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Published: Oct 4, 2006

Blaine Fontana: The Manifest Soup Transcripts of Four Corners

Runs through Oct. 8, Lineage Gallery, 21 N. Second St., 215-928-0980, www.lineagegallery.com

Blaine Fontana's anxious tree spirits hovering over their charges recall the great Japanese animator Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away), but halo effects and complicated patterns hint at Fontana's past as a graf artist. Are his koi leaping toward the heavens, or swimming up a wall in the bad part of town?

The Manifest Soup Transcripts

The Pressed Image: Summer Printmaking Exhibition

Runs through Oct. 6, City Hall, Broad and Market sts., second and fourth floors, 215-686-2803

An unexpected reason to risk the flocks of tourists being shepherded around City Hall: 50 prints from 32 local artists. Placards explain the techniques that produce results as diverse as Christopher Hartshorne's Woman Eating Oysters, which looks like what would have happened if the Hairy Who had made woodcuts, Dee Collins' Levittown linoleum print accordion book and William Knight's Refraction, which resembles a galaxy exploding. Or, in some oracular fashion, a Center City manhole.

Border Crossing (Mauro Zamora) / This is Not Your Father's Narrative (Todd Keyser)

Runs through Oct. 8, Seraphin Gallery, 1108 Pine St., 215-923-7000, www.seraphingallery.com

Man-made structures interrupt nature in Zamora's mixed-media, usually monochromatic paintings. The paradox is that our careless Balkanization of natural spaces has led to some fascinating compositions. Keyser is equally concerned with space—outer space, that is. Symbols of the industrialized world—corporate office buildings, mountain condos—fragment and drift apart amidst the asteroids. Bright colors, icy alienation.