Two Galleries Give Death A Whirl. By Margaret Regan IN THE SENTIMENTAL Victorian days, people marked their loved ones' passage to death in elaborate ways. They put on black mourning dress, wore rings entwined with locks of the dead one's hair, and grieved at graves that, at least among the wealthy, were ornamented with weeping angels carved in stone. Sometimes the bereft family commissioned artworks called memento mori (memories of death), usually black and white drawings inscribed with verse. Some even had photographs taken of dead children dressed in their Sunday best. Such goings-on strike us an unseemly, if not morbid, in an age when the messy details of death are left to professional undertakers and outpourings of grief are more politely confined to the therapist's office. Yet two downtown galleries, Dinnerware and Central Arts, right now are staging shows about death. Each space is filled with contemporary memento mori: photographs and sculptures and mixed-media pieces that sometimes rage against the dying of the light, sometimes celebrate the life that once was. The Central Arts show, Death: A Round Trip Ticket, is the more gentle of the two, exploring the natural cycle that takes us ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the Dinnerware exhibit is a raw journey into grief and loss. The entire show focuses on a single death, that of Diane Marie Ferris, a Tucson ceramist who died last summer of cancer. Her husband, Gary Benna, a ceramist who is president of Dinnerware, has filled the floor space with nine sculptures fashioned out of equal parts stoneware and grief. Along the walls are pale photographic portraits of Ferris, made by Tucson photographer Ann Simmons-Myers in the months before Ferris' death at the sick woman's own request. Half-buried already in sand and stones, the dying Ferris gazes forthrightly out from the delicate salt-print pictures, a messenger from the realm of death. Knowing what inspired Benna's art, it's virtually impossible to assess it solely in aesthetic terms. How can we not think of the agony of the survivor when we look at "Embracing Love's Gift"? In this pedestal piece, above a small, lifeless female form, a man is having his entrails ripped out by a bird. Then there's the untitled porcelain wall in which the male figure desperately grabs at the foot of a winged woman who's impatient to fly away. Still and all, Benna has paradoxically brought an almost classical discipline to this emotionally gripping series. Drawing on different art historical styles, his works call up both classical heroism and medieval terrors. "Graces of the Inner Gate" suggests both. It's a large stoneware triptych, with doors that open and close on golden hinges. Outside, death is orderly and serene. Classical female figures are tucked into niches, and a god on a throne reaches out kindly to a woman crawling toward him. Inside, though, all is torment. Souls straight out of Hieronymus Bosch tumble down rocky cliffs to their doom. Most poignant of all are Benna's sculptured dancers. In "Dance No. 3," a woman still healthy and vigorous dances happily in the arms of a man. But in "Dance No. 1," her body is compromised; her dancing partner holds her lightly so as not to damage her further. The partner may be her loving husband, or it may be Death itself, eager, just like the skeletons in the painted medieval "dances of death," to take her as his own. Over at Central Arts, the palpable sense of grief is less intense, diffused as it is among 35 artists who were free to fashion works about loss of all kinds, not just death. So while there's a Mexican-inspired shrine to a dead lover by David Adix, full of flowers and snapshots and personal belongings, there's also a mixed-media homage to a beloved but long-dead dog by Carol Jacque. One of the finest pieces in the show, "Homage to Magnani," is actually a memorial to a lost art studio. Catherine Nash and Robert Renfrow, regretful over the shutdown of a centuries-old Italian papermaking workshop, put together a lighted cross filled with photographs of the tumble-down place. The cross stands on a pedestal of rusted cabinets and tools. There's a coffin, to be sure, in a central room designated the Sanctuary, but it's been painted in cheerful flowery colors by show organizers Pat Dolan and Erica Swadley. They've called it "Going Home." Above it Dolan, Selina Littler and Sharon Brady have hung a graceful boat fashioned from tamarisk boughs to guide the departed on his journey to the afterlife. (Dolan is the widow of artist Charles Littler, a UA prof and the founder of Rancho Linda Vista, who died several years ago. Littler is his daughter). Their installation adds up to an elegant send-off. Drawing further on Catholic funerary imagery (who does death better than Catholics?) there's a corridor christened "Stations of the Heart." And the front of the gallery is set up as a mortuary yard complete with lovely, handmade urns, including John McNulty's fine Egyptian-inspired chariot and Andrée Richmond's playful "Lizard Urn." Swadley says one purpose of the show was to bring art back to death, to restore artists to their former place as the designers of meaningful funerary trappings. After all, in a secular age when religious rituals have lost meaning for many, the grieving still need comfort. Such enterprises as the national AIDS quilt have attracted thousands of participants. The two Tucson exhibitions suggest that art can indeed resume its former role as a player in death, by fashioning memento mori for the living. A show of works by Gary Benna and Ann Simmons-Myers continues through March 29 at Dinnerware Gallery, 135 E. Congress St. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with extended hours until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, call 792-4503. Death: A Round Trip Ticket continues through March 29 at Central Arts Collective, 188 E. Broadway. Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with extended hours until 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays. At 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 13, participating artists will discuss their contributions to the handmade Book of Ours. The show closes with a procession to Armory Park beginning at the gallery at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 29. For more information, call 623-5883.

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