One of Craig Hein's small clay sculptures.

Craig Hein’s small clay objects are very modest. No room-sized installations here. He molds things which are mostly recognizable – carpets, dirt piles and hand trucks – yet rather elusive. For instance, why is the hand truck loaded with mounds of dirt and a flag? These tiny, perhaps easy to overlook creations allow for an astonishing amount of possibilities in their simplicity.

John Slaby and Tobias Waite, the exhibition’s other artists round out the show in two dimensions. Slaby’s suburban scenes are composed of skateboards, hair, trains, buildings, yards and well, more hair. Undoubtedly this takes many viewers back to days of youthful rebellion and infrequent haircuts. The flat green yards and train cars reinforce the familiarity of these Anywhere-USA landscapes.

Waite’s creations scintillate between pure pattern and subject. Horde, one of the show’s highlights, shows just the weapons of a perceived mob of people poking through waves of color. Both fun and potentially critical, I think this piece is somewhat revealing of our troubled economic and social climate.

Vox Populi’s September exhibiton is as diverse as it is overwhelming. One group exhibition, Paradise, explores the recession and its impact through large-scale, documentary style photos and a video calling for the return of the Works Progress Administration of the 30’s.

Jamie Dillon's installation at Vox Populi

Jamie Dillon offers the most visually interesting, if most obtuse, work in the show. The front fender of a Dodge Magnum sits idly near the center of a room. Having previously been twisted out of form, perhaps in some past accident, it mimics the pinkish streaks of paint smeared along the four walls. If this piece has any distinct meaning, it is unapparent, but standing between the crumple zone of this car and the marks on the walls, I found myself spending more time with this single piece than any other.

Two of David Kontra's paintings at Vox

The showstopper at Vox, though, is undoubtedly David Kontra. This almost completely blind painter dives headlong into biting social criticisms and doesn’t look back. Questioning America’s overindulgence, greed and apathy, Kontra takes shots at a number of sources from the Bush Administration to the Westboro Baptists to the average American that sits idly by drinking beer and watching TV. Painting a quarter inch at a time, as if “looking through a straw” as he puts it, these gnarled images do well to reinforce his messages.

Cardboard sign from Adam Blumberg

The most amusing September exhibition I encountered was almost certainly Adam Blumberg’s Punctum(s) at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. A show of seeming refuse and witty banter, Blumberg creates some signs in the style of those held by homeless people asking for change, except encouraging the readers to “Jump! You Fuckers” or asserting that “I Wish I Had Your $Millions of Problems.” Both irreverent and relevant, some pieces are simply word bubbles on loose-leaf paper.

One piece is a plaster and wooden contraption, a beer bong, painted golden-bronze, and looking more like a broken bugle than a drinking device. The do-it-yourself, low cost, drinking-away-of-sorrows approach to Blumberg’s show make it worth a few hearty chuckles and perhaps the hankering for a beer… although I prefer a glass, myself.

Colin Keefe in front of work by John Slaby at Mt. Airy Contemporary

This was our first venture out there for the exhibit On the Fringe of Nature, with work by John Slaby (he had a Fleisher Challenge last year) and Brooklyn artists Siobhan McBride (a Penn fine arts grad) and Amy Chan–three representational artists using gouache on paper. Slaby’s dreamy, wry narratives evoke a sort of hipster eden that never was. McBride’s collage-like landscapes and lichen-like surfaces reel with the tension between flat and perspectival space. And Chan’s foliage and nature-inspired closeups, collaged or 3-dimensional, are supersized without the threat of say Alexis Rockwell.

by John Slaby; all art images in post courtesy of Mt. Airy Contemporary

In addition to the art, we are interested in the curating of the space–the Keefes are mashing up out-of-town artists with Philadelphia folks. If this show is any example, the aesthetics cohere notwithstanding the geographical distance.

Siobhan McBride, Moody House

The Keefes have created an elegant gallery space in the old out-building, with pristine, hanging walls that are architectural statements–a super space for exhibiting small works. The two of them, both artists, have their artist studios upstairs. In addition, Colin works as an IT consultant, and Andrea teaches at Central High School in Philadelphia. They moved here from Williamsburg when the realized they were outgrowing the youthful demographic of the neighborhood. The gallery location grows out of having a 3-year-old and a life that’s rooted in Mt. Airy.

Amy Chan

On First Fridays, they open the gate on the side of their house so people can walk into the gallery without going through the house. They’ve been getting impressive crowds of more than 100 local people with families in tow. Many of them probably wouldn’t even dream of heading to Center City for First Friday. The crowd also includes the artists and other art folks who come in from outside the neighborhood.

The model for showing art here is typical DIY. The place is a show space, not a business. If someone wants to buy a piece, the Keefes will put the artist in touch with the buyer directly. This way, there’s no business license or taxes. It’s a labor of love.

On the Fringe of Nature runs to Dec. 5.

Tim Belknap’s hand-built ice cream truck with its pineapple greenhouse on wheels at the Fleisher Challenge.

With the exception of shopping mall artist Thomas Kinkade, most contemporary artists have a complicated relationship with beauty. The artists of the first Wind Fleisher Challenge are no exception: None of their works could be considered beautiful by traditional standards.

Solar panel on top of ice cream truck. The artist likes working with other people, letting them contribute what they’re good at and like to do.

But beauty is not always the point in contemporary art. The point is more often a message about an urgent issue or feeling. What’s felt here is anger and resignation. Whether it’s Cheryl Harper’s ceramic caricatures of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Timothy Belknap’s post-apocalyptic fairy tale installation or John Slaby’s hand-painted cigarette packages, this work is fueled by social and political concerns.

FM Transmitter, last in line in this little post-apocalyptic parade.

Belknap’s installation is a theatrical tableau featuring three full-scale fantasy vehicles: an ice cream truck, a mobile greenhouse growing a pineapple and a striped ball on wheels (that doubles as an FM transmitter). In one corner of the room a skeleton in farmer’s clothing kneels in a flower bed while being caught in headlights from the vehicles. On a wall, a small photograph of a child with a horror mask is a macabre family portrait.

Pineapple power. Belknap grew the plant and is hoping it will flower soon.

The very loose narrative, says the artist, is about Mr. Bolt, an ice cream truck entrepreneur at the end of the world and his conflicted relationship with children whom he loves during the day and fears at night. Mr. Bolt is a puppeteer and his truck is a hybrid vehicle, part solar and part diesel. His pineapple plant will feed the children and the FM transmitter—its logo is emblazoned with the words “do not give up”—plays a wan and reedy acapella rendering of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Do not give up might might be the theme for this slippery narrative that’s a visual art cousin of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  Belknap – who does not know the McCarthy book but did refer to Mad Max in a discussion we had, built the ambitious set piece himself (with the help of some friends).  The young artist (Tyler MFA 2006) has a dark sense of humor that reflects the times.

Cheryl Harper’s The Teaching Gore, 2007. stoneware, 31x12x12″

Iconoclastic stoneware figures by Cheryl Harper lampoon political leaders and politics. In her artist’s statement Harper says she’s disappointed by people in Washington who could be role models but aren’t. Hillary Clinton is skewered as a scary smiling sphinx; her husband Bill is half rockstar/half businessman and far less noble than the dog next to him; Al Gore is a barefoot messiah and born-again preacher of ecology.

Bill n’ Buddy. 2008. stoneware, dog leash, approximately 27x20x10″ (two figures)

Republicans get theirs too, although the piece focuses mainly on Democrats. There are also two large landscape works, but these pieces are less successful at representing the artist’s anger.

Two of John Slaby’s painted cigarette packages.

Most people wouldn’t look twice at an exhibit of 37 real cigarette packs on a wall. But John Slaby’s trompe l’oeil painted and constructed cigarette boxes are virtuoso works that slow you down and sucker you in. Slaby’s not a smoker but he picks up discarded packs from the street for his models. Whatever the work’s about—anti-smoking or anti-litter, perhaps—these painted pieces raise thoughts about how good design sells bad things.

John Slaby, painted cigarette packages

Wind Fleisher Challenge 1.
Through Nov. 22.
Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St.
215.922.3455.