HE Bermuda Society of Arts Summer Members' Show this year is on the lean side and is really rather eclipsed by the debut show of pastels by Frances Furbert at the adjacent Edinburgh Gallery. Frances Furbert is a pupil of Sharon Wilson and the textured and layered application of the medium used by Ms Furbert is characteristic of the Wilson school. Instead of people, however, this artist is preoccupied with botanical works.

This is not however, to the exclusion of a couple of charcoal works, one of which, , is a highlight of the show. Portraits can very often be formal likenesses of people without a lot to say about their character and nothing at all to say about their relationship with the artist (witness the array of mayoral portraits in the main lobby). The portrait of Uncle Mac says a great deal about the subject and more about the obvious affection in which he is held by the artist. It is a work that may be looked at for some time and little by little more of this character and the relationship behind it surfaces. I am partial to good portraiture and it is most satisfactory that the artist in this case realised that the work was finished before going on to colour it with pastels., another charcoal is also an interesting work outside the botanical range, but not as exciting a work as the little The punt in question is seen through a complex pattern of branches that make a composition of remarkable interest and fascination. It is the kind of work that one is inclined to return to.

Botanicals, however well painted or drawn, are only botanicals. They can be beautiful or merely pretty, often depending on the nature of the plant in question, but they rarely make for inspiring art. Ms. Furbert's botanicals are beautifully executed, if in a rather hard edged style that I thought might well have been softened a little. She has done this within a way that made it one of the best of the botanicals.

Obviously the artist is fascinated with Calla Lilies. She has two versions in the show, both excellent, but again, a little hard edged. This isn't surprising. It?s a stiff sort of flower even though remarkable for the simplicity of its beauty, a simplicity that is emphasized by the artist in choosing to render only a single bloom. The other botanicals ran the usual range of available Bermuda flora and were all well executed and all done with the sober eye for colour encouraged by Ms. Wilson that is both warm and restful.

A first show is a formidable undertaking and a frightening occasion. Frances Furbert has passed through her testing moment with flying colours. I encourage her to diversify. She has a good and perceptive eye and experimentation is the path to ultimate success.

In the main Onions Gallery the show was both small and without much to lift it beyond the ordinary. Amongst the few pieces that did were two sculptures in applied (as opposed to cast) concrete by Dhammika. The first,, was not unlike the second, being a recognisable element arising from a column of shaped concrete. The second, , was, I thought, inspired. The character and spirituality of the upturned face rising from a gnarled tree trunk presumably representing the Cross was extraordinary in a piece so relatively small. By the same artist was an oil, , that hadn't the same sense of spiritual inspiration, but in its early Renaissance religious style was not unaffecting.

Beyond the Dhammika works only a few photographs were worth commenting on.

Martin Graznar's , closely and finely focussed against a blurry background, a little in the Robin Judah mode, was beyond the ordinary as was his charming , two fisherman isolated at the end of a wet pier. So was a photograph by Sarah Hughes using that unlovely construction as mere punctuation in the distance framed in a bower of branches. She might well sell it to the Paris Tourist Office.

Amongst the rather few paintings only Frank Dublin's demanded attention. The rocks in question have had their shape simplified and their colour probably warmed to considerable artistic effect. The delineation of shape and the colour scheme were admirable.

The only other piece of note, and that only because you had to walk all the way around it, was one of those meaningless pieces of endlessly repetitive installation art that have been so unfortunately faddish in Bermuda and elsewhere of late.are achieved with 156 pieces of paper folded like notepaper into little tents in three sizes. On these little paper tents is a monotonously repeated ink rendition of a bowl. It is like a nightmare version of some popular soul's Christmas mantelpiece without the colour and it is spread out over far too much of the gallery floor for comfort. The only joy it provides is in the certainty that it is purely ephemeral.