'17+ Studio Artists of the Clay Studio'
Through Oct. 26, Space 743

MOST OF THE artworks in "17+ Studio Artists of the Clay Studio," the gallery's annual lead-up to San Francisco Open Studios, are clay sculptures, of course, but you'll also find paintings, works on paper, and mixed-media pieces. Louisa Van Leer's Future House utilizes more eclectic materials than any other work in the show. The title sounds like something out of a slick design magazine, but the piece is actually more or less a homeless shelter made out of recycled containers. Barbara Florez's Mad Bovine Memories series wields the greatest shock value; she stamped 21 images onto paper using watercolor, ink, and a cow brain. The red and yellow blobs are starkly physical, almost barbaric, and it's impossible to look at them without wondering what cellular complexities might be encoded there. (They're also very au courant as meditations on genetics and memory, given the recent spate of similarly themed shows.) Georgia Hodges's Within Earshot, three aquarelle drawings on paper, and Kara Strehle's Love and Indifference, two stoneware sculptures, speak volumes about interpersonal relations using extremely minimal means; they seem completely abstract until you read their titles and begin to recognize not just biomorphic shapes but also emotional interactions. One of the best works in the show is Wendy Testu's School of Decaying Fish Skeletons, which appears to swim out from the wall, briefly enter the gallery space, and then reenter the wall. The Raku-fired ceramic fish indeed seem to be decaying – their gaping mouths and empty eyes are grotesque and gargoylelike – but their small size and delicate, crumbling flesh make them look less like monsters and more like ghosts, or shells, of long-gone leviathans. Their almost-breaking-apart bodies echo the state of their "school," a haphazard formation that also appears to be disintegrating before our eyes. Wed.-Sat., noon-5 p.m., and by appointment, 743 Harrison, S.F. (415) 777-9080. (Lindsey Westbrook)