Berta Walker, however, has assigned one of the rooms in her gallery to a winter cooperative of artists under the banner of the 6 Degrees Gallery. Sculpture by Ken Fishman, paintings by Sky Power, and Will Sherwood's photographs inaugurate this modest but strong transgression from the saturation and pressure of summer shows.

Sky Power's "Ikage 41" is on display at 6 Degrees Gallery, at the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown.

Exhibiting here for the first time, Ken Fishman presents ceramic masks and vessels, nonfunctional ware that reflect themes of identity, transformation and containment. In the mythological persuasion of such works as "Pan," "Harlequin" and "Ram" there's a vaguely Nordic or African thrust to his forms reminiscent of horned beasts and wandering fish. They're full of fat spirals like the lock of horns, or perforations of small holes, mouthy slits with protrusions of tongues, and the skinny furrow of etched lines that crisscross surfaces ranging from what look like primal tracts of raw clay with a sugary glaze to a soft and marrowy bone white.

"Noir" is the one exception, a confrontational presence of green black that has the dull deep sheen of polished leather, its surface ripplingly expectantly. For the most part, Fishman's work is benign, fun even, but this piece with its fetishistic overtones - its rows of holes are begging to be laced - is a nervy reminder that sometimes power resides in darkness.

Chiaroscuro is the technique of defining form by pulling light from the surrounding darkness and, on a technical level, it's one of the things that Will Sherwood's nude photographs do best. His suite of impenetrably dense black-and-white "humanscapes" are like that momentary lapse in the morning when you're not quite awake and the folds in a blanket appear like the idyllic rolls of distant hills. His nudes invite similar moments of disorientation. At first you're not quite sure where you are, but after you've spent a moment untangling and differentiating the various knots of limbs and heavenly repositories of dimpled skin, you're left with bodyscapes that exist in their own private inner and outer space.

In dark, airless worlds, his figures are huddled forms that play hide and seek with just the thinnest slivers of light to pick out a crease of skin, or the long, low composition of a distended torso. There's an interminable hush to these images, a cool evasiveness and a dark sensual chic that tends to linger on delicately mottled mounds, delight in the delicate fray of goose bumps, or witness the sharp tiny pulse of a thin strand of hair.

Sky Power has been producing colorful and free abstract paintings for some time now, but the paintings from her "Ikage" series are among her best. Tapping into her American Indian heritage - ikage is Apache for shield - Power has appropriated these symbols of protection and empowerment for her own investigations into individuality and the self. That's all fine and good, but at some point it's nice to enjoy these for what they are: a beautifully succinct and fluid discourse on color and abstract painting.

Made between 1999 and 2002 on uniform 2-by-2-foot masonite panels, there are close to 50 paintings in the series, but they all have a marked simplicity and strong direct presence. Here three of them hang together bathed in a persistence of yellow, their emblematic shield shapes indeterminate and warm like buttery yolks painted in clean, confident sweeps of lemon yellow, pure bolts of color the consistency of custard. Around the periphery of their lemon centers, Power wipes the viscous density down to a stain of dirty sage and murky edges of muddy terra cotta. Absolutely lovely.

At 4 foot square, "Taming the Fire" is her largest and latest painting in this modest showcase, exemplifying the ying and yang of her spontaneity and consideration. In searching altercations of strident red shapes like a decommissioned Alexander Calder mobile, feathery staccato stabs of yellow, and a soft sky blue, Power's simple primaries and ample spaces of white allow the painting to soar on some form of deeply satisfying aerial extravaganza.

If You Go: 6 Degrees Gallery, at the Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradford St., Provincetown; Saturdays and Sundays, through December; 508 487 6411

(Published: December 11, 2003)