It’s a somber time of year, and this show reflects November’s waning light. Entering, one passes a Day of the Dead altar for the late Jill Berk Jimenez of the BAC, who died suddenly last month. Dominating the gallery’s one room is Thomas Lavin's approximately 4 X 3’ archival print War Memorial, depicting a military cemetery, as if lit by a full moon. A velvet covered table stands in front of it, where visitors to leave flowers.

Erin Malone's camera studies freeway sites where traffic deaths occurred. The fateful places are marked with impromptu memorials: small crosses leaning on the sound walls, plastic flowers wound into cyclone fences.

Angelika Schilli observes one specific loss in her color photographs of the home of her grandmother Oma, who died at age 90 in 2005. Schilli takes a last look at the lady’s tea kettle, the spice jars in her kitchen, and the radiator that kept Oma warm. By contrast, Heather Polley arranges, in sepia-toned photos, relics of her own grandfather, a famous human fly (a la Harold Lloyd's silent comedy Safety Last.)

Speaking of flies, even a dead insect gets its due in a literal "nature morte" in the show’s saddest pieces: 8 platinum/palladium prints by Beth Kientzle. Things fade in their silvery auras: a ghostly dying moth, the needle-fine whiskers of a dead rodent, and the tiny balled-up claws of a stiff bird.

And the happiest pieces? These would be Kirk Thompson's photos of the Sacramento Delta town of Isleton, a temporary place on temporary earth. Rusty buildings give a black goat some shade; trailer parks shamble around wild patches of calla lilies. Isleton he says, is a place for those who love "houseboats, beer and birds"… and the other fleeting joys of life.

--Richard Von Busack

(*Images, from top to bottom, and left to right: Thomas Lavin, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, War Memorial, archival print, 4 x 3', courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Erin Malone, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Collision on Hwy 101 Left One Dead, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Erin Malone, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Man Hit Killed on Hwy 101 in Sunnyvale, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Angelika Schilli, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Oma Fur, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Angelika Schilli, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Oma Kettle, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Heather Polley, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Laid Table Still Life, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Heather Polley, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, The Human Fly, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Beth Kientzle, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Untitled (Grosbeak), courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Beth Kientzle, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Untitled (Limpt), courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Kirk Thompson, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Mobile Homes, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.  Kirk Thompson, Loss, November 2 - December 7, 2008; Berkeley Art Center, Cream Building, courtesy of the Artist and BAPC.)