ARTIST AUDITIONS

In this postmodern era, artists and gallery owners are forced to go to increasingly outlandish lengths to achieve originality. The consuming desire to create something new has inspired all manner of cockamamie events in art history; witness Marcel Duchamp's urinal and Christo's wrapped buildings.

Frustrated with traditional gallery shows, Sarah and Justin Boss, co-curators of "Artist Auditions: Phase III" at the Brian Marki Gallery, set to discover or create something new in contemporary Northwest art. They found an inspiring set of works in progress, none of which was groundbreaking in the Duchampian sense, but some of which they were able to cultivate into true pearls.

Their curatorial process began with elements of pure chance -- anonymous postings on Craigslist and invitations to mysterious events at undisclosed locations -- and ended with intensive studio reviews and a rigorous jury process. To remove the corrupting effects of gallery politics, the Bosses refused to provide details about the show to the candidates. To weed out shoulder-rubbers from serious artists, they staged events including a social mixer with collectors and a party at a karaoke bar. Only artists who were able to engage and respond creatively to these situations passed to Phase II, which involved an academic- style critique of the artists' works.

Every step forced the artists to operate outside their comfort zones, socially and artistically. This was meant to foster their growth, both as artists and as people. Two artists will proceed to Phase IV, a two-person show, in March. The curators documented every madcap step of the auditions with video and photographs. They plan to release the footage and photo catalog with the March show.

Some of the artwork in this show, Phase III, remains as the husband-and-wife curators found it: seeds of inspiration, not fully formed. Jessie Bean's glass amoebas, which were pulled as is from her basement, are interesting concept pieces, but lack the soul that comes from focused artistic development. Soma Venus' scrappy collages look like random thoughts. Lauren Black's acrylics-and-rust concoctions are downright unsightly.

However, some artists responded to the curators' challenge with a sense of playfulness and adventure and found themselves, and their artwork, transformed. Noah Nakell constructed surreal miniatures using objects from his sons' model train sets. "Plosion" is a set of three diminutive houses, one of which has tree branches sprouting from its windows and doors. A second tree, devoid of leaves, stands outside the houses. It is a charming, satirical comment on the perverse relationship between nature and the human environment: The tree inside the house thrives, while the one outdoors languishes.

Equally charming is a tiny box called "Dreamer." A small window frame on the front reveals a miniature scene of a chair on a grassy slope. Behind the chair is a white surface, on which is projected a shadow of a figure and a tree. The entire piece is only inches in size. It is like a memory of childhood, captured in a box.

Kelly Neidig's thoughtful landscapes are composed of brightly striped, organic shapes separated by planes of solid gray. In "Sizzling Hot," the stripes resemble layers of rock. In "Odds and Evens" they appear like concentric ripples of water. Her palette -- solid earth tones combined with jarring stripes -- and her layers of paint are reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud's delectable landscapes and frosted cakes. If Neidig traded her acrylics for oils and applied her paint just a bit thicker, her works would be delicious.

But the true darling of the show is Madoka Ito. Better known for her intricate handiwork with ink (on view at the Basil Hallward Gallery at the downtown Powell's), for this show Ito created new works in oil on wood. The series revolves around white, faceless figures, dressed in jewel-toned garments and standing in windswept landscapes. Some figures sprout tree branches from their heads. If you lean in close, you will see Ito has incorporated her signature whimsical details -- but instead of painstaking ink brushwork she has used pieces of thread, etching and miniscule points of color.

Indeed, Ito seems to have crystallized what all of the artists seem to want to communicate, but couldn't quite say. Where the familiar meets the unknown, where lines dissolve into puddles and where humans and houses begin to sprout and grow, that is where beauty lies.