After many years of attending ARTFeast, which raises more than $100,000 annually for arts education, SFR has developed a few ideas about how to tackle the main event.

What 6/6/6 surfeits in concept (“six artists, six cities, six connections”), it lacks in size and thematic links. There are only 18 pieces (ideally three per artist, but not in practice) and they’re a solid bunch, but the connections seem to go no further than phone tag.

If the exchange of famous vaginas for subtle, literary feminist allusions means progress, we’re in. Female artists Amy Cutler, Ruth Claxton and Runa Islam stage three structurally different but thematically related shows for a collaboration that will not be tied down, nor told what it is or how far it can go.

Albuquerque-based artist Ted Laredo creates geometric pieces, usually spin-offs on cubes—let’s call them boxes—using combinations of acrylic paint, glass micro beads and cotton twill tape. None of the boxes—or elaborate extensions thereof—are just boxes and, as in life, no two are the same.

From John Wayne to Jeff Bridges, from escapism to jingoism, from open skies to internment camps, the American West is a buoyant metaphor for whatever American mythos one hopes to portray at any given moment.

Like any contemporary exhibition concerned with the contemporary world, Emergence has much to worry about (and worry in contemporary art certainly isn’t just a contemporary concern). John Feodorov broaches issues of environmentalism, consumerism and a culture disconnected from its roots.

No, yes, Christ, crossing, 10, times, poison, pirates, dead string, straight-edge, I’m lying, I like you�an X can mean a lot of things. But an X is never just an X. In Crux, Mokha Laget creates a space to meditate upon the X and all its connotations in order to leave those associations behind�or not as the case may be.

No one ever suspects the basket weaver. The practice fits so easily into nursing-home craft circles and pre-industrial agriculture, and doesn’t usually push boundaries. The woven bamboo works at Tai Gallery, however, do just that, in regard to the craft.

This reporter, having never seen 1933’s Duck Soup, the referent of David Kearns’ Painting Groucho’s Duck, watched the cult classic in preparation for this review. While it’s a delightful way to spend 68 minutes, don’t expect it to illuminate much about the exhibition.

Artist Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo’s works come in thematic pairs, and each work is further divided intotwo separate parts: an image and an illustration, for the most part. A black-and-white archival pigment print of a waifish model greets gallerygoers as they enter.