The CVA Gallery of Brookdale Community College has been transformed into a life-sized timeline of inventions titled "100 Greatest Designs of the Past Thousand Years" on loan from Kean University's Department of Design.

"Mozart's Curtain" by Mardee Reed Each design/invention is represented by an illustration or photograph and a few paragraphs of text laid out on a 4-foot-by- 14-inch panel. The regularity of each panel gives equal weight to the invention of the brown paper bag as to the light bulb, violin and the stink trap. But that is part of the appeal of this unusual show.

To see that calculus and the fugue were invented independently in the 1600s is interesting pictorially, with sketchy, scribbled illustrations for each. The text enhances the notion of each as design.

Calculus is introduced as the "code of the cosmos. … Calculus took math from static descriptions of the world to dynamic interpretations that allowed things to change …" and creates a parallel with the field of design, "the amazing ability of a sketch, a plan, a scattering of marks on a blackboard — whether for a building, an engine, or a code of calculation — to reach out into the world and change it for all time."

Designs/inventions are illustrated on panels, which also contain a few paragraphs of text. It's surprising to make connections in areas that are outside one's discipline — and to possibly even "get it" without much effort. That might be the greatest contribution of this show.

The fugue is presented as musical geometry: "More than almost any other form or procedure, the fugue can be readily heard as a planned structure of sounds, similar to the way architecture is constructed and appears to the viewer as a complex organization of parts and pieces that achieve a cohesive overall effect. … It has been said that architecture is frozen music; but the fugue stands as a corollary example … music as liquid architecture."

The accompanying text is easy to read, informative and at times inspiring. For viewers who might be grappling with chronologies in their own fields of study, it is useful to understand how far humankind had advanced at any given time.

On view at Brookdale's Center for the Visual Arts through Oct. 30, "100 Greatest Designs" was conceived by Kean University Professor Alan Robbins, who is also director of The Design Center there.

Three-dimensional additions to this display have been provided by Brookdale's faculty, and a handmade model of an original suspension bridge designed by Brookdale architecture student Amado Tanglao is also on view.

Professor Martin Holloway, who helped develop the exhibition at Kean University, wrote in a catalog that accompanies the show, "The campus environment encourages and welcomes all expressions of human creativity, be it painting, music, theater, dance, creative writing or design. And the exhibition has itself been designed to stimulate reflection on its subject."

Memorial to a painter/teacher

On a granite-colored dividing wall of the CVA Gallery there are six paintings: gray, gold, red and silver made by the late Mardee Reed of Little Silver.

Reed had long been retired as a Henry Hudson Regional School art teacher but had also taught at the Teen Arts Festival and at the summer camps at Brookdale Community College.

Her paintings have been given one last chance to be seen by the local community, interested artists and students before they are dispersed and

closed behind the doors of family

members and private collectors.

There is no charge to visit the CVA Gallery, which is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m.

Marie Naples Maber is Brookdale's Art Department chair and CVA Gallery coordinator.

If You Go:

Exhibit:

"100 Greatest Designs of the Past Thousand Years"

Also on View:

"A Visual Tribute to Mardee Reed, Artist and Educator"

CVA Gallery, Brookdale Community College

765 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft Hours: 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, through Oct. 30

For more information: 732-224-2520