"Birds and Bees'' -- An exhibition of mixed-media work inspired by nature -- Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard -- September 10 to October 20.

While birds, bees and even educated fleas may, as Cole Porter sang, fall in love, they have also served as (with maybe the exception of the fleas) popular subjects for artists -- and indeed have inspired, in the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard's latest exhibition, some truly fine work.

Since September 10, the Arts Centre has been hosting a mixed-media display of works -- painting, sculpture, even patchwork quilts(!) -- that have taken their cue (whether directly or indirectly) from the natural world.

What this means, of course, is that the exhibition, which runs until the end of next week, is positively rife with depictions of such standard pastoral fare as fowl, insects, foliage and fruit.

But although the show, consisting in its last few weeks of exhibition of some 68 pieces, includes such old and reliable stand-bys as Eric Amos' finely detailed studies of birds, it is those submissions that are less conventional (in terms of both execution and medium used) that really soar -- particularly (and surprisingly) the sculpture.

On first consideration, the sculptural form is not the first technique that springs to mind if the evocation of nature is a target, but it does, as most of the sculptural samples at the Arts Centre indicate, lend itself nicely to the task.

In terms of reflecting, for example, the natural world's traditional denotations of freedom from man-made shackles, Chesley Trott's remarkable "Woman Releasing Bird,'' a marvellous bronze depiction of an exaggeratedly elongated female as she thrusts the winged creature skyward, speaks volumes, incorporating as it does both a sophisticated (yet accessible) visual language and a synchronistic adherence to symmetry and movement.

In the same vein, Antoine Hunt's "Trio of Pears,'' a striking silver-tinged assemblage of the fruits on a simple wooden background, constitutes a deceivingly complex study of nature's dual nature -- both its ripeness and sterility, its starkness and fecundity -- while Lynn Morrell's two largest sculptures (the lovely and innovatively executed "In The Bamboo'' and the humourous but message-laden "A Fable For Our Times'') each capture the splendour and vulnerability of the natural environment.

With these two submissions, in fact, Ms Morrell, whose talent has been cited in these pages before, has never been so playful and filled with whimsy, so socially minded and so vital, as she appears in this show. May she, in other words, continue down this garden path.

Of course, there are a number of paintings that also shine in "Birds and Bees'' -- Helen Daniel's fanciful gouache and "trials of life'' series, Caroline Troncossi's fluid, psychadelic "Double Hibiscus'' and Ruth Vallis' lovely quartet of watercolour miniatures (especially "Red Hen'' and "Three Ducks'') spring immediately to mind.

But, overall, it is the sculptures of the ensemble that ultimately draw in and delight. It is the Trotts and the Hunts and the Morrells, in other words, that really help this "bird'' soar.

DANNY SINOPOLI Sculptor Antoine Hunt