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A r t s B r i e f sJordan at Sixth:Short of %u2018Poo%u2019When looking at paintings like those by Rachel Jordan now showing at the Sixth Estate Gallery , one begins to wonder what it is, exactly, that qualifies as art work. Park of it is, obviously, putting the paint down on the canvas (or chipping the marble, or molding the clay, depending on medium) which is an obviously integral part but just as obvious is the fact that %u201c art%u201d constitutes more than that. And if the %u201c more%u201d is merely putting the paint exactly where one had intended that it should go, then Jordan has done a fine job. But if it (art) means capturing or recreating-indeed, if it involves anything having to do with emotions or feelingsJordan has missed it by a long shot.Jo rd an %u2019s show exhibits eight large paintings and two smaller at the 85 Atlantic Avenue gallery. The major subject is the old %u201c optical illusion%u201d pattern of cubes--in which one can%u2019t tell if the parallelogram is the top of this curbe or the side of that cube or what. It is slightly reminiscent of the %u201c pop%u2019%u2019 era of the %u201960s--those simple colored geometric shapes which died out because they had nothing better to do. But this exhibit falls short of these %u201c pop%u201d pieces. It lacks variety, the composition, or the obnoxious simplicity of this era.Rachel Jordan%u2019s paintings will be at the Sixth Estate through October 22. Thegallery, located at 85 Atlantic Avenue, is open Tuesday through Friday, 2 to 6 p.m.OnH on in %u00a3 _ M ****** ** %u2022! WVUWHWUi UUW Jll V U il ii a-J.W .Masks Vibrateat Work of ArtThough M U Johnson paints portraits, his works aren%u2019t of people. They are, instead, depictions of the emotions and reactions people emit. %u201c Our Masks & Vibrations,%u201d Johnson%u2019s current show at the Work of Art Gallery, consists of bold, vibrant paintings and some smaller prints.Combining geometric shapes with abstract suggestions of selected facial features, Johnson emphasises one common element throughout every displayed piece -th e eyes. While the rest of the paintings are usually done in shriekingly brilliant, unblended fluorescent colors, the eyes, often contoured to depict expression, are blended and done in deeper, richer tones. They are the integral and central element of each of the paintings, and like windows that look into and beyond the canvas, the eyes reveal the real soul of the paintings.The eyes are, perhaps, the only part of the picture in which the artist treats his subjects with candidness. That is-the eyes are the only part of people that Johnson feels aren%u2019t mostly masked. They stare, or scream , or weep from behind these %u201c masks%u201d -and the viewer can%u2019t help get the feeling, because of the total unashamed frankness with which Johnson handles emotions, or more pointedly, the hypocriC*%u00abr * o f U%u00abr> %u00bb V/J. l l t o O U t/ jV C IO %u2022Though the paintings are intriguing and imaginative individually, as a group they become slightly repetitious, losing their major attribute of individuality and originality. If his style were varied more, or if he were to take a new approach to this unique angle of a tired subject, Johnson%u2019s show would be greatly improved. As it stands, the show is worth seeing, but not worth spending a significant amount of time at.%u201c Our Masks & Vibrations,%u201d will be at the Work of Art Gallery, 87 Atlantic Avenue through October 22. Gallery hours are 2 to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. The next show will be one of recent paintings and drawings by Susan Fishgold, which opens October 24.Satirical Fibre Art%u201c People I have known and/or, God forbid, am,%u201d is the intriguing name for the show of fibre sculpture that has just opened at Gallery 91, 91 Atlantic Avenue. Created by Linda Holland Rothkopf these %u201c soft sculptures%u201d are a satirical look at people, if not on life itself. The show will be at Gallery 91 Thursdays and Fridays, 2-5 p.m. and on weekends, noon-6 p.m. For more information about the exhibit, or about future shows or the. gallery, contact Gallery 91 at 624-4255.Pizarro Captivates*%u2022*, * mm t # u v nuw>***%u2019Currently displayed at the Atlantic Gallety is a captivating one-man show by Jose Pizarro called %u201c Visiones y Pasajes.%u201d It is a thrilling collection of twenty-two paintings featuring legs, legs and more legs. They scream ideas of sado-masochism, violence, the current punk rock rate and would be well suited to a rock group%u2019s album cover.Women%u2019s legs are beautifully portrayed from sole to thigh and are usually clad in stiletto heels or high-heeled tight boots. Many are bound in ropes, metal cuffs or pieces of dark clothing. Some are colorful with bright pinks, greens and blues. Others are dark and mysterious. Still others are lightly splashed with graffiti or have numbers written on them. Several are collages; light legs are cut out and glued to dark backgrounds with cigarette wrappers interspersed throughout.The show is modern with a current theme of adventure, life and violence. The paintings were done with energy and skill, definitely worth seeing! The Atlantic Gallery, 81 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights, is displaying %u201c Visiones y Pasajes%u201d October 3-22. The gallery is open Tuesday-Friday, 2-6 pm and SaturdaySunday, 12-6 pm.--M.K.Book Beat b y L.J* D a v itThe trouble with a how-to-do-it book is that although it can show you with wonderful exactitude just how to go about placing your three foot length of fantastically expensive copper pipe in the brand-new vise you have clamped onto your sawhorse with a wingnut and a prayer-and, more, it can demonstrate the proper (or missionary) position for angling your hacksaw%u2014the thing it cannot do is tell you how it feels when you start to cut the son-of-a-bitch in half.The way it feels when you cut the son-of-a-bitch in half is where it%u2019s at.It%u2019s a lot like sex; you can read about it until you%u2019re red in the face, but when you come right down to it, the only way to learn is by doing. There is no substitute for on-the-job training. Renovating a house is not the same as whipping up the batter for a Dobos torte; it is remarkably difficult to sprint back to your cookbook for a spot of advice if you%u2019re holding up a bearing beam and your lolly column has just fallen down and your wife is back in the old apartment and if you bend over, the house will fall on you. It is at such moments that the human mind comes in on its own. You will find yourself thinking very hard.A little advance knowledge is, however, a useful thing; ignorance is nothing but ignorance, and it can either get you killed or make you broke. In Boerum Hill on Wyckoff Street there stands a house that is told of in song and story. Long, long ago when we were all very young and poor, before the whole undertaking got Man-, hattanized and the renovators you met in the street looked like your mother and father except that you were their own age, a chap decided that he wanted nothing more in that house than a picture window. God knows why he wanted a picture window in an 1850 townhouse, but he did, and he picked up a sledgehammer and made one. Then he went around the comer to buy himself a beer. This was a stroke of luck, for when he returned a few minutes later, he was very surprised but also stillalive. The facade of his house was on the sidewalk. There were tons of it.MAKE HASTE SLOWLYTo coin a phrase, make haste slowly. Remember, you don%u2019t know anything. You may think you do, but you don%u2019t. You may have just made a killing on the Crawford deal and gotten picked to head up the dummy corporation, you may even rememberVhat a tenon is from high school shop, but in the matter of old houses, you are merely educable and even a Democratlr%u00abAMFc mnt-A fKftn yrtii Hrt Whpn vnil waIVthrough the Brownstone Crescent, you can%u2019t even see right. Oh, sure, you notice that some houses are brown and some are red and some have a lot of crap onthem%u2014and some streets are nifty and others seem pretty awful, etc. But unless you sit right down in your easy chair and take a crash course in what you%u2019ve just been looking at, you%u2019re going to take a bath. (The days when you could walk into the Crescent, plant your flag any old where, and luck out as though by a miracle arte gone forever, and you%u2019d better get used to it.)Learning to understand what you%u2019re looking at means that you%u2019re going to have to learn to ignore dopey paint jobs and naked light bulbs behind curtainless windows and even cunning little flower gardens in the front areas; the burned-out junker you%u2019ve just disdained may be one of%u2018Ignorance isnothing butignorance, and itcan either getyou killed ormake you broke.%u2019the- last available Greek Revival houses in the city (Boerum Hill) an all-but priceless Georgian-Federal (Vinegar Hill) or part of a row of intact Neo-Grec (Park Slope and Fort Greene). Get a copy of Charles Lockwood%u2019s Bricks and Brownstone or Clay Lancaster%u2019s Old Brooklyn Heights. Set aside an evening, and give yourself a lesson.You can still take a bath; there are some really super houses on Bushwick Avenue, but Bushwick is going to bum to the ground long before anybody else (including, in all probability, your spouse) is going to move there of their own free will.You now know how to pick a house but it is vitally important for you to learn how to pick a neighborhood, and for this, real estate salesmen (sterling fellows that they often are) cannot be wholly relief on; we are in times of scarcity, and they have to make a living. About the best guide you can lay hands on is Deirdre Stanforth and Martha Stamm's Baying and Renovating aHouse in the City which, though published in 1Q7? ha%u00ab thp cfraiohf rwv\\n r\\r% rpAcnnnt o %u25a0 r %u2014ir -----------------neighborhoods, financing, contractors, and all the awful things that can happen to you. Do not buy a house until you have read this book.Okay, so you%u2019ve spent a part of your nut, you%u2019re up to your eyebrows in debt, and you%u2019re all set to assault the masonry with hammer and tongs, right? Nope. The trouble is, you%u2019ve only assimilated a lot of valuable but superficial knowledge, and the hard part comes next. You%u2019ve learned to read the outside of your house, you%u2019ve got some idea what%u2019s wrong with it, but you still don%u2019t know how it%u2019s put together. Odds are your contractor doesn%u2019t know either, or if he does, he%u2019s slyly concealing his knowledge; the sad fact is, it%u2019s a lot easiet and more profitable for him to get in there and rip out all that old junk any old way; the way Narcissus loved his kisser.You, sly dog. Are going to pause again and either spend a fortune on an architect or shell out a couple of bucks for a reprint of the 1826 edition of Asher Benjamin%u2019s American B uilder's Companion and M inard Lafever%u2019s Modern Builder%u2019s Guide? These are the guys who designed your house. You won%u2019t understand but about half of what you read and they%u2019re a little light on pictures, but read them anyway; your house didn%u2019t stand up for 125 years because Benjamin and Lafever didn't know what they were doing.Now you%u2019re ready to start, and it%u2019s time for a new library. Here the rules of thumb are relatively simple, and you%u2019d better heed them if you don%u2019t want to mismeasure with your rule and end up sawing off your thumb. All the local bookstores but Womrath%u2019s have reasonable collections of how-to books (Womrath%u2019s used to have some, too, and the others had more, but the days of mighty adventure have given way to the day of the checkbook; if you want to spend a lot of money, fine, but don%u2019t come hollering to me when your contractor announces that your ceiling rosette has to go, because it doesn%u2019t and you ought to know better).Avoid any book on any subject unless it possesses a minimum of 150 pages; if you think the mysteries of electricity can be explained in a pamphlet, you%u2019re living in a fool%u2019s paradise. Avoid books that do not contain clear line drawings of everything, not just some things, and not small ones, either. Avoid the Sunset books. There are a lot of them and they proport to tell you how to do almost everything under the sun, but what they actually are is books full of pictures of how everything under the sun looks when it was done (mysteriously) by someone else. Avoid books that tell you how to build or deal with free-standing, usually suburban, structures; the problems'?c!\dramatically different. Start small. Very small. Go up to the Community Bookstore and pick up Alvin Ubell and Sam Bittman%u2019s Recipe for Home Repair. It deals mostlywith dumb problems like how to bleed a Crane valve and how to fix a loose electrical plug, and it talks to you as though you were a child. Great. You are a child. The humble renovator is the solvent renovator.You are now ready to move onto finer things, like the Reader%u2019s Digest Do-ItYourself Manual and the Reader%u2019s DigestFix-It-Yourself Manual. Either the PopularMechanics Complete Manual of HomeRepair and Improvement has fallen on evil times or I%u2019m remembering it wrong, but the latest edition up at the Remsen Street Bookstore is nothing but a lot of murky photographs (and photographs of any sort, murky or not, are to be avoided like the plague; you want those line drawings) and sparse text. The Reader%u2019s Digest stuff is a lot better.HOME FREEThat%u2019s all there is to it. Simple, huh? Oh, you may want to go on and equip yourself with things like Joseph V. Lo Schiaro%u2019s plumbing manual from Bibliomania, but the tools will bankrupt you. The thing is you've got to learn a few simple principles, and you learn these principles by a little study and a lot of practice. Electricity, for example, is not the fluid our grandparents thought it was, but it acts as though it were; you shut it off at the source, and it stops coming. Your Reader%u2019s Digest books will have informed you that inside the wall is a thing called a junction box. You break in and get it, take it up to Sid%u2019s, show it to Dominick, and Dominick (for a consideration) will give you another, new one. You take it home, check out how to wire h up in your book, and do so, taking your time. Then you turn the electricity back on. The same holds true for some stuff called BXcable. Once you get it right, keep on doing it the same way, and you%u2019re home free.Bricks and Brownstone: the New Yorkrow honse, 1783*1929. An Architecturaland Social History. Charles Lockwood. McGraw-Hill. 262 pp. Bibliography and index.Old Brooklyn Heights. Clay Lancaster. Tuttle. 183 pp. Bibliography, glossary, index.Baying and Renovating a Hesse is the City: a practical guide. Deirdre Stanforth and Martha Stamm. Knopf (paper). 414 pp. Appendix and index.The American Builder%u2019s Companion. Asher Benjamin. Dover (paper). 114 pp. Index.The Modern Builder%u2019s Guide. Minard Lafever. Dover (paper). 146 pp. 89 plates. Glossary.Recipes for Home Repair. Alvin Ubell and Sam Bittman. Plume 271 pp. Index. R eader's Digest Complete Do-ItYourself Manual. 600 pp Index.October 19.1978, THE PHOENIX, Page 19