ORANGE COUNTY

Among the things we ask of art are that it look like it’s made by a real person in a real place at a real time. Such demands for “authenticity” are hard to satisfy in an age of global homogenization, but the cause is noble and it doesn’t lack for supporters.

Take Joachim Smith, who has engaged himself in a search for Orange County roots with the fervor of a born again Pre-Raphaelite. Formerly swapping his identity of Vic Smith, modern abstractionist, for that of Joachim Smith, botanical and biological illustrator, he has now organized a group show called “A Sense of Place” that includes his own sparkling records of wildlife around his Carbon Canyon home along with work by other Southern California artists who depict local landscape, use indigenous materials or otherwise seem to be at least vaguely in sympathy with his idealism.

It’s an odd assortment--from technically fine but otherwise ordinary land and cityscapes to Connie Zehr’s airborne, life-size dolphin (extracted from a multipart installation) and Tom Holste’s intriguing display of rocks and rock drawings that allude to ancient sculptures of human heads. Though the quality of the art is high, the premise of the show is such a can of worms that it’s hard to see the work without slipping on the words that ooze out of the catalogue. What we have here is a modern-day messiah trying to turn personal conviction into an art movement. It doesn’t work. Though the artists are variously attuned to nature, their art doesn’t hang together; it’s only camping out at a spiritual retreat.

Nonetheless, there’s something appealing about this endeavor: We all want to re-create ourselves and go back to nature at some time or other and we admire anyone with the courage to do so. But the romance is also self-serving, and the show finally rings quite hollow. This isn’t the ‘60s, the hippies have moved into corporate positions and the exhibition isn’t staged in an idyllic, natural setting. “A Sense of Place” simply occupies space in a frame-shop/poster gallery that’s lodged in an anonymous shopping center on a busy suburban boulevard. (Art Angles Gallery, 3411 E. Chapman Ave., Orange, to April 17.)