If you’re looking for art, try Dansville.

*That may seem like a surprise, since many people know Dansville as a pleasant small town with no particular artistic pretensions. But times are changing, so Dansville is more and more an easy-access venue for art.

*Last week we visited Dansville ArtWorks, a gallery on Main Street, for the 29-piece Fourth Annual Juried Photography Exhibit, along with the Mert Wager Restrospective.

*Photography’s a funny medium to judge or jury. First of all, you’ve got color photos, or black-and-white photos – how do you compare? Likewise how do you rate the relative merits of a landscape, a portrait, and a still life?

*So just to plunge into what really caught my eye – “Tender Moment” by John Adamski seized me. John captured two small fawns with their mother, a thrilling sight and a thrilling photo regardless of its artistic metits. But in this case the centrally-placed mother was alert, closely watching the photographer, with the two young ones carelessly confident in their mother’s care. I found it outstanding.

*Scott Hooker’s photo of spring thaw at Canadice Lake Inlet also got my attention. The main matter of the photo is swiftly-flowing water, but here and there the flow is punctuated by ice frozen around obstacles… water racing forward, and water standing still, impeding the flow.

*Nicole Walker’s nighttime “Rochester Skyline,” with its vivid colors exploding from the dark, unsurprisingly received an honorable mention. First place went to a black-and-white still life called “Screws” – a collection of flat-headed wood screws, arranged like the skyscrapers of a great city. It sounds odd, but it certainly caught my attention from across the room, so for whatever it’s worth I can support the award. Tom Kredo’s the photographer.

*In second place was John Adamski’s “Appalachian Sunset.” A lot of Appalachian sunsets have been immortalized over the years. This one I found very interesting because all that was shaded seemed to form one unbroken field of black. The outboard motorboat, for instance, showed no color and no detail beyond its silhouette, in the blue lake. It was a very interesting piece of work.

*L. Mert Wager, a Buffalo Mohawk lineman, taught himself to paint at the age of 40. His exhibit (paints and prints) starts off with a bang in the person of a red-breasted nuthatch, perching in its traditional head-low position but with sky beneath. That’s the first painting in the exhibit, and it drew me over instantly, and it’s defintely my favorite. I also loved the kookaburra, though I confess to having no idea what a kookaburra looks like.

*“Almost There” really gets across its concept, with a mounted cowboy leading a pack pony as he and his two animals trudge through deep snow. They’re crowding into the right lower quadrant, and ahead of them fenceposts just peek above the snow – they’re almost there. And the other three-fourths of the painting suggest all the terrain that they’ve struggled through to get to this point.

*A man and two horses also dominate “Sugar Time,” in which the man on the loaded sleigh strains forward, even as his horses plod through the snow.

*I don’t hunt, but I really liked the composition in “One Up,” where hunter, dog, and pheasant are all joined together, but each in his own space is a solo performer. In “Still Life Granny Apples,” the composition (logs, apples, blossoms, boughs) is islanded and spotlighted by surrounding white space.

*The photo exhibit is up until April 27, and the Wager exhibit through May. There are also works of numerous nedia for sale by local artists.

*While you’re in town, you might try the Fairy Doors walking tour – miniature fantasy doorways in places in or along Main Street. The library also features changing exhibits, and so does the historical society. On top of that there’s public statuary, in the person of a Civil War soldier. So, to circle back to my original statement, if you’re looking for art, try Dansville.