These images look only summarily like the installation that went up last night at Soil—they’re design prototypes—but they capture the general impression of exuberant excess offset by rigorous structure that’s suggested by the show’s title, Hardline Organics (A Tale of Absurd Optimism). The installation swallows the gallery in four segments, all different but of a piece, all made by the fivesome of Craig Miller, Jenny Heishman, Yuki Nakamura, Saya Moriyasu, and Etsuko Ichikawa—in a grand exception to the usual rule about art made by committee.

As you walk in, red light animates paper sculptures hanging on lines like geometric laundry; a little farther into the space, enormous plywood and neon pods jut across the space and up toward the ceiling. The centerpiece, in the heart of the gallery, is a partly deconstructed geodesic dome shape that you walk inside. It’s made of the plywood ends of wire spools, the holes covered in colored plastic, and tiny ceramic figurines gather and play on ledges on the outside of the dome, outside the holes, so if you’re on the inside looking closely, you see their little suburban lives through the plastic windows. In the back area of the gallery is a sort of rainbow of plywood strips above three concrete cylinders where, again, some kind of ceramic community has formed, including a sparkling blue swimming pool. Everything is here: modernist interior design, Eastern formalism, futuristic cinema, utilitarian architecture, cartoon utopia, abject figuration, humor, wishing. It’s up through July 1, Tuesdays-Sundays noon to 5.

I also stopped by Shift Studio, which last month had the sublime—and I do mean partly frightening—stalagmites of Elise Richman. This month, Donna Stack and Andrew Kaufman are showing separate work that conjoins thematically. Stack’s sutured-together stuffed animals, trapped in asphyxiating hugs, and pink rabbit fur pelt are in tribute to her former sculpture professor, who committed suicide in 2004. Kaufman documents trauma and recovery in single splats of paint or ink, first made in black, then reproduced in white, then in negative, as if the impact is rehearsed repeatedly. The two artists are a couple (recently reunited, according to Shift’s web site), based in Ellensburg. Shift is open Fridays and Saturdays noon to 5.