A group show of emerging artists has the great benefit of the romance of potential: you enter the gallery a little more open to the chance of pleasant surprise, and if nothing gives you that unexpected zing, you leave the gallery knowing that the artists are young yet, and maybe next time one of them will dazzle you. For me, this is the case for the 4-person exhibition at CAC in the Arts Factory, which is aptly named “Tomorrow People,” a nice title which vaguely suggests procrastination but vigorously states the premise of the show, to present some young artists who have their eyes on the near future.

The works–by Leah Craig, Catherine Cruise, Justin Favela, and Thomas Willis–are nicely curated and well placed in the space, with ample elbow room for the paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixed media works to do what they need to do. Any view of the show encompasses works by most or all of the artists. And each of the artists has a distinct mojo that, like Kiss’s face makeup, offers a clear choice so you can pick your favorite.

Works by Willis, Cruse, and Craig

Mine is Leah Craig, particularly her odd wall pieces made with thin sheets of fused plastic. These are new and experimental works, full of that lusty potential, but still hanging on to elements of her drawings, particularly the use of a meandering, delicate line. While this line work evokes half-remembered ideas in her more conventional drawings on layers of translucent paper, in these tattered plastic things the line feels unnecessary and distracting. This said, these pieces have a visceral, Eva Hesse-like presence, especially the large untitled piece, which dispenses with her drawings’ delicate linear descriptions of familiar neighborhood footpaths and goes for the blunt embodiment of the moment when, out on those same streets, a gust of wind blows a plastic grocery bag into your face.

Justin Favela uses similarly modest materials to far different effect. His large, cardboard-and-paint signs draw on the neon-powered aesthetic of the Vegas Strip and a flippant, Spanglish humor. Estardas is a pulpy reincarnation of the old Stardust sign featuring the piece’s title, a nice Spanishized mispronunciation in place of the original hotel name. Across the gallery a smaller but double-sided sign reads Hella, Hella, Hella Bomb! with a kind of joyful gusto that makes you wonder if you’re in on the joke. A pallet of 1,095 mixed media tamales, all aluminum-wrapped, completes this trifecta of light-hearted swagger, which after the reflexive smiles, leaves you with the suspicion that, having just shared a laugh with someone who speaks another language, maybe he wasn’t laughing with you. This impression could be a shortcoming of Justin’s pieces, but the attitude, the humor, and the different uses of language point to the possibility that an ambiguous hostility is at work, and that would be a cool thing.

Grey checking out Favela's Estardas

Catherine Cruse is the traditionalist of the show. Two untitled watercolor drawings and two large oil canvases feature the nude female figure reclining and twisting in familiar poses. The drawings have a freshness and facility, while the paintings sag under the weight of a lot of paint and a lot of hours with the palette knife. Works like these, which have some elements working for them (pretty good color and form in the figure) and some elements not working (harsh lines separating figure from ground and absent content outside of the figure itself), remind us of how hard it is to pull off a naturalistic oil painting and how tricky it is for a contemporary artist to contend with the masters who invented the rules of the game that Cruse seems to be playing.

Thomas Willis’s works also have elements of naturalism, but in a dreamy modern context. The two bigger pieces feature images of keys, cell phones, and other pocket contents, arranged in a tight radial pattern. Rather than painting these objects on the white background of each piece, he masks and reveals the intricate parts of the image, then burns the exposed gesso. This technique is impressive, especially in that it accomplishes the rare feat of using tape to mask a painting without leaving ridges when tape is removed, ridges that have been the bane of many a west coast art viewer (and artist) for decades. The result feels like it was made with an archaic camera or a new x-ray technology for airports, and the tone of these pieces is of delicate observation to the immediate environment, like a poet sent into reverie by a paperclip, or the Flaming Lips lyric, “driving home the sky accelerates and the clouds all form a geometric shape.” Something romantic is happening in Thomas’s mathematical arrangement of everyday objects. Focus and ingenuity notwithstanding, these pieces feel like they are still on their way somewhere, and that place may well be awesomely weird.

In all, “Tomorrow People” doesn’t give it up so soon in our new relationship with these artists. The potential is there, and the show is a good flirt, flashing glimpses of what we may have a chance to lay our eyes on if we all keep showing up. Turning potential into great art is a rare and flighty thing, but we want to see what happens when these artists take it all off, so we’ll keep showing up. Tomorrow, people.

Works by Favela, Willis, and Cruse. Grey heading towards Favela's 1095 Tamales.

“Tomorrow People” at Contemporary Arts Collective, in the Arts Factory, February 4th – March 19th