Continuing its practice of matching artists, D. Berman Gallery pairs the color photographs of Laura Pickett Calfee with the paintings of Anna Held Audette.

For the past few years, Calfee has trained her lens on empty rooms in ordinary houses in small Texas towns. The homes are currently occupied and generally kept in a family for generations. Calfee then interviews the families before photographing their homes and leaves the rooms untouched and empty of people.

Calfee's approach is the opposite of voyeurism. And at a time when fine art photography is replete with peek-a-boo scenes (or even images of staged events meant to simulate reality), that's a nice touch of decency. Even though Calfee does no rearranging of furniture and objects, the composition of her shots is remarkably formal. Ditto with her good use of available light sources to create a sense of mood.

Unfortunately that mood registers as little more than nostalgia. Calfee gets close to wriggling out from underneath wistfulness with a few images such as "Comfort," in which a rumpled bed and a parted curtain suggest a fleeting presence. It carries an edge, and one wishes for more of it.

Audette's oil paintings depict the detritus of abandoned factories, discarded machines, mothballed battleships and scrap yards. Audette's is an essentially heroic style, idealized even, much like the social realist art of the 1930s. At the same time, her compositions verge on abstraction, their swaths of dark hues and moody shadows emerging as pure forms, not clear images.

Much like Calfee's work, Audette captures plenty of melancholy, beauty and mood. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. But if there were a little more heft to Audette's paintings, maybe there'd be a some deeper resonance.

("Anna Held Audette and Laura Pickett Calfee" continues through Nov. 11 at D. Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St. Call 477-8877 or go to www.dbermangallery.com.)