Once again I managed to visit Arts Benicia on the very last day of an exhibit, in this case Works On Wheels. It would have been nice, I told myself, to write about something that readers could still see, but my personal admonitions have obviously fallen on deaf ears, because I was late, which is both bad and good.

It’s bad because anything I say may be even less comprehensible than my normal musings, given that you can’t see what I’ve seen unless you’ve already seen it, if you follow my gist. But it’s also good, this being the cow’s-ear-to-silk-purse part, because I’m forced to discuss the art I saw in a broader context.

In particular, since I’ve been thinking about art while preparing the Carquinez Review and the Arts Benicia exhibit contained such a wide range of works, I’d like to consider a question that I should, like our highways at rush hour, probably take extraordinary pains to avoid: When is art compelling?

Arthur Danto, art critic for The Nation magazine, suggests that art, like love, is in the eye of the beholder: "It can be anything artists and patrons want it to be." Fair enough, I thought, wandering among the works at Arts Benicia, though not particularly helpful.

One room of the exhibition contained the warlike, smooth and hard, frequently fanciful metal sculptures of Bella Feldman, who juried the exhibit. Her works on wheels were spread on the floor like advancing soldiers and bizarre contraptions, following behind formidable machinery that included a vanishing staircase and a chariot, both leaving trails of twisted-cable flames and smoke.

On the opposite wall, a whimsical mechanical contraption by Paul Berson was mounted like a vertical pinball machine. I pushed its press-to-start red button in a red box and steel balls ascended in chain-driven buckets where they were delivered onto a track and descended, gliding and clattering, by various colorful routes, which included, as a whoop-surprise that startled me, one stray ball that left the track and arched into a basket, like a time-delayed rabbit unexpectedly popping out of its hole only to be caught in a cage.

Berson’s Steel Circus shared a second-place award with Nikki Schrager’s 6 x 12 x 12, a vertical wire sculpture consisting of six cubes, each containing different geometric shapes, stacked one on top of the next to create a rectangular tower.

First place was awarded to Linda Raynsford’s Regeneration, a massive, five-foot tall by five-foot wide torus-like sculpture made from rusty recycled metal strips. In her statement, Raynsford said that her "... geometric sculptures convey a masculine side that affirms my fascination with time and space, which integrates the primitive with futuristic simplicity."

I was especially disoriented by a complex installation piece by LeeRoy Champagne. I approached it warily and then backed off again, circling it carefully, not wanting to get too close, feeling somehow voyeuristically guilty. It included a bright yellow sofa covered in plastic, with pink throw pillows and a life-size inflated girl, wearing a red baseball cap with a pacifier in her mouth, lying on the sofa which was situated in front of an ornate, darkly draped, glittery neon shrine that included objects and images, some on pedestals.

In fact, to varying degrees, I was confused by all the artworks on display. They evoked mystery and uncertainty that left me wondering what they meant. It was not as though I could look at each and appreciate each for its beauty, like a jewel set in a case for all to admire, or for its clear message, like a Norman Rockwell painting that presents a complete narrative tale at a single glance, leaving little to the imagination.

Beautiful artworks are the easiest to appreciate but can be the least compelling. We understand them almost immediately. We covet them. We can imagine them in our color-coordinated rooms, matching our furniture, complementing our decor. If we only had enough money, we dream, they could be ours; we could possess them and be the envy of our neighbors.

But compelling art is frequently more disturbing. It is at its best when it takes us below the surface. Using appearance to attract or repel us—to coax us into opening our minds—such art, like the works on display at Arts Benicia, abjures answers.