Newsday (Nassau Edition) du lieu suivant : Hempstead, New York • 66

be be part Insights Claus Mroczynski's 'Sand Dunes' has 'a marvelously sensuous Mroczynski was born and his photographs are far European in character. Like whom he studied briefly in Preston By Malcolm Preston Although Claus educated in Germany, more American than Ansel Adams, with 1972, Mroczynski's images, with their high degree of technical skill and dramatic subject matter, extol 2861 the beauty of the American landscape. Ni Of the almost 50 AHVANVe Port prints brary, on there Washington view are at only the Lia few that do not convey the beauty of the mountains and deserts of the American southwest. Mroczynski, who lives in Old Westbury, first came to the United States in 1963 at the age of 22. He stayed for two years, working as an interior decorator.

Long vacation periods allowed him to travel. On those trips to Mexico and Alaska he began to take "tourist's photographs." After his return to Germany, photography as hobby gave way to a serious career. In 1968, he returned to school and, after five years of study, returned to America. His work, as evidenced by the Port Washington exhibition, is much in the genre of Adams. Like Adams, he finds among the rocks, trees, skies and boulders the most "beautiful" arrangements of form and light.

By converting the familiar into something new, Mroczynski's prints give us new insights into nature. IN SHORT Polish holiday tradition The Polish American Museum will hold its traditional Christmas program Jan. 10 at 3 PM. Among the attractions at the "Jaselka," the traditional Polish holiday event, will be a variety of entertainment including folk dances of Poland, Christmas carols and a visit from St. Nicholas.

Part of the ceremony will be an authentic ritual, the breaking of the Oplatek, known as The Bread of Love. The museum, at 5 Pulaski Port Washington, is open on a year-round basis. It contains exhibits of national costumes, art work, handcrafts and displays of Polish history. Admission to the Christmas program is $1.50. The rest of the time visitors are admitted free.

Call 883-4727. Grim outlook for theater Chances are slim that the Uniondale Mini Cinema, a popular theater which booked special films aimed at the youth market, will re-open. Marc Laffie, co-owner of the theater, said that it was doubtful that the 416-seat house would ever go back into business. He said it was closed Sept. 14 because of a combination of factors, primarily a legal dispute with the Nassau Library System and "declining grosses." The library system owns the property on which the theater.

is located and has its administrative offices and storage facilities there. Laffie said that the library system erected a fence around the property, which blocked access to the theater. Andrew Geddes, director of the Nassau Library System, said that the crowds of young persons attracted by the theater presented "a serious security problem" and there was "the constant matter of litter and loitering." The issue is currently in litigation. The Uniondale Mini Cinema, which originally opened in 1970 as an AIT Theater, was acquired by Laffie's company about four years later. It became successful with a policy of showing youth-oriented films and such cult offerings as "The Rocky Horror Show," which was a staple at the theater for several years as a midnight feature.

Laffie's firm also operates the East Meadow Flick. Skating for charity The St. Vincent de Paul Society and Laces Roller Skating Rink in New Hyde Park, will stage a roller-skating party for the benefit of the needy on Feb. 2, PM. The rink will be open to the public during those hours free, with only the donation of $2 worth of canned food required for admission.

However, a spokesman for the event said that those wishing to skate without bringing the canned goods will be charged a $3.75 admission. The charitable society hopes to collect $5,000 worth of food for distribution to Long Island families hit by hardship. Laces Roller Skating Rink is located at 3345 Hillside Avenue. About shady preachers Marjoe Gortner, Hollywood's resident preacher-entertainer, has found a lead for his independently financed movie aboutwhat preachers. Gary Busey, who played the title character in "The Buddy Holly Story," will star in "Glory Road," as a television preacher who learns to turn a nifty buck by spreading the Word via the tube.

Gortner, who was a child evangelist, is directing the picture, which is being financed by a Mississippi land developer. For the congregation scenes, Gortner said he would take his cameras to real churches and personally help set the mood. "I know how to work 'em up, how to get 'em in that trance, praising the Lord," Gortner said. "I'll get 'em into it." In "Geyser, Yellowstone" Mroczynski catches the mist, ice and bare trees that we have all seen before, but in this particular arrangement we see them anew. It is the same with the hot, caked, cracked endless plane of the desert in "Parched Earth," or the waterfalls, rocks and quiet of "Mono Lake." The broad panorama which Adams handles so marvelously, appears in Mroczynski's work too.

"Badlands, South Dakota," two studies of the same theme, are both sweeping views, technically well done. But beyond that, they demonstrate the breadth and grandeur of nature. It is finally, however, Mroczynski's eye that gives his work its special character. It is the way he sees and composes the image of a dead cactus, or the shapes of sand stones, smoothed by centuries of wind and rounded into molten, flowing forms. It is his control of light and the sharpness of his focus that gives to his "Sand Dunes" their marvelously sensuous quality.

The hanging of the show groups the prints more or less in accord with their specific subjects. There are the dunes and the forest, the lakes and water things, the rocks and the swamps. But what seems to pervade almost all of the work is a feeling of desolation, of emptiness. In that respect Mroczynski differs from Adams, whose work tends to romanticize the majesty and sweep of our land. Still, one finds some abstraction in Adams as one does in Mroczynski.

The exhibition will remain on view through Jan. 14. The library, located at 245 Main Port Washington, is open Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 9 PM, Saturday, 9 AM to 5 PM, and on Sunday, 1 to 5.