Critic's Faves: art

1. This is the Future curated by Dos Pestañeos at Saltworks Gallery

Though Dos Pestañeos lost two of its key members this year to graduate school in other cities, they were still able to manage this knockout punch about what the future might hold. Hopefully the scrappy, always inventive collective will live on in a new form.

2. Chihuly in the Garden at the Atlanta Botanical Garden

The mix of botanical and seaform sculptures and gardens by glass superstar Chihuly was not unprecedented. But the resulting sellout crowds proved a point that has generated much debate in the arts community: that ordinary folk can embrace public art when given the right mix of artist and institution.

3. Boys Will Be Boys by Fiona Buttigieg, Seen Gallery, Decatur

Provocative and funny, this Georgia State University graduate student's peek at the bathroom rituals of various men -- from hipsters to nerds, hotties to not-so-hotties -- provided an au courant glimpse at male vanity and vulnerability.

4. Conversations with the Contemporary Figure curated by Danielle Roney at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery

The topic was dauntingly huge and frighteningly obvious: the figure in regional artists' work. But the carefully selected sampling of artists yielded impressive results and made the case that even so broad of an idea was worth thinking about anew.

5. New Clear Family by Bill Turcotte at the Red Wall Studio and Gallery in St. John Chrysostom Melkite Catholic Church

Staged in the unusual setting of a Catholic church basement, Turcotte's odd show of luscious drawings, marrying the psychedelic and Victorian in an exploration of childhood anxiety, was one of the best yet most-overlooked shows of the year.

6. The Georgia 7: Seven Emerging Artists from the State of Georgia at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia

This well-chosen group of up-and-coming regional artists, including photographer Sheila Pree who offered a fresh view of the black middle class, gave Atlantans reason to hope that local museums might finally acknowledge the talent in their midst.

7. Marcus Kenney at Marcia Wood Gallery

This devastatingly clever Savannah artist deconstructed American culture by assembling its ephemera -- old checks, cigar wrappers, advertisements, paint-by-numbers kits -- into gorgeously retro collages.

8. Family Business by Mitch Epstein at Jackson Fine Art

A devastating photo story about photographer Mitch Epstein's

82-year-old father and his crumbling Holyoke, Mass., furniture empire, this work also told a larger tale about distinctly American dreams going up in smoke.

9. By My Self, Swan Coach House Gallery

Seven female artists tackled identity -- both personal and political, mild and confrontational -- in this sassy, nuanced show founded on self-portraiture.

10. disCONNEXION by Xing Danwen at Kiang Gallery

Trash never looked as good as it did in Chinese-born artist Danwen's look at the toxic computer recycling industry. It's a shadowy Third World business staffed by China's most impoverished workers, a byproduct of the First World's frivolous, unchecked, and dangerous waste.

Felicia.feaster@creativeloafing.com