Marvin “Red” Garner: “Pots & Paintings”; Barbara Rich Anderson: “My Familiarities”; and Aviva Rahmani: “IF”; through March 2 at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art has kicked off its 50th anniversary year with exhibits by past board presidents Barbara Rich Anderson and Marvin “Red” Garner, along with an installation by Aviva Rahmani presented in support of this year’s Camden Conference theme, “Politics, Water and Energy.”

Garner, a former art professor at SUNY-Potsdam, combines two distinct phases of his career in this show. He worked in ceramics until 1987, when physical problems forced him to give up pottery. He then converted his studio and started to paint abstract landscapes that reflect his influences, most notably Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn.

Garner’s paintings are saturated with color – in his “Winter Landscape,” a strip of glimmering orange slices through the horizon, making the frozen gray and tan landscape seem even paler in comparison. In “Ocher and Red,” a finger of inky water juts into an ocher marsh and the sky blazes in fiery crimson. At times, only a line of trees suggests that these are, in fact, landscapes. In others, bold, geometric rocks or pointy triangular pines give it away.

His pottery, though more

subdued in color, is equally bold. His pots and vases are often organic in form – a tri-spout stoneware vase reminds the viewer of a human heart, and the pattern in his free-form bowl looks like a giant pupil. His vases reference human silhouettes, yet his glazes speak to the land and sea. The combination is mesmerizing.

In the first-floor gallery, the first thing you notice is the giant photograph of a scrunched-up fishing net on display beside the admission desk. The corner of a metal bed, with a tangle of pale blue and green drift nets in place of a mattress, peeks out from behind a divider, luring you into Rahmani’s installation, “IF.”

The installation, which charts the nine-year reclamation of a Vinalhaven salt marsh, combines painting, photographs, assemblage, found objects and journal entries collected and made during the course of the project.

The result is part documentary, part art exhibit, though it never commits to either. While it raises issues that are relevant from a conservation standpoint, the installation didn’t strike me as well placed in an art gallery.

Certain elements – the bed of nets and a series of graphic maps that juts out from a wall mural – hold their own without the context of the surrounding documentation. Other pieces, such as the walls papered with journal entries, and the science-fairlike assemblages, which portray the site before and after the reclamation, seem incongruous and indulgent. These are distracting, whereas the rest of the installation is admirable for its sheer scope.

In the lower gallery, “My Familiarities” is a poignant glimpse into the local people and places that Anderson holds dear. Viewing the paintings is like leafing through a scrapbook. Her paintbrush captures the smiling faces of children as they jump off “Devil’s Rock” into the water below or the way the light dances on the leaves at Carle Brook.

Though the paintings will strike more of a chord in people who are familiar with the region, Anderson’s subjects are universal – we all know a young boy like the one picking blueberries in “Summer’s Day.” We all can recall a favorite swimming hole or a hidden stream in the woods. In her “familiarities,” we can find our own.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $2. For information, visit www.artsmaine.org or call 236-2875.