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Serious doesn't always mean dour.

Serious art can be seriously fun, too.

With "Whimsical Muse," the Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center will be filled with toys, dolls, animals and other playful things.

Fourteen works by twelve artists from eight states and Canada include Alabama artist Beth Edwards, who contributes "The Happy Wanderer," a portrait in oil of a doll.

"Dolls reflect human life, yet because of their inanimateness, they often become the object of abuse and neglect," she said in her gallery statement. "Despite their precarious position, dolls are usually created with a positive or happy countenance.

"I am interested in the ways in which this particular doll is working hard to be an optimist and how his expression simultaneously betrays the fragile nature of happiness."

Other works include a video piece by Charlie Kearns that offers a narrative glimpse into a young boy's afternoon, which could be the events leading up to a visit to the exhibit itself, said curator Jason Franz, who called the exhibition "completely untamed."

Other works include decorated cakes, a patchwork pup tent and Gabrielle Mayer's painting of a clown's face made from crumpled paper.

Manifest Gallery will also open "The Drawthrough Collection by Scott Robertson" today, curated by Brigid O'Kane, who calls the exhibition "a tour-de-force exhibit of concept design that hints at what Leonardo DaVinci might be drawing if he were a young man working in Los Angeles, California today."

Robertson is the founder of Design Studio Press, which has a mission of design, drawing and rendering education, and a design consultant for the entertainment, sporting goods and transportation industry with a past client list that includes Mattel Toys, Nike, Universal Studios, Fiat and the feature film "The Minority Report."

how to go

THE NAME: "The Whimsical Muse" and "The Drawthrough Collection: Scott Robertson."

THE LOCATION: Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, 2727 Woodburn Ave., Cincinnati.

THE HOURS: Opening reception 6 to 10 p.m. today; exhibitions continue through Jan. 20, 2007.

THE TAB: No charge.

THE PHONE: (513) 861-3638; manifestgallery.org.