Art: Souls in Aspic

"The world presents itself to me in a many-faceted, elusive vision—I am no longer interested in the now of today. There exists a peripheralness, a border to which the unconscious mind must be let free and unburdened." So says Harold Paris, the bearded, exuberantly loquacious son of an immigrant Yiddish-theater actor, who is having his first major American show at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, Calif. At 46, Paris has been by turns wigmaker, illustrator (for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes), fisherman, painter, environment maker and sculptor. Though he has exhibited frequently in Europe, he is still virtually unknown...