ASKA'S SEA CREATURES

Aska has produced detailed, surreal, and beautiful paintings that somehow fail to connect with the poetry. Each spread bears the label of the creatures or plant pictured--""Stingray,"" ""Seaweed""--accompanied by three or four lines of text. In this latest collaboration with Aska, Day (Aska's Birds, 1992, etc.) offers short, haiku-like verses: ""Happy and carefree/You blow bubbles joyfully,/Fluttering gold fins in a tropical sea."" Each piece is upbeat, usually anthropomorphizing its subject, but can't overcome the remoteness of the paintings. These are impressive, with the showy virtuosity of fantastical posters for adults. Aska's palette ranges from sunrise reds and sunset yellows to intense sea greens and tropical turquoise. Included are frolicking whales, optimistic dolphins, serene underwater scenes, etc. All are painstakingly polished, and inordinately cool.