They’re young and I’m restless. I used to think it was the young that were restless. Lately I think that the young are too knowing to be restless and it’s us older folk who are restless (and I’m not just talking restless legs).

I’ve been seeing a lot of work by young artists this last couple weeks, and this being Spring, there will be more such available as BFA and MFA shows come rocketing through town. I pay attention for several reasons — I like to see what young artists are channeling and I like the anything goes-loose cannon factor. You never know what you’ll get from the youth and often — although not always — the work can be amazing. Here are a few samples I want to share.

Bill McRight teaches print making at Arcadia University. He is a Space 1026er and his linocut prints, especially those on found wood, are great examples of the Goth-Cookie Monster genre of image-making. There’s something aboriginal in his dark repeat lines and animal-hybrid imagery. I loved what I saw in this show. And the works are very reasonably priced — $50 for an unframed print; $200 for the linocut on wood pieces. The show’s up through April. More images at flickr.

Dennis Ahearn‘s tiny prints in his model architectural spaces felt playful (the miniature scale; the wee little prints). These guy dollhouses felt to me like build-outs from Second Life: Tabula rasa boxes for avatars to come play in. I found myself thinking also of James Casebere’s photographs of artificially-created architectural space. And wondered whether these little buildings would work better in the flat, meta-world of photography (or in cyber-synthetic environments) than in the real 3-D world where a viewer towers over them and they become a tad precious.

Jahjehan Bath Ives‘ yarn works exude ghostly auras. I could feel Eva Hesse’s breath on my neck as I walked around the room. I look forward to seeing where this goes. Some pieces (like the one pictured here) feel more complete than others. More photos from Ahearn/Bath Ives show at Temple here. (closing April 14)

Max Maddox and Theresa Rose got in touch with me a while back when they curated a show at Art Around Gallery. It was a great show with works by Syd Carpenter, David Stephens and others. Now they’ve got a two person show themselves at Art Around (closing April 15). Exacta is full of hubris, mostly demonstrated in the art’s asking price, which is far too high. The show — drawings, assemblage, collage and a video piece — uses a horse-racing metaphor to talk about competition/collaboration and marriage. I enjoyed best the video that intersplices a real horse race at Philadelphia Park with a horse race by plastic horses in a mechanized racing game. Some of the drawings are very nice and I look forward to the next outing by the two PAFA grads. More photos here.