Italo Scanga

Jan Baum is closing her La Brea Avenue gallery on the last day of 2007. Thirty years after staging the first of hundreds of exhibitions for artists such as Betye Saar, Peter Plagens, Chris Burden and Roberto Gil de Montes, it's time for Baum, who's now in her 70s, to travel and pursue her art passions at a more leisurely pace.

An inordinate number of art shows are coming up glass this week, and it's no coincidence. The Glass Art Society is holding its annual national conference in Los Angeles, at the Ambassador Hotel through Saturday. In conjunction with the four-day meeting (largely an illustrated talk fest featuring lectures, panels and technical discussions), about 20 galleries have staged glass art exhibitions.

There's a new "look" in town, "the John Snyder look." It's not coiffure. It's not couture. It's not architecture, interior design or landscape design. It's floral design. Snyder's works are more and more often being commissioned for major social events. They appear regularly at Java, the San Diego art scene's coffee bar/gallery, and in the homes of San Diegans who enjoy what Snyder calls "a reasonably priced luxury."

When artists create dining room tables that reflect their art, you get some pretty arresting tables. Take Jim Morphesis' surreal, black-draped environment with skull place mats and gold napkin rings. Or minimalist Tony DeLap's long, vertical wood sculpture suspended from the ceiling over the table. Or playful Italo Scanga's Italian-inspired, hand-painted tablecloth and large ceramic Italian cypress centerpiece. And we haven't even gotten to the table with moss growing on it.

It's understandable that an artist dealing with an intensely personal cultural theme may want to make the most outspoken and physically imposing statement possible. But splashier and bigger is not necessarily better, particularly when passionate belief is packaged in a tired format. Unfortunately, most of the sculptural and installation work in "Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art," at the Fullerton Museum Center through Sunday, falls into that trap.

SummerFest grows ever more impressive under the direction of David Finckel and Wu Han. A finer collection of American chamber music players will not be found anywhere else this summer. If La Jolla has yet to become a chamber music vacation destination like Santa Fe, that is surely the next step, given this popular resort with its veneer of elegance and sparkling beaches.

The Quint Gallery (664 9th Ave.), for its second show in a row, is exhibiting outrageous furniture. This month it's the furniture of Roy McMakin, a part-time resident of San Diego. At the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art's "A San Diego Exhibition" last year, he created a much-praised installation that resembled a California craftsman-style dining room.

"Gardens: Real & Imagined" feels a bit untended--overgrown and ambitious in parts, stunted and parched in others. The Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York, which originated the show last year, invited 12 artists to explore the garden as idea, metaphor or literal plot of land. The results can now be seen at the Felicita Foundation for the Arts in Escondido (247 S. Kalmia St., through Feb. 1), the show's sixth stop on a three-year tour.

The center city art district stands to get a high-class shot in the arm, and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art will get a downtown satellite, when it opens Paramaters 8 on Oct. 18 at 715 8th Ave. "We wanted a tougher space," an urban change from the museum's emotionally cool galleries, Director Hugh Davies said at a press briefing last week.