Theme shows are a regular -- and popular -- feature of the Arts Centre at Dockyard. Its latest exhibit, Celebrating the Tree, which highlights its importance in increasingly urban Bermuda, provides a subject that is topical and thought-provoking. It is well worth a visit.

The opening on Sunday took on an air of busy resolution as participating artists clustered outside the gallery, working on lino cuts, prints and, in the case of William Collieson, demonstrating how a sculpture of found objects is actually created.

Inside, the emphasis is overwhelmingly focused on the after-life of a tree (if it's lucky enough to have one) in the form of objects crafted from tree by-products. The living tree as an object of paintable beauty has (oddly, one would have thought, in an art show) been given short shrift, with only one oil painting on view, and a quartet of delicately brushed miniaturistic watercolours from Dana Cooper. The oil painting, loaned by David Wingate, harks back to 1930 and was painted by Helen Tee-Van, wife of an associate of water submersible pioneer Dr. William Beebe. It depicts, in somewhat murky colours, a group of ancient cedars on Nonsuch Island. From an environmental point of view, the picture's interest lies in the recording of a spectacular cedar which survived the blight, but succumbed to a later hurricane.

One of the most striking works in the exhibition is sculptor Paul Doughty's wall sculpture, Untitled, revealing the richly variegated grain of fir ply wood, and set on a solid green ground.

Helen Whight, newly arrived on the Island, displays audacious talent, whether she is drawing, sculpting, or carving lino cuts. There are two beautifully draughted pencil studies of trees, but her outstanding contribution is a collection of figures sculpted in papier mache. Financial restraints as well as recycling concerns have apparently encouraged her use of this cheaper alternative. That she does so with such disciplined vitality, excites anticipation of works in a more durable medium. In the meantime, her figures almost dance with their sense of movement; there is an obscurity in her fragments of texts from poems by Muriel Rukeyser -- presumably they are about trees? The versatile and ever-original William Collieson displays a work entitled "Sign of the Times,'' consisting of what is really a notice board on which is somewhat cryptically written in vinyl type lettering, "Are You Sure Everything Is Alright?'' There is also an evocative collage, mostly in grey and black flushed with silvery touches, of wild and stormy trees in "Arbour Nights.'' Calligraphy is another new departure in this show, with Patricia Thompson Brown displaying several examples which explore such topics as "What does a Tree mean to me?'' and "The Power of Trees,'' an attractive piece where a shimmering gold tree casts its rays into a glowing pink infinity.

Niall Woolf has used plywood and household paint to produce a lively, free-standing Family Tree, in a refreshingly cheerful representation of growth and life. The pastel hues turn thoughts to the nursery. The point he is making here is that each branch is independent but still part of the whole unit.

There are, as always, some exquisite quilts. June Christie's beautifully executed "My Garden of Trees'' has a symmetry of design that is quite breathtaking. You can indeed almost feel the sun peeping through Lynn Morrell's quilt, "On Looking Up,'' inspired by a walk in the Arboretum where she lay on the grass, enjoying the sunshine as she gazed up at the spring leaves.

Furniture, of course, is one of the primary uses of felled trees and Woodart has two beauties on show, both Queen Anne-style and crafted in Bermuda cedar.

Chesley Trott, on the other hand, turns to the wood of the grapefruit tree for his abstract "Life and Death of a Tree.'' Unusually, too, he has applied touches of elemental red, white and blue paint.

A slightly worrying tendency which seems to be gaining ground, especially among the young crowd, is an insistence on explaining their work, more often than not in language that borders on the pretentious. What happened to the time-honoured principle that a work of art should speak for itself? ---- Patricia Calnan