‘I Look for Clues in Your Dreams’ a tribute to California

“The West is the best,” some might say, but for curator Heather Marx, it’s instead a source of fascination — a magnet for her Midwestern family, which moved to Malibu in the ’60s, fell in love with California and entreated the rest of their clan to move to the West Coast as well.

When it came to organizing a show in her East Bay community (Marx’s S.F. gallery, Marx & Zavattero, shuttered in 2013 after almost 12 years), she drew from those still-resonant feelings and concepts.

“I Look for Clues in Your Dreams,” a group show at Berkeley Art Center, takes its cues from its octagon “tree house” space, as well as landscape- and environment-inspired works by local artists that sidestep traditional landscapes.

Leo Bersamina’s painted pieces of driftwood, collected from his surfing spots along the coast, draw from the line work and patterns of aboriginal artwork.

Kaleidoscopic, gemstone-esque effects are rendered with oil paint on found redwood burls by Victoria Wagner, while Amber Jean Young channels her obsession with sky, light and water into photos printed on fabric that she stitches into quilt-like textile pieces.