If visiting an art school provides a glimpse into the upcoming art scene, then Gallery R's current show is like walking around in Rochester's visual future. The regional juried exhibition, open to college students within 100 miles of RIT, houses an array of media and styles, and shows off the balance of talent and critical thinking necessary to create relevant and interesting art.

In the hallway before entering the main gallery space, the viewer is confronted with "Becoming Softer," a mixed-media wall piece by RIT student Aspasia Tsoutsoura. An unraveling chain link fence, its wires like reaching metal vines, has been wrapped and woven over with quilt batting, crotcheted upon, adorned with lace and peachy tulle, and backed with white, downy fur. By unweaving the metal and embellishing it, the artist has domesticated the industrial and the urban to create a new landscape. Her lust for juxtaposing metal and fabric is repeated in the photo "Springs and Fiber," which shows the innards of a mattress, and recalls her installation (in the Gallery R "Arttech" show this past August) "Ice Melt," in which a similarly ruined mattress creatively alluded to global warming.

Another artist concerned with our forsaking the Earth is RIT's Bradley Butler, whose "A Day at the Beach, 2" in acrylic and conte gives only the vaguest suggestion of sand and sky, which is almost completely overcome by sweeps of black wind and tongues of flame rising from the earth. I saw and loved his work last year in his solo show at the Rochester Contemporary Lab Space.

RIT student Sarah Campbell's "Series: Self Aware" Nos. 1-3 is an oil-on-canvas triptych of her own skillfully fragmented and close-up features: a subtly freckled nose, soft pouty lips, crimson glasses, and her chameleon-like green-gray-blue eyes. It's not easy to make close-up, large-scale portraits interesting, but with expert attention to the luminous potential of the material, Campbell layers many rich undertones to build a glowing countenance.

Shifting gears from an outer to an inner portrait, we have "Unlock Your Mind, 2" by Brockport student Katie Mertz. The mixed-media piece of bruised-colored madness and complexity contains layer upon layer of imagery, a spectacular chaos: a woman, the diagram of a brain, bird silhouettes, tiny crosshatchings of counting, numbers, dates, and scribbled phrases.

A calmer, more zen artist is found in Rebecca Strauss (RIT), with her large oil painting "Magnolia," a soft-lighted, pastel-hued, graceful portrait of the flower. Equally delicate and organic is her grouping of "Four Vessels." Cast in soft and shimmery aluminum, they are organic vessels of nature, resembling empty, one-time containers.

"Regeneration" by Greg Parizek (Brockport) is a terra cotta grouping on a low platform. The white golf ball-sized spheres with black texture resemble seeds surrounding three tall blades of new life sprouting from the platform. At top the blades become Yoni-shaped with a crimson interior.

Brockport student Andew Holley's "Toil" is a plaster and leather recreation of Magritte's painting "Le Mod�le Rouge." The work boots and feet hybrid includes the top of the shoe and laces, with a smooth transition from shoe to feet and ending in a perfect cast of toes.

"Muffin Top" and "Pancake Ass" are two cheeky oil-on-canvas works by Savannah Bennett (RIT). The figurative pieces have the title foods superimposed over the body parts, in a humorous/serious statement on body image and its immediate and inherent link to our complex relationship with food.

RIT student Sung Min Lee's mixed media "A House" received the Juror's Recognition award. The seemingly floating fibrous canopy platform's underside holds three pod-like bubbles, back lit with a soft orange glow. Cords hang from each pod and pool on the floor, like lines for a person to climb. The piece simultaneously evokes both a tree house and spaceship.

Two of the show's three awards went to pieces that spoke of time and inevitable mortality. The alabaster "Abstraction of a Classical Head" by Jos� Enrique Portas (RIT) received the Honorable Mention. The larger-than-life partial face recalls a statue that, once well preserved in stone, is rendered anonymous by time and acid rain.

The best in show rightly went to Nazareth student Brenda Cunningham, for her blown-glass installation "Time." Cunningham cunningly tackled a tricky image to make a powerful statement on the inevitability of mortality. Whenever an artwork features the image of a human fetus, it's generally used in an either too-precious, cloying way, or - more commonly - it's about abortion. Set on a knee-high platform, the viewer looks down at a ring of nine hollow, frosted glass fetuses, each curled protectively around the stem-like umbilical cord whipping from its center. On the head of each is a black stamp, like you would find on a mass-produced product: "EXP 01/30/1928" or "EXP 04/20/2064."

The viewer has the feeling of looking down at something predetermined, from the perspective of eternity. The circle placement recalls a clock, a cycle; the material speaks of our fragile nature. Cunningham asks a lot of questions and, like any good thinker, doesn't dare try to answer any of them. It made me consider the countless factors that push and pull on a life, many of them already in motion long before a birth, and the possibility that much of what we will experience is predestined. The Determinism school of thought leaves me a bit sad, a little relieved, a more than a skoch frustrated.

I've had the pleasure of viewing more than one of these artists' work before, and I'm rather excited to see what else they have coming.

R Connection

Through February 21

Gallery R, 775 Park Ave

242-9470, galleryr.org

Thursday-Friday 2-6 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 1-5 p.m.