ALBANY -- Juror Linda Norden has crafted an interesting and broadly popular show for this year's ``Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk/Hudson Region.'' The exhibit, which had its opening reception Friday evening at the Albany Institute of History & Art, is dominated by representational painting and drawing accessible to artists and non-artists alike.

Now in its 66th year, the annual Regional is the area art scene's single most prestigious group exhibit. The show rotates among three venues: the Albany Institute, the Schenectady Museum and the University at Albany Art Museum. I don't know if the Regional reveals anything all that comprehensive about regional artists, but every year it brings surprises of several kinds.

Entrants are taken from a 100-mile radius of Albany, and each Regional is a mixture of familiar names and new talents. This is as much a matter of self-education as it is discovery, since who's new to one person may be another person's favorite (or least favorite) artist.

More important, there is a sense that the Regional expresses the general tide of the art world. That's a tricky judgment, though, because each year the venue hires a guest juror, and each juror constructs his or her own reality. Norden is associate curator for Contemporary Art at Harvard University's Fogg Museum.

Visually engaging

This year, the art is vivid, juicy and fun. The initial thrill of the 2002 Regional is how visually engaging it is.

Interest in both painting and representational art has been making a resurgence among artists across the country over the past several years, and the rebirth is welcome. Of the show's 119 works, by 67 artists, nearly half are paintings and drawings, and nearly a third are representational in one sense or another. The half-dozen or so installations are also nearly all based on traditional visual media.

While there is not always a single standout work in the Regional, this year Louanne Genet Getty's ``Home'' is far and away the greatest artistic triumph.

The work, which won the $1,000 first prize in the show, is a rel ief sculpture of five portholes arranged in a line on the wall at the exhibit's entrance. Each of the five units is fitted with a small lens, through which a miniature room -- kitchen, bedroom, etc. -- comes into view in startling detail.

The middle porthole is also wired with a motion-sensitive sound unit, which plays bird song whenever anyone walks near it. The effect, visual and aural, is intimate, mysterious and unsettling, like looking into the private rooms of another person's house, or the dusty reaches of an old mansion.

Part of the fun of each Regional is the chance it gives the viewer to second-guess the juror. Norden started with nearly 1,000 slides and winnowed them down to a tight final show. But invariably the individual is going to recut the exhibit into his or her own likeness. There is enough variety this year to give educated people of opposite tastes enough material to bookmark two wildly different lists.

Random thoughts

Here are my own random thoughts on the exhibit.

In her essay in the exhibition catalog, Norden praises painter Deborah Zlotsky's ``Self-Portrait Series'' for its ``seamless conflations of homage and self-aggrandizement.'' The series actually includes three oblique portraits of artistic elders who've influenced Zlotsky: French still-life master Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, American portraitist Alice Neel and British muralist Stanley Spencer.

The strength in Zlotsky's work lies not in its aggrandizement but in its spirit of praise and gratitude for these past masters. It also comes from the painter's vivid color sense and the technically thrilling way she whispers paint across the surface of the canvas.

Ronda Jeffer's ``Small Drawings,'' in the Institute's Rice Gallery, some 500 playing-card-sized pictures in colored pencil and marker, form a daily diary of the Albany artist's impressions, desires and stimulations. An ant, a shark, a nude woman, a foot, an African mask -- Jeffer shifts from sensation to sensation like a kid with the TV remote.

The chaotic, confessional power of Jeffer's work is somewhat defused, however, by Norden's insistence the pictures be hung in a grid pattern. The juror should have left the artist alone on this matter.

Space and time are limited, and there is much to praise: the energy of Laura Frare's small ``Daily Drawings,'' the angst in John Hampshire's mural-sized ``In the Studio with Zephyr,'' Allison Hunter's photographic ruins of the Port of Albany. Teping Lin's ``Heart and Soul'' fuses nature and technology in a fresh way, while Dan Mehlman's linoleum-cut prints have a wry, affectionate take on everyday events.

Ellen Nieves' two horse portraits are luminous and loopy, while Michael Oatman's video installation ``Syzygy'' is an exploration of memory and travel. The white-on-white minimalism of Michael Paddock's photographs is enigmatic, and Leslie Park's unflinching admiration of flesh in her ``Carole'' is astounding. Peter Taylor's abstract canvas feels like Agnes Martin gone organic. And the collages of Lisa Gregg Wightman capture with poetic grace the evanescence of the eye and mind amid the natural world.

There is much more, of course. This year's Mohawk-Hudson Regional rewards at every turn.

Creative winners

Each year, the Mohawk-Hudson Regional's three sponsoring institutions honor artists in the exhibition through purchase awards. This year's awards are:

Albany Institute of History & Art: Richard Garrison, ``Sixteen Parking Lot Color Scheme #1''; Deborah Zlotsky ``Self-Portrait Series: Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin.''

Schenectady Museum: Rob O'Neil, five photograph.

University Art Museum, University at Albany: Allison Hunter, ``Port of Albany'' Nos. 1 and 2; Susan Stuart, ``Green House Off Clinton.''

In addition, Albany Center Galleries has chosen Louanne Genet Getty and Z lotsky for its 2002 Mohawk-Hudson Invitational. An exhibition of work by both artists will be presented there in January 2003.