WHAT IS THE meaning of pink? In the work of the artists exhibiting at Creativity Explored's "The Pink Show," it is cheerful, affectionate, and fantastical. Several artists responded to the invitation to explore the color by painting playful portraits, rich with the pleasure of companionship. In one of the gallery's front windows, Gordon Shepard displays a series of paintings of clowns, "Pink Clown #1-10," only one of whom is frowning. Sara O'Sullivan presents drawings of women, including Shopping Lady, complete with a purse in hand, and the series "Pink Lady O-Q," with bright pink backgrounds and brown, white, blue, and yellow in the women's skin, hair, and dresses. They too are all smiling. Eric Boysaw has installed a mixed-media sculpture of the gallery's second building on Arkansas Street, Creativity Explored II, with the figure of a man surrounded by a house of cards built with portraits of the people who work at the studio. And inside the gallery, Kelly Clark offers a series of print portraits of members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (a philanthropic organization of gay men in elaborate nun costumes) that trace their features and habits with soft, curved lines and depict them as beautiful, otherworldly creatures – which, in fact, they are. (The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence sponsored the show and bought Clark's prints as gifts for one another.) Other artists responded to the invitation to work with pink by constructing magical modern vehicles. Marcus Cortez's bright pink biplane, Pink Plane, flies in the gallery's other display window, with a poster of San Francisco behind it and, on the ground beneath it, a motorcycle, Pink Motorcycle, also built by Cortez. Steven Gin has drawn Pink Car using lines and solid monochrome shapes to divide up the picture plane in a manner reminiscent of Romare Bearden's and Henri Matisse's studies of modern life. In a more mysterious and menacing tone, Boysaw has painted Pink Soldier, who lies with a gun by his side, staring up at the sky. Is he dead or dreaming? Are the pink circles on his uniform bullet holes or figures symbolizing playful possibilities for his life from which war has diverted him? And on a political note – perhaps in response to his use of "girlie man" as an epithet – Searcy Ryles has painted a portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger, simply titled Pink Governor. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., 3245 16th St., S.F. (415) 863-2108. (Clark Buckner)