"We have stumbled into the 21st century with the technologies of 'Star Wars' and the emotional maturity of cavemen," writes Richard Notkin in his artist statement at the Michael Berger Gallery.

It's an election year and politics and passion energize two keen exhibitions that originated in conjunction with a recent national ceramics conference but could hold their own alongside those of any medium.

Notkin is among 20 artists assembled by ceramist Deirdre Daw for a sizzling exhibition at Berger Gallery, one of several Pittsburgh venues that pitched in when a call went out to host conference-inspired shows.

His terra-cotta tiles with titles such as "Ruins" and "Collateral Damage" are only the latest statements in an acclaimed oeuvre infused with social consciousness. Other seminal figures from the studio arts movement include Patti Warashina, represented by a signature sake set, this one from her "Drunken Power Series," and trompe-l'oeil master Richard Shaw, with one of his notable "book jars," "G.W. Bush and Other Jokes."

Marilyn Lysohir's camouflaged battleships in teacups cleverly make a connection between distant conflict and the domestic front. Jim Budde's satirical "JoyRide," a teapot-inspired form that presents the president as a monkey gripping an oversized oil can spout with phallic implications, gains impact, positive and negative, from its off-color nature. (Budde has elsewhere equally lampooned Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

Sexual politics, gang violence and the Katrina aftermath are also saucily addressed.

Perhaps most affecting is Ehren Tool's work -- shelves of mugs embellished with war-related imagery that at first appear somewhat conventional. The title, "2nd Platoon Bravo Company," and that they are sold as a platoon, squads or fire teams, are tips that something more is going on here.

Tool, who holds a UC Berkeley master of fine arts degree, is an ex-Marine who served in the 1991 Gulf War and whose WWII veteran grandfather "had dreams about what he saw until he died." He feels that everyone is culpable and has a duty to monitor accountability, if his government initiates conflict. "For or against the war, I think you should have to see the corpses with your morning tea, as our vets will for life," he writes in his artist statement.

Although Tool has developed an impressive body of conceptual work, his promise is even greater. It's evident that profundity lies beneath festering experiential scars, awaiting time's revelatory transformations.

Ultimately these artists, like most, hope to inspire dialogue. Visitors could hand them no greater compliment than to initiate conversations relative to what they've seen.

"Object(ions)" continues through April 26 at 415 Gettysburg St., Point Breeze, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays (412-441-4282).

Robert Morris University inaugurates its Media Arts Gallery with a first-rate exhibition that suggests a promising commitment to high caliber art.

"Brit by Brit: Contemporary Ceramics by Rod Bugg and Stephen Dixon" was curated by Sarah Nichols, Carnegie Museum of Art adjunct curator.

Dixon hand builds traditional, if altered, ceramic forms -- platters and vessels -- the latter referencing in their construction oil cans and armor. These become canvases for compositions that conflate imagery from pop culture, media and art history to critique British and American involvement in Iraq.

At first appearance, they are sumptuous and somewhat decorative, even humorous. But a close examination of their layered subject matter dissolves any misconception of lightheartedness.

Bugg's pieces are as plain, earthy and solemn as Dixon's are busy, sociable and cheeky.

"Italian Linen Construction I," a floor piece comprising 20 clay squares, calls to mind Carl Andre. But these multiples have great, if subtle, variety and a painterly quality that is in concert with their varying surface tactility. The piece was inspired by the patterns of repair to a cloth found in a house in Italy that the artist owns.

Similarly, smaller wall works of the "Sail Fragment" series are drawn from a patched boat sail in a 17th-century Dutch painting hanging in London's National Gallery, Nichols says.

Bugg's graphite drawings are painstakingly built bramble patterns of black and gray, pushing in and out of tension against their white backgrounds, inviting, as do the clay works, immersion and meditation.

"Brits" continues through April 19 at 600 Fifth Ave., Downtown, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays (412-397-6881).

• Submissions are being accepted through April 30 by the Pittsburgh Technology Center Arts + Technology Initiative for the launch exhibition of the 15 Minutes Gallery, at the Technology Center on Second Avenue and operated in partnership with Sirani Gallery, Squirrel Hill. Jurors are artist Jane Haskell and Sirani's Barbara Krause. For details, call Kim Harvey at 412-918-4223.

• Clear glass twigs 8 to 20 inches in length are being solicited for "The Communal Nest," an installation that will be part of Susan Taylor Glasgow's October exhibition "Absence of Body" at the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Non-artists may sponsor center artists to make a twig in their names. Profits support the women's shelter Bethlehem Haven and the Glass Center. Due date is Aug. 15 for inclusion in the nest and catalog. Information: www.taylorglasgow.com or 412-365-2145.