Sakeena Alkateeb, “Stick Drawing.”

On a recent Project Runway episode, Tim Gunn challenged the competing designers to construct garments using only items from a hardware store. Good thing the contestants didn’t have to go up against St. Anne’s-Belfield students Hannah Velie and Katelyn Coyner, whose dresses are among the standout pieces in this year’s High School Art Show, currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center.

Velie’s mini-dress, “Far Out,” pops with swirls of blue, green, purple, and yellow paper paint swatches spiraling outward on the front and back of a yellow oilcloth shift. Velie’s piece is not only fun, it’s also dead-on in its retro pop-art sensibility. Meanwhile Coyner’s “Lucky Strike” dress wows with a fringed bodice made of red-tipped cardboard matchsticks, a wide cummerbund of layered blue Diamond matchbooks, and a fringed skirt created with long wooden fireplace matches.

Can you find all of Velie and Coyner’s components at a hardware store? Why, yes, you can— and Project Runway judge Nia Garcia would never deem their innovative designs “boring.”

Innovation and mastery of technique are the keys to several students’ successful work in this year’s show. Renaissance School student Sakeena Alkateeb’s “Stick Drawing” is simultaneously raw and sophisticated. The quick India ink marks that Alkateeb has used to create her simple figure are free and energetic, but she has softened the composition and given it presence through varied weights of charcoal shading.

Western Albemarle student Ally Slechta also dazzles with technique in her batik, “April in Paris.” Even the darkest areas of Slechta’s Eiffel Tower, rising skyward behind stylized cherry branches, feature rich detail and texture. Further down the hall, another Renaissance School student, Marian Stevenson, has created a monochromatic red block print of a heron spreading its wings while standing above a fallen women that’s both strange and compelling.

Among the ceramic pieces, St. Anne’s-Belfield student Greg Wise’s whimsical creature is especially charming. Resembling a humorous cross between a dog and an alligator, the four-legged being’s body comprises parallel discs of bisque-colored clay. But it’s the movement in the scaly tale and expression of the painted-on eyes that bring the piece to life.

Also noteworthy for their outstanding technique are Western Albemarle students Reid Meador for her hand-tinted photograph of thread spools, and classmate Aly Baker for her watercolor, “Mrs. Roy.”

They may be young, but these local high school students combine fresh imagination with mature execution. As Tim Gunn would say, they “make it work.”

The annual High School Art Show is on view through March 31 in the upstairs hall gallery at the McGuffey Art Center. 201 Second St. NE. 295-7973.

Romare Howard Bearden, “Circe Preparing a Banquet for Ulysses,” 1968 Collage, 46 x 58 inches (framed) Courtesy of Charlotte Scott.

The University of Virginia Art Museum offers a “Saturday Special Tour” with curator of exhibitions, Andrea Douglas, who will discuss the development of African-American art from the 1920s to the present, while guiding participants through the current “African-American Art” exhibition. Not to be missed! 155 Rugby Road. 243-2050.

Phil Elson, “Just Down From Placa de Catalunya, 15 pieces.”

Christopher Burch, “Amber Lake.”

New-to-town Warm Springs Gallery presents “Passages,” its inaugural exhibition featuring paintings by American artist Christopher Burch and ceramic pieces by Australian artist Phil Elson. 105 Third St. NE. 245-0880.

The Piedmont Council of the Arts hosts a brown-bag-lunch seminar, “Connecting to the World as an Artist: Identifying and moving past limitations to success,” led by Jessica Thayer of Insight Dynamics. Registration is required. McGuffey Art Center, 201 Second St. NW. 971-2787.

Tim Griffin.

The University of Virginia Art Museum’s presents Artforum editor Tim Griffin, who will deliver the annual Gladys S. Blizzard lecture. The title of Griffin’s talk is “Compression,” and he will discuss trends in the manipulation of space and site by contemporary artists. Campbell Hall, Room 153. 243-2050.

Lindsey Mears, “Abide.”

In the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, which recognizes the beauty of imperfection, the word sabi refers specifically to a beauty acquired through age and wear. Think graceful curves of peeling paint or the varied patina of tarnished metal. One artist who venerates sabi is Lindsey Mears, whose exhibition, “Album: Winter into Spring,” is currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center, and her artworks are like shrines created for its dusty altar.

The 51 pieces in Mears’ show include hand-bound books, wall-mounted assemblages, freestanding sculptures, and shadow boxes. Although her pieces incorporate found objects— threadbare velvet boxes, fragments of wasp’s nests, faded photographs, and bedraggled feathers— Mears also uses a wide range of skilled art-making techniques, ranging from printing to paper-making to electroform plating, to enhance her collected treasures.

Mears’s aesthetic recalls Joseph Cornell’s— particularly in her piece, “The Temple of Costly Experience”— but her approach is decidedly feminine. With a mix of nostalgia and wryness, she examines old-fashioned notions of womanhood. Themes of mending and sewing, as well as ornamentation and cosmetic beauty, run through her work.

In “Vanity for a conjurer,” a fan-shaped box sits open, resembling a lady’s dressing table. Mears has placed an ivory-handled mirror, embellished with feathers, against the worn satin upholstery of the upright lid. A matching ivory-edged comb lies next to a wisp of horsehair tied with grosgrain ribbon at the bottom of the box, surrounded by cloudy glass bottles, one containing a copper-plated wishbone, another old buttons. The effect is at once nostalgic, curious, and humorous.

The piece also highlights Mears’ flair for theatricality. Many of her works involve stage-like settings, such as in  “The Temple of Costly Experience,” where Mears creates a proscenium arch with fabric swags and small bells. In “Tomorrow is Ours,” viewers become actors, gazing into an illuminated mirror, its silver scratched away to reveal an interior where a dove soars upward in a blue, starry heaven.

Throughout “Album: Winter into Spring,” Mears shows a dark sense of humor in the way she juxtaposes elements. For instance, a glass disk of gilded thorns sits at the center of a rose-filled jewelry box in “Learning about the Thorns.” Her compositions have an intuitive energy, but Mears has carefully considered the impact of every detail.

In her devotion to sabi, Mears nudges viewers to bathe in nostalgia and consider anew the beauty of things forgotten and left behind.

Lindsey Mears’ exhibition, “Album: Winter into Spring,” is on view through March 31 at the McGuffey Art Center. 201 Second St. NE. 295-7973.

Painting by Melanie Carratt.

Milano Cafe features painter Melanie Carratt’s exhibition, “Horses and Guitars.” 100 W. South St. 220-4302.

The Virginia Film Society screens Blood on the Flat Track: the Rise of the Rat City Roller Girls, a documentary about the resurgence of women’s roller derby that follows the Rat City Rollergirls of Seattle, who formed their league from scratch in April of 2004. 215 W. Main St. on the Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

Image and text from After Love, written by Jeff Pike and illustrated by Ryan Fox.

The Virginia Arts of the Book Center presents Jeff Pike, professor of Communications Design at Washington University, who will discuss “Letters to Fictions: Heloise & Abelard.” In addition, the VABC will present After Love, which was written by Jeff Pike, illustrated by Ryan Fox, and produced and hand-bound by the book artists at the VABC. 977 Second St. SE (Ix Building). 296-3506.

For one day only, the Charlottesville Community Design Center hosts “The Design Revolution Road Show,” a traveling Airstream trailer exhibition that displays 40 humanitarian solutions from Emily Pilloton’s book, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People. Lecture, 12-1pm. (See also Emily Pilloton’s lecture at the UVA Architecture School). 100 5th St. NE. 984-2232.