Last Chance

Catch it or Regret It

by Holly Otterbein

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Stockings and brooches are usually as cookie-cutter as suburban real estate, but Philadelphia artists kitsch the holiday staples up a notch: Risque black lace lines the stockings and wooden brooches resemble icky bacteria. Grandparent-safe paintings, drawings and mixed-media works are also available: Kylie P. Grant's Philadelphia 1920 depicts an orange-tinted photo of ancient trolleys, buildings and wide streets, screen-printed onto wood. Other pieces are more appropriate for your best friend: Andrew Jeffrey Wright fuses Mr. T's haircut and necklaces with E.T.'s body in Mr. E.T. with Soda.

When Carrie Bradshaw laments over farting in bed on Sex and the City, it seems reasonable. But when artist Oriana Fox re-enacts the scene, the dialogue is stripped down to its absurd shallowness. Sans cast or crew, Kara Hearn, Lauren Friedman and Fox crush our suspension of disbelief as they take on Fame, Star Wars and other American relics in their one-woman videos. Even E.T. isn't safe: In Hearn's rendition of the Spielberg classic, she wraps herself in a green towel and rug to portray our favorite alien.

Using a low-temperature-scanning electron microscope, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gathered images of snowflakes magnified 250 to 1,000 times their actual size. The title "Frozen Architecture" implies that a connection exists between natural and man-made objects, but the photographs (pictured) tell a different story. Nature's columns, slabs and hexagons far surpass the Howard Roarks of architecture.