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By Dan Leone

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DO-IT -yourself taxidermy: it's not exactly an appetizing thought, but artist Lauren Davies was fascinated when she stumbled across a manual on the subject. The idea has since spawned multiple art projects, including her latest, "Ultra-marine: The Workshop for Alternative Aquatic Taxidermy," the result of a monthlong residency at the Lab. Instead of starting with a dead fish, Davies begins with a trip to the local hardware store and builds her own fish-shaped sculptures out of scrap wood, chicken wire, and lots of acrylic latex spray. Her pièce de résistance is a 25-foot shark made to look as if it were swimming through the center of the room. The rest of her creations lounge around the gallery, many of them seemingly half-finished, and none of them looking much like real fish, dead or alive. You might call it dadaist taxidermy, or taxidermy for vegetarians, or fish-under-construction. Davies prefers to think of her work as a kind of symbolic challenge to all kinds of realist art, including taxidermy, and the blind faith in the idea that art can somehow replicate the real world. Her obviously artificial fish poke fun at the trophies that fishermen hang on their walls, which are also fake-looking in their own way, despite the taxidermist's efforts to make them look as if they've just leaped out of the water. Are you feeling some Dr. Frankenstein-type urges yourself? Visit the Lab Sat/16 for a hands-on workshop, open to the public, where you can visit Davies and try building your own trophy fish. Also featured in the Lab foyer is "Roadside Attractions," a sculpture series by Leslie Henslee that pays tribute to the American off-ramp. Workshop Sat/16, 2-4 p.m.; gallery hours Wed.-Sat., 1-6 p.m., and by appt., 2948 16th St., S.F. (415) 864-8855. (Lindsey Westbrook)