Larry Bell may be the only artist who has the creative energy and resources to manifest 10,000 collages during a four year period while also working on several private and public sculpture commissions. Bell is exhibiting approximately SDO pieces from his -Fractions" series tonight at his recently completed studio annex and at New Directions Gallery both in Taos.

Bell is celebrating his 40th year as a studio artist and decided to offer his friends and neighbors an opportunity to see his latest work.

His commitment to manifest 10,000 unique images began early in 199S, at the end of a long day. Bell had been cutting up rejected works from his "Mirage" series. He was destroying large canvases that he felt were not of presentation quality, slicing them into small pieces.

While unceremoniously throwing the scraps into his dumpster an unage caught his eye and kept him awake that night. Early the next day, before the trash truck arrived, Bell hauled his scraps back into the studio.

He had noticed that though the overall compositions were flawed, the small shards were often quite interesting. To explain his new insight, he wrote a limited-edition book titled "Fraction" that was published in Paris. In each copy was a small piece of one of his "Mirage" canvases. The text in French and English explained his fascination with studio process and discovery.

The current "Fractions" series of canvas fragments on watercolor paper took shape during the following year Since them he and his studio assistant Cody Riddle have completed close to 9,000 compositions. Bell hopes to finish the series by the end of this year.

His process involves tearing 500-pound French watercolor paper into 10-inch by 10-inch squares. A small square stencil is placed over each sheet and water is sprayed onto the unprotected paper. Layers of watercolors are then dripped or brushed onto the wet area and allowed to dry Bell then selects canvas fragments that echo the colors or shapes formed during the drying process.

The whole is then cooked in a vacuum table until the laminate film dissolves. The resulting images with bleeding edges and deeply layered surfaces become either highly structured architectonic statements or expressive landscape vignettes. Since beginning the whole project, Bell has refined the reprocessing of his old canvases. The fragments that he now uses have often been highly modified with new layers of materials before being cut into tiny scraps. Many finished works contain more than 30 layers.

Each work has the visual power of a large, abstract expressionist painting. Bell says he's trying to re-release the energy that was trapped in the large works that had failed. Because of the elaborate production process, he am the final results as time capsules. Works are numbered rather then, titled to encourage viewers to bring their own narrative to each piece.

The annex exhibition of 500 works is arranged in two gallery spaces. The large gallery contains 330 pieces arranged in two horizontal rows broken by vertical columns every ten feet The vertical columns are stacked with early works in the series while the horizontal pieces are presented in chronological order.

Bell hung the show with pins to replicate how he views the work in the studio. For every image in the show there are hundreds still in boxes. The overall look is very striking. Each colorful composition has its own presence that contributes its energy to the surrounding ones.

The effect is much like trying to read a pictographic language. I was reminded of Anasazi rock drawings, Mayan codices and Egyptian hieroglyphics. A close-up view reveals whole worlds unfolding in each piece.

The hanging with its horizontal beats and vertical breaks is very much like a musical score. Bell was a very good guitarist who played in Los Angeles coffee houses during his student days. About 12 years ago, he discovered that he suffered from a genetic degenerative nerve disease that resulted in a 40 percent hearing loss.

Hearing aids restored most of his hearing. The world of new sounds resulted in an explosion of creative activity that resulted in the "Mirage" series. Those large canvases contained childhood rage, adult frustration and the joy of creative abandon.

Bell describes the rapid pace as trying to watch the feet of the Road runner while eluding Wile E. Coyote. That psychological escape from sound led to many successful and unsuccessful works. It is the remains of that frantic period that ire now enshrined as "Fractions."

The smaller gallery contains, white pin-up pieces bordered by works on black paper. There are also two sets of framed works in the small gallery.

Many of Bell's pieces contain elliptical images. Bell became interested in ellipses when he noted that everything from circular dinner plates and automobile steering wheels to galaxies are generally viewed at an angle. He did an extensive series of 40-degree ellipses - the angle from which we see the Andromeda galaxy - on glass and paper.

It's Bell's fascination with how we perceive the corner of a room or luna eclipse that has informed a lifetime of work. When he was coating glass in a vacuum chamber he noticed that the brown paper used to protect the glass carriers also received a dose of vaporized metal or quartz. Those observations led to the "Vapor Drawings" series that evolved into today's efforts.

Bell is an unrecognized genius who is absolutely dependent on and confident in his own intuition. The exhibition at the New Directions Gallery will contain approximately 30 framed pieces. The gallery show had not been Installed at the time of my visit.