Different kind of auto show: 'Automania' in New Hope

'Automania: Second Gear," an exhibition at the New Hope Arts Center to complement the New Hope Auto Show, is an eye-opener. For while the auto show takes place every summer, a related art show is a first.

Pride of place in the latter goes to a 1904 Glide auto, built by the Bartholomew Co. and a familiar sight on the streets of Lambertville and New Hope with owner Jay Snyder at the wheel. It's driven now, on rare occasions, by his grandson Josh Snyder.

The photos of John Slavin, a former Inquirer photographer, are journalistic at heart. Taken along Route 66 over the course of 19 years, they stick with real, if romantic, reporting - gas stations, roadside signs, motels, highway landscapes, Amarillo's Cadillac Ranch, with its upturned, half-buried cars. There's vast treasure to be mined, and Slavin imparts a steady upbeat feeling for his subject, one that resonates with memories.

The richness of an occasional gleaming chrome surface distinguishes Eugene Perry's abstract sculptures, while painter Scott Matern conveys an easy bucolic nostalgia by including aging cars and trucks in his farm scenes.

Paul Beckwith, a new arts center board member, has lent a remarkable array of auto-related items collected by three generations of his family. These range from eight signed drawings by auto designer Ray Dietrich to vintage auto photos - Gen. Dwight Eisenhower standing by his Plymouth staff car - and an amazing variety of antique dealer promo models.

In the emerging-artist show "Places, Everyone" at Gross McCleaf Gallery, the display's personality emerges effectively in the "storytelling" of several of its seven painters.

Absolutely "now" are fascinating narratives by Ursinus faculty's Vera Iliatova, latest of many artists of Russian heritage whose work tries to make sense of confusing times in post-Soviet Russia. Some of that angst rubs off on Iliatova's disquieting oils of groups of young women in inscrutable outdoor settings, responding in various ways to the challenges they face.

As light as a souffle but even more nourishing and delightful are Erin Raedeke's tabletop still-life oils. What's unusual is the intense interest in realism this young mother shows here while painting her child's toys and candy. Also childhood-related are Sarah Noble's strange man-in-the-moon heads, painted as emblematic objects with hidden meanings that nonetheless exert a sense of presence.

The seeming casualness of Sarah Gamble's woodsy oils suggests the brevity of a sketch but belies their serious intent. Significantly, Gamble's semi-abstractions don't exile themselves from reality but delve deeper into it, celebrating the richness and mystery of visual experience. By contrast, Joe Ballweg broadly patterns big, emphatic abstract oils in a seemingly direct way without losing decorative detail - yet he bases each on hundreds of sketches.

Texture, surface, and color draw as much attention as subject in Jay Noble's oils, some having succulent touches, and always a suggestion of abstraction. Meanwhile, Caroline Santa offers subtle, airy, harmonious small paperworks you'd never guess are abstracted from newsprint photos she clips.

Our connection to both gritty city streets and airy spirit is affirmed in a "New!" show at Rosenfeld featuring eight regional artists new to the gallery and at differing points in their careers.

A copious, unedited talent, Ken Tutiamnong from Thailand paints vigorous if unpeopled Philadelphia street scenes that offer commentary with lots of empathy for gritty surroundings - these large paintings enlivened by being painted on aluminum. In contrast, David Shevlino's more representational paintings of people in suburban landscapes rely absolutely on the evocative potential of his perception of pervasive light and of color - as much or more than relying on expression.

Nobuaki Nakashima is no slick abstract expressionist painter. But he does work large and does love color. Fran Gallun's collages show a patternmaker's persistence and a traditional concern for drawing and for things seen while traveling. And Jorge Caligiuri from Argentina uses fresco to give his subdued blocky abstract panels a tactile surface, marking the sturdy honesty of his fresh approach. Graham Dougherty's is a resonant art, though his abstract paintings are built of gentle pale scrims of color that suggest he's a master of an achingly exact technique. Anne Caramanico's nature-based abstractions relating to Cambodia have a conciliatory sweetness, airy spirit and serenity, while sculptor David Krevolin's figures possess an expressive force at once disquieting and bemusing.