Nancy Graves -- 20 Years of Prints & Sculpture The Bermuda National Gallery, City Hall, Church Street.

Until January 9, 1999. Call 295-9428 for holiday hours.

*** Even a cynic could be convinced that the wild exhibition of work from late New York artist Nancy Graves is a bit like Christmas.

The rainbow of bright colours are as arresting as any decorated tree. And the show -- only on for another two weeks -- leaves you feeling warmly inspired as if you've just opened a sack load of surprise gifts.

But like the festive season several pieces of her work leave the stale, old question of what it all means hanging in the air.

And I've got no doubt some fuddy-duddy traditionalists will walk out of the Bermuda National Gallery wondering where Art went wrong.

Straight away this in-your-face art hits your brain with the notion that Graves was no shrinking violet.

The undeniable energy struck me and as I wondered among the 41 prints and nine sculptures her creativity felt like it flowed through me.

Get artistic juices flowing Some of Graves' unconventional methods and constant -- at times awkward -- experimentation seem to echo abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock.

One of her Monoprint Series, Chala (1981), seemed akin to that crazy artistic era back in the 1950s and 60s when such big brushstrokes and splotches burst onto American canvases.

But other pieces like her lunar maps of the Apollo mission (Lunar Series, 1972) show a much more studied effort than Pollock's famous drip-painting, although her work could be just as impulsive and intense.

With the almost hypnotic Iconostasis of Water (1992) she had finished the print but at the last-minute decided to add an embossed relief made from three fish she bought from an Italian market for lunch.

Extras also feature in Stuck, the Flies Buzzed (1990) where she added a paper relief of embossed leaves.

As painstakingly intricate as the additions are, they almost seem a bit superfluous since the initial pieces already contain such substance.

Her obvious passion for science and history has resulted in pepperings throughout her work of unorthodox forms from archaeology, astronomy, botany, maps and zoology.

Even after staring at To Belittle Consciousness (1991) for 15 minutes new features like Egyptian hieroglyphics and elaborate, twisting snakes appear.

Graves attended archeological digs all over the globe and lived in Florence and Rome after growing up watching her father at work in a museum.

Those extraordinary observations seem to have set her mind alight with possibilities.

But then at times I felt her experiments failed as in some of the Pilchuck Series (1992) which, although interesting for her technique of putting organic form directly into her prints, didn't have a great outcome.

Maybe their subtle brown-hued smears were simply over-shadowed in this exhibition because of the stark contrast with more lively prints.

The overall richness I enjoyed in her prints I missed in some of the sculptures which seemed a little too contrived.

The separate parts in Cockatrice (1986), Foliar (1987) and Annulate (1988) were vaguely interesting but as a whole meant nothing.

Pilot (1982) -- a huge flower with blue pods for petals -- was alluring in an exotic confusing way a bit like some kind of mysterious jungle potion.

Perhaps the most awesome piece was the vivid, textured Tanz (1984) -- a bronze embossed fan and leaves with polychrome patina and baked enamel.

Similarly with Alembic (1994) and Gulo (1993) Graves managed to tie many materials -- each stimulating on its own -- into a beautiful composition.

This use of common objects together to create a single unique, worthy whole is commendably innovative but it's not a new concept.

At the end of last century the "Dada'' band of artists began using absurd art forms to challenge the high-minded bourgeois.

Like Graves they served up everyday objects with a twist -- Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917) was an upturned urinal -- and sometimes irked traditionalists so much as to provoke Police action.

Even just this month new artist Chris Ofili -- who works with elephant dung, acrylics and oils -- was awarded Britain's top art award, the Turner Prize.

Nancy Graves manages to sit in both camps -- her work is fresh and unexpected but at the same time it is undeniably creative and disciplined.

Love it or hate it, anyone who wants to feel their artistic juices flowing should have a look before the exhibition closes on January 9.