Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Barbara Monoian's "Fall Hunt," on display in the PPG Wintergarden, is part of the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors-sponsored "Projects 2006" exhibit. Click photo for larger image. If you go The exhibition continues through next Sunday. Hours are noon to 8 p.m. daily. A reception will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday. Admission is free

"Projects 2006," an exhibition of sculpture in the PPG Wintergarden, has something for the art connoisseur as well as for those folk who like to walk around during the Three Rivers Arts Festival pointing and saying, "What the heck is that?"

This smart, contemporary show features a dozen artists, three of whom reside in Pennsylvania. It was co-curated by James Nestor and Jennifer Bechak, Indiana University of Pennsylvania fine arts faculty member and alumna, respectively.

While not officially part of the Festival, the exhibition is held in conjunction with it under the auspices of the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors. Kudos to the SOS -- which picked up the venue when the Festival stopped holding its juried three-dimensional shows -- for ensuring that art returns annually in the summer to this great Downtown space.

For the first time, two of the works are outside, in Four Gateway Center Plaza, across Stanwix Street from the Wintergarden.

The more evident one, which comprises 165 pink concrete disks set atop steel supports of varying height and arranged in a grid, is "Epitab," by Danish artist Line Bruntse, who's currently teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Through her presentation, the artist calls attention to the spatial relationships within the park and to the nearby massed plantings of blooming pink roses.

Less showy is Pam Ayres' "Grass Terraces," black stone-shaped nylon sacks placed within the shrubbery at various elevations on welded steel stands, and at ground level. They are filled with soil embedded with rye grass seed and have begun to sprout, probably the only work at the Festival that benefited from the first week's rains.

Inside, the first sculpture likely to catch the viewer's attention, although located at the far side of the room, is Matthew Barton's "Animal Rave in a Tree." An unlikely fantasy among its peers, it not only follows its own drummer but also exudes his sounds, while strobe lights flash behind red and blue windows in the trunk of the intentionally crudely made tree, a contravention to the high-tech within. For the full experience, push gently and hold for a moment the two switches near the small sign that Alice-in-Wonderland-like reads "Press buttons to fuel the party!" (Look up as you do.)

Vying for attention are two equally commanding works by Gary Justis. He combines traditional materials, such as steel and wood, with bright upholstered fabric components, to produce exceptional abstract sculpture that is sleekly sophisticated with an invigorating pinch of Pop.

The most puzzling for the casual visitor most probably will be the gizmo-filled table that looks like a mix of kitchen and laboratory, Michael Aurbach's humorous take on the "Critical Theorist." Entering this maze at one end is a metal book titled "Critical Theory" that, were the piece mechanized, would pass through apparatus (a tea kettle, meat grinders, strainers) marked "object disposal," "art evaporator," "cutting edge" and "spin cycle;" pass on to the likes of "distillate of deconstruction," "FD & C Red N. 40" and "essence of Derrida"; and exit at "extract of Foucault," the final two references being examples of the theorists that are the object of the artist's derision.

In contrast, Barbara Monoian's primitive and ritualistic "Fall Hunt" elicits a visceral response.

More intimate is the multilevel construction by Carin Mincemoyer, "Model Landscapes #14-#28," an expansion of smaller pieces that she's exhibited in recent years that critique the evolving relationship between man and the natural world epitomized by ubiquitous styrofoam. Mincemoyer has been receiving deserved recognition for her work, including the highly competitive 2005 Outstanding Student Award from the International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, N.J.

John Van Alstine exhibits three extremely fine, assured abstract sculptures which, in the context of this show, are the most traditional works, an illustration of the great amount of change that has occurred in the art world during the last half century.

A towering metal flower with rose and purple stained glass petals, "Justified Status" by Alison Helm, seems most at home in the huge, decorative, glassed plaza of the Wintergarden.

Three video works, in contrast, reveal themselves subtly, each in some way addressing the notion of time, two featuring water.

Margaret Cogswell's "Cuyahoga Fugues: The Cuyahoga River" is a beautiful, lyrical evocation of life's seasons presented as a visual fugue comprising the river's human and natural ecology.

Patricia Villalobos Echeverria's ocean bathers of "ALAMAR" also seem to exist just out of reach and consciousness in an equalizing and timeless realm that suggests gestation and regeneration. It's unfortunate that building regulations require that the work be roped off since the experience of it would be stronger were one able to walk to the edge of the sand as if at the shore.

Most potent is Kaz McCue's "Forget," a distracted elderly woman eating, alone, the image given emotional weight by being produced from a color-enhanced negative. Knowing that the piece features the artist's widowed mother, who suffers from dementia and for whom he is now a caregiver, isn't necessary to the appreciation of the work, but it explains how McCue achieved its straightforward, empathy-inspiring mix of tenderness and objectivity.

The abundance of daylight and reflective qualities in the Wintergarden are such that presentation of video work is compromised, but other than that this it is a rich exhibition that raises the bar for what might be done with the opportunity this space offers.