ART REVIEWS; STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND MENTORS

By D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI

Artists Under the Influence

ROCA (Rockland Center for the Arts), 27 South Greenbush Road, West Nyack, (845)358-0971, through April 10.

The current show at ROCA, ''Artists Under the Influence: The Mentor Show,'' reveals five successful relationships between educators who are established professional artists, and their students, who are already advanced in their artistic expression.

Being a teacher myself, I have come to know firsthand how difficult it is to teach someone of extraordinary talent without upsetting what made them unique in the first place.

The most stirring example of the positive influence of a mentor's powerful esthetic is the relationship between one mentor, Joel Carreiro, and Allyson Spellacy. Mr. Carreiro's heat-transfer collages turn a vaguely Rococo, even Romantic aesthetic into an exquisite match of color and composition.

Mr. Carreiro's color sense, his suggestive way of communicating the concrete versus the visceral, is passed on to Ms. Spellacy. Her quest is to show how memories determine mood, which culminates in an unusual and potent expression in her installation, ''Roundabout'' (2004).

The hardest influence to articulate is between a mentor, Sylvia Roth, and Lauren Orchowski. Ms. Roth's paintings, which are a cross between Georgia O'Keeffe and Odilin Redon, somehow brought out Ms. Orchowski's concern for how the engineered or constructed world that surrounds us is organized for human consumption.

What this exhibition reveals; and what is most important in any constructive relationship, is that all parties involved have the opportunity to grow. The mentor relationship, which is so well exemplified here, shows itself as a mutually fulfilling one.

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