallery. The reason: an exhibit of paintings and mixed media works by Michael Francis Lane, a young Massachusetts artist who died in 2002.

It's not that Lane is a great artist. Indeed, many of the dozen or so works in the CCRI show, "Insightful Images, Literary Overlays: Philosophical Abstractions of a Young Man" are amateurish at best.

Instead, it's Lane's emotional intensity -- a rarity in today's over-conceptualized art world -- that seems to have struck a chord with viewers. That intensity is reflected in works such as Hypocrite, a dense, collage-like work that's dominated by a picture of Robert De Niro playing the demented cabbie Travis Bickle in the movie Taxi Driver.

De Niro's leering visage is surrounded by other images, ranging from a picture of sunflowers to a snapshot of children in Halloween masks to another movie shot -- this one of Jack Nicholson in the famous "Honey, I'm home" scene from The Shining. As a final touch, the word "HYPOCRITE" is spelled out in large block letters along the bottom of piece, though the target of the epithet is unclear.

De Niro pops up again in Lost Souls Swimming, another mixed-media work whose centerpiece is a shot from Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Yet Lane also has a softer side, as illustrated by a group of paintings featuring poems by the likes of William Blake, Sylvia Plath and Kahlil Gibran.

Lane, who was only 33 when he died, may not be the most polished artist you've ever seen. Yet some of his pieces have a rough-edged intensity that can bring up you short. Like work of so-called "outsider artists," the best of Lane's artworks speak to us from the heart, not the head.

Through March 31 at the Community College of Rhode Island, Flanagan Campus, 1762 Louisquisset Pike, Lincoln. Hours: Mon. 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 2-6 p.m. and Fri. 10 a.m.-2 p.m.. Phone: (401) 825-2220.

Mind over matter

Emotional excess isn't a problem for Helen Lee, a RISD graduate student whose work is on display in the Providence Art Club's Dodge House Gallery. In fact, Lee's show, "Helen Lee: Anechoic," is so conceptually dry and opaque that it almost feels almost disembodied.

That's a shame, especially since Lee combines two art forms -- glassmaking and conceptual art -- not often seen together. And for anyone who's seen one too many over-the-top Chihuly bowls (and, yes, I'm one of them), the chance to see younger artists stretching the limits of contemporary art glass is always a treat.

Unfortunately, Lee is almost as sparing in her use of glass as Chihuly is florid and overblown. Sliver, for example, consists of a series of thick glass shards that Lee has aligned so that they form a single continuous strip. When lit from behind, the shards form a kind of jagged prism -- a visual effect that will be familiar to anyone who's ever tried to peer through a broken windshield.

The show's title work, Anechoic, is even more of a puzzle. It consists of a large sheet of glass out of which various glass forms -- vases, platters, bowls -- seem to be emerging. Or are they sinking? It's hard to tell.

As for "anechoic," it means "without echo" -- a condition that viewers can experience for themselves by stepping into a soundproof chamber Lee built with the help of a friend, Matt Bissett.

Two other works also reflect Lee's fascination with language and silence. One, a silent video montage of scenes from Wheel of Fortune, is dedicated to Lee's mother, who, she tells us, watched the show "every day for the last 20 years of her life not knowing a single word of English." The other is a record of every word -- all 11,691 of them -- that Lee spoke during a single day.

While Lee has some interesting ideas, she needs to do more with them than she does here.

Ends tomorrow at the Providence Art Club, 11 Thomas St. Hours: Mon.-Fri. noon-4 and Sat.-Sun. 2-4. Phone: (401) 331-1114.