Hackett, Regina “Final Call” Seattle PI May 1, 2005 (unpublished)

Final call

Today is the last day to see Randy Wood at Soil (112 Third Ave. S, noon-5 p.m.) and Francesca Sundsten at Davidson Galleries (313 Occidental Ave. S,10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.).

Wood does thumb-sized ink and watercolor drawings of mountains. What they lack in size they project in scale. Lined up around the wall, each seems in its own odd way momentous. Critics can be horrid, and Wood included two in the gallery: A pair of gerbils who have chewed their way through a number of Wood's finest efforts, recycling the art into bedding.

Sundsten's oil-on-canvas paintings are both luscious and creepy. Her black birds in drifts of snow ("European Birds of the Crow Family," 47 inches high by 67 inches wide), are exact, feather by feather, and yet rooted in an otherworldly dream time. It takes awhile to see the white rabbit being pounded into the ground, or maybe kissed by the shiny beak of the avian predator standing above.