New uses for discarded materials

It's been a dicey year for many Boston galleries. Foot traffic is slow; the Internet and art fairs are increasingly the places to sell. The more established dealers take their art to fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach , and often do really well. Smaller commercial venues, some with less sophisticated websites, have a tougher time. Two small but strong local galleries have closed since December 2005: Clifford-Smith Gallery and Gallery Katz .

The opening of the new Institute of Contemporary Art may have a trickle-down effect, boosting an interest in 21st-century art in Boston. You can see the cogs of the art business turning already, as area dealers have snapped up finalists for the ICA's Foster Prize , a biennial award given to Boston-area artists.

This year's gallery highlights included established and emerging artists, traditional and new media, and the purely beautiful as well as the pointedly political.

The most innovative gallery show of the year was both sociological survey and sculpture: "Tipping Point," at the Boston Center for the Arts' Mills Gallery, dove into the health histories of several anonymous artists in the South End through the research of medical anthropologist Ellen S. Ginsburg . Jennifer Hall and a team of artists created poignant kinetic sculptures, mechanized seesaws that embodied metaphors found in those narratives.

For her installation "Working for Passage" at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Laura Baring-Gould, with a crew of helpers , made a hive-shaped installation out of wax. It felt like a chapel. She also cast a slew of bronze "tools" that metaphorically help with the hard work we do in life. For example, a child's clown doll was a "tool to safely know the darker side." The piece honored how we all labor -- physically, intellectually, and emotionally -- and offered solace.

Speaking of physical labor, Deb Todd Wheeler's "Live Experiments in Human Energy Exchange" at Green Street Gallery required a volunteer to ride a stationary bike to generate energy for the exhibition to run. It was low-impact polemic, a sweetly witty and humane commentary on climate change and the need to develop alternative fuels .

Marcus Kenney's "Young American" show of collages at Pepper Gallery took no prisoners when it came to issues such as race and war. Kenney, a Georgia-based artist, built his pieces out of discarded paint-by-number sets, magazines, books, and other ephemera. They centered around children, using their innocence as a means to cleverly dissect racism and patriotism.

Another collage artist, Tom Fruin , builds works out of baggies scavenged from the streets of New York; most of his materials were used in the drug trade. He sews them together, throwing in cigar bands and scribbled notes. The results, in his show "One Man's Treasure" at Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art, married the coziness of grandma's quilts with the seaminess of New York's underbelly.

"Personality," Joe Zane's show at Allston Skirt , riffed on fame and the construction of identity. It included a fake but fancy biography of Zane, a series of portraits of famous art forgers that Zane had had painted in China for $75 a pop, and a soundtrack of cover bands. He cleverly led viewers into the murky waters of authorship and authenticity.

One of Boston's best painters, Michael Mazur , had a self-titled show at Barbara Krakow Gallery that shocked those accustomed to his lush, gestural brushwork and misty washes of paint. Mazur deployed spray paint and stencils, gracefully layering forms in his familiar, rapturous tones. These new paintings were as gorgeous and enigmatic as their predecessors, but seductive fogs of color used to pull you in like the dance of the seven veils. Now Mazur's sinewy forms mystified and enticed.

Lorna Williams had her first commercial show in January at Judi Rotenberg Gallery . At the time, she was 19 and a sophomore at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Williams collaged soulful, kaleidoscopic portraits on plywood using fabric, metal thread, and sheet music, among other things. The pieces looked like intricate jigsaw puzzles flowering from the wood grain. Gritty and heartfelt, they signaled that Williams is going places.

Sycamore pods deliriously showered downward in Neeta Madahar's video and photographs in "Nature Studies" at Howard Yezerski Gallery . Her landscapes looked upward, not outward. The photos set the fluttering pods against a starlit sky and a bright blue one. The video had them spiraling from a distance, then overcoming the frame like a swarm of gentle moths.

Mary Ellen Strom , in "Future Memory" at Judi Rotenberg Gallery, re-created works by Botticelli, Courbet, and Magritte in video. The nudes at the center of the action often turned to the camera and locked eyes with the viewer. With that, the power balance shifted; the viewer felt like an exposed voyeur, and the nude -- objectified by the viewer's gaze -- regained her individuality. Strom trod familiar ground in art and feminist theory, but her work was disarmingly effective.