By Liz Goldner

An art gallery that is run by volunteers (who also are artists), shows lots of pretty pictures, and gives exhibiting artists a whopping 75 percent of the sale price (the average rate is 50 percent), contradicts the practices of most commercial galleries.

The 23-year-old Showcase Gallery in South Coast Plaza Village and its three-year-old offspring in Santa Ana Artist's Village are neither commercial, nor conventional. The home-grown cooperative galleries were borne from the creativity and camaraderie of a group of Orange County artists who got together in 1963 and called themselves the Costa Mesa Art League. Many water colorists were among early members.

By 1979, the Art League had grown to more than a hundred members and included many serious artists. The League had so many paintings and other art works that members began looking for gallery space. Initially, the Irvine Company offered them an empty store in its Westcliff shopping center.

In 1986, the League moved to the first of four locations in South Coast Plaza Village. With its more visible location, the League quickly outgrew its Costa Mesa roots and began attracting artists from throughout the county and beyond. By the late 1990s, the League renamed itself Orange County Fine Arts and opened a second gallery, Showcase North, in Santa Ana. In 2001, Showcase Gallery moved to its current location - a spacious, light-filled space, next to the Village Farmer Restaurant.

With two stable locations, each about 1,500 square feet, Orange County Fine Arts reaches out to artists, students and the general public. Members and guests can attend monthly meetings with educational demonstrations, slide shows and lectures. The organization provides scholarships for students, as well as venues for emerging and established artists. President of OC Fine Arts, Marilyn Brame, emphasizes that emerging artists often share gallery space with artists who have won local and national awards.

The two gallery directors, John Di Bello at the South Coast Plaza location and Maureen Nolen at the Artists Village location, invite artists to submit works to the gallery committee. If works are accepted, the artist pays a fee of up to $40.00 per month for wall space for the showing of several works.

The South Coast Plaza Village location continues to show many pretty paintings in water colors, pastels, oils and acrylics, along with photography and sculpture.

Showcase North shows cutting edge, contemporary paintings and sculpture, many of them with Latin American themes.

Rather than create a specific artistic identification, Showcase shows the breadth and range of its growing number of members, exhibiting several hundred works. Paintings that embrace the best of the Plein Air school and more realistic, deftly done water colors, offer buyers a variety of high quality choices. Or as Brame explains, "This is a great place for decorators and home owners to acquire original art works at reasonable prices.

Some highlights include: Spencer Marquis' large watercolors of seaside scenes with their clear roots in the artist's profession as an architect; Maria Elena Bicer's studio-painted oils and watercolors of outdoor scenes, many with flowers and clothes hanging to dry; David Globerson's color-enhanced photographs of San Francisco street scenes; Laura Robinson's classic California impressionistic oils.

Showcase North reflects the area's penchant for the abstract and experimental. Gary Bjorklund's large computer generated images are evocative of Georgia O'Keefe's huge flowers. Kathleen Robison's oils

of landscapes and boats have impressionism themes with expressionistic techniques. Paul Schoettinger creates paintings with bright acrylics that look like square quilts. Rebecca Love's sculptures of heads and torsos, done in cast clay bronze, are of people she knows or has known.

Showcase Gallery is open from Wednesday though Sunday during daylight hours, Friday and Saturday until 7 p.m. The gallery hosts general meetings for members and guests the third Sunday of every month. Address: 3851 Bear Street, Suite B-15, Santa Ana. 714-540-6430.

Showcase North is open Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to 10 p.m. Address: 207 North Broadway, Suite B7B, Santa Ana. 714-558-8843.