Libby Black

The Bay Guardian Goldie winner has homed in on high-end goods in the past, fashioning paper knockoffs or wiseacre spin-offs of luxury product like Hermès Hustler King Roller Skates, a Burberry skateboard, and a Chanel surfboard. For "Bay Area Now 4," Black takes the middle path, constructing a replica of a Kate Spade boutique modeled on the accessory designer's Grant Street store, down to the original's gentle lighting, cushy decor, and mood music. Working at the juncture of upscale commerce and upper-middle-class aspirational consumerism, and handmade art and mass-manufactured retail, the California College of Arts and Crafts MFA graduate fashions each bag, wallet, and shoe out of paper, foregrounding the idea that "fleeting wants and objects of desire  in the end, are just objects" – and fragile, ephemeral ones at that. (Kimberly Chun)

Liz Cohen

This SF artist is fascinated with change. Over the past few years she has been rebuilding a modest, utilitarian car from the former communist East Germany as a "bouncing, bucking" El Camino. In the process, she has transformed herself from a mousy artist trying to make a name for herself in the gallery scene into a bombshell breaking into the world of low-rider enthusiasts. To raise money for the project, she held a "bikini car wash" outside Abner Nolan's now-defunct Spanganga Gallery, washing cars in high heels and next to nothing else, and offering to take photographs with her patrons. She plans to enter low-rider bikini contests and currently splits her time between working out at the gym and welding in the garage. Her work explores cross-cultural experience, plays with the erotic association between the bodies of women and cars, and celebrates the thrill of growing into and cultivating a fully sexed adult body. The idea is as hot as a centerfold. But it also raises the obvious feminist question: Is this real change or simply more of the same? (Clark Buckner)

Robert Gutierrez

Robert Gutierrez has produced a large number of paintings this year, impressive when one considers the highly detailed complexity of his work. Perhaps it has something to do with size, as the dimensions of his paintings have often been close to the 8 1/2-by-11 format of a typical sheet of paper. But your average sheet of paper is rarely blessed with the type of hallucinogenic, weirdly peopled vistas found in any of Gutierrez's Untitled pieces, which sometimes beg comparison to Hieronymous Bosch (or, in the case of 2004's Harvest Moon, Dalí), a reference point or influence one doesn't come across very often these days. Gutierrez's use of line is contemporary, however; the face in one corner of his I'll Call You My Occupier (also from last year) would almost fit in a graffiti or Mission School aesthetic. That piece's title speaks to the political undercurrent in Gutierrez's strange-as-what-I-see approach, which draws from Filipino shamanism rather than sci-fi sources. It looks like his "Bay Area Now 4" contributions use a brighter palette and wider dimensions, but size-wise, appearances can be deceptive; Gutierrez can cram a mile into an inch. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Xylor Jane

For all the talent on display at "Bay Area Now 4," there's always a temptation to ask why so-and-so isn't present. This year's inclusion of Xylor Jane is a welcome (some might say overdue) development in terms of the show's hand-rendered contingent, but where is Lena Wolff or Will Yackulic? (Right now, the answer to the former is Clarion Alley, and the response to the latter is Gregory Lind Gallery.) For "Bay Area Now 4," Jane is working in the same Yerba Buena Center for the Arts window that Barry McGee recently occupied, and her trademark colors and numerical mysticism – in this case, possibly influenced by the tolling of bells at a nearby cathedral – are sure to make an appearance. (Huston)

Jim Jocoy

California punk's first wave comes back, with all its fierce attitude, vivid hues, and visceral desperation intact, through the eyes of Sunnyvale shutterbug Jim Jocoy. Here, we'll see a selection of shots from his 2002 powerHouse bestseller, We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy, SF/LA 1978-1980, a captionless compendium of images cornering flashy unknowns, glittery contenders, and outright legends such as X's Exene Cervenka (whose writing appears in the book), Flipper's Will Shatter, Sid Vicious, Jello Biafra, Darby Crash, Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, DNA's Ikue Mori, and Lydia Lunch at the likes of SF's Mabuhay Gardens and LA's Masque. A self-taught photographer inspired by the Warhol scene in NY, who simply wanted to document the faces and fashions he'd encounter at punk and new wave haunts, Jocoy says, "Now I see there was this aesthetic sensibility that came with documenting this scene – I just dutifully went with it. I'd go home and look at slides after they were produced and go, 'Oh, there's something happening here.' So I just kept going and going and going. My little obsessive collection ..." Jocoy juxtaposes those snaps with contemporary portraits of survivors in the Bay Area punk community today – consider it a before-and-after look at the genre's wild years. (Chun)

Kate Pocrass

It's obvious that Kate Pocrass is a fan of people-watching, walking for the sake of walking, and quiet observation. Her interactive Mundane Journeys project, begun in 2001, directs people via a weekly recorded telephone message (call 415-364-1465) to various sights around the city that Pocrass finds interesting or that beg for further introspective probing (callers are urged to leave a message with their thoughts on their particular experiences). She might lead you to an interesting telephone pole, a new restaurant, or a place you've already been but will experience from a whole new perspective. Mundane Journeys isn't necessarily something you'd want to refer the first-time-visiting-SF set to, but for all us jaded city dwellers, it might just be the urban renewal we've been waiting for. For "Bay Area Now 4," Pocrass leads a bus tour that stops at the best-of Mundane Journeys sites. (Sarah Han)

Hank Willis Thomas

Anna Von Mertens

Nuclear quilts? Yes, Anna Von Mertens has created some. Her 2004 diptych Black and White could be viewed as quilting's answer to Bruce Conner's film Crossroads, a serious gaze at the awesome beauty and horror of a nuclear detonation that, in capturing the symmetry of a mushroom cloud, causes one to wonder about the complete devastation such a phenomenon leaves in its wake. Von Mertens formed Black and White's patterns through cross-stitching that itself is a feat of wonder, using hand dyes to form a White "negative" version of Black's nuclear blast. She has two contributions slated for "Bay Area Now 4." One mines chaos theory, perhaps to an op art end. The other will use stitching patterns to depict an exploding tank. (Huston)