WILSHIRE CENTER

“Angel’s Flight” is a vaguely wing-shaped sculpture made of copper and wood. Installed high overhead on a gallery wall, it is representative of Susan Jordan’s aesthetic, which is simultaneously whimsical and ponderous. Whereas Jordan’s ideas are engagingly fancy free, the common building materials she favors tend to be rather leaden and earthbound. Sometimes this combination of opposites works.

Represented here by four charcoal drawings, four large exterior pieces and two small interior wall pieces, Jordan describes her work as “reductive formal gestures.” Regarding a lumpy black birdbath that looks like something out of the Flintstones, she says “a well becomes a birdbath becomes a gesture of containment.” An extremely unusual planter shaped like a curved trough (and planted with common grass) is described as “a riverbed becomes a trough becomes a gesture of embrace.” One could take issue with various aspects of those comments, but her work inarguably succeeds in walking the line between utilitarian object and fine art. Her oddball exterior sculpture would stand as a subtly provocative exclamation point in any manner of garden. (Saxon-Lee, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to Aug. 8.)