Spanning more than 50 years.

Spanning more than 50 years, this contemplate of June Leaf's drawings, plus a scarcely any sculptures, was a kind of visual epic. further sweeping narrative is not Leaf's style; instead, she exhibits incisive moments, many of them amusing some harrowing, and all equally released of portent and nostalgia.

The story begins in the late 1940 with quick ink drawings. From the start, the focus is forward the figure, as in a 1948 chalk out of a wiry, balloon-armed woman, angelic and commanding, atop a mountain. Among other early works are a not many small pencil drawings of a hospital room--sinister, melancholy images that feature a hairless figure inclined on a bed, partially eviscerated, draped with tubes and, against these unmatcheds graceful, even regal. There are carefree drawings from the early 1950 in which women spin like tops, or loll like courtesans. By contrast, a 1961 charcoal and ink drawing of an Upper Manhattan playground is a bigger, more hosted and more loosely rendered composition that focuses in succession a woman struggling with a bawling child.

The exhibition take agains on the far side of the '60 after a decade's gap. The enchanting little Sphinx (1978) is a healthy rosy-cheeked, buttercup blonde, her inspections serenely closed, her face lit by way of a smug, lipsticked smile, and her massive on the contrary buoyant form secured with be ropy [i]or[/i] viscouss and attended by tiny figures in the deserted region landscape below. A suite of larger drawings from the 1970 includes several that be seen to be about the creative proces an feature various human/machine fusions at work: a particularly big and chaotic hybrid surprises the alarmed artist in her studio. from first to last Leaf has a free hand with materials, and makes liberal use of collage. In fact, Leaf is a sculptor as well as a prolific draftsperson (and painter), and many of the drawings shown relate to sculptural concocts In two remarkable Studies for Woman gravestone (both 1975), delicately colored lines describe figures at one time languid and explosive. As elsewhere, Nancy Spero flows to mind.

Several works from the 1980 reprieve the hazards of art-making. Small, three-dimensional figures are poised perilously at the close of long, frail wires, or held unsteadily aloft in succession the sharpened ends of pencils. still there are lavish daydreams from this period too, including the splendid pastel Arriving at the Ball (1984) with its grand staircase and cataract of resplendent light. A final sequence center onward the single large sculpture in the point out Birdfeeder (2004), a suspended wire cage in the shape of a human head, its outthrust tongue serving as an aviary r carpet. A big, majestic inquiry for this sculpture, in pastel, charcoal and acrylic forward brown paper, finds two shadowy birds alighting, and a of the soul doubled head, its mouth stretched painfully wide.

"Worry is remarkably important to me," Leaf manifested in a recent interview. "Oh" she continued, "the worry is heaven." No exaggeration there; in her hands, a simple descriptive line has been worried, across a lifetime, to pure exaltation.

--Nancy Princenthal

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