This is a detail of a frame from James Duesing's "Law of Averages" of 1996. It's one of five animations by the artist in his 2004 Artist of the Year exhibition at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Click photo for larger image. Artist of the Year Where: Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, 6300 Fifth Ave., Shadyside. When: Noon to 4 p.m. tomorrow through Sunday. Tickets: $5, suggested donation; 412-361-0873 or www.pittburgharts.org

With an arts scene as full as this season's, it's easy to miss something. But it shouldn't be James Duesing's 2004 Artist of the Year exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, which runs only through Sunday.

One of the most novel and creative artists living and working in Pittsburgh, Duesing is also among the growing number who are better known internationally than locally.

In fact, given the achievements of some of the region's artists, one may ask why none have been tapped for the Carnegie International in recent decades, as they once were. Keep Duesing's animations in mind as you view works in similar media in the 2004 International, which opened recently at Carnegie Museum of Art. But I digress.

Duesing has made his mark on the global animation scene with quirky, engaging works that spring from a unique imagination and a quick intelligence. Like the best fairy tales, they're simultaneously fanciful and foreboding, drawing the viewer into the lives and environments of characters who may exist. We just hope it's somewhere far away.

The problem is -- and this is what gives these slightly ominous snippets their punch -- that they actually dwell just down the block from, if not within, the viewer.

"How much stupidity can a person squeeze into a lifetime?" mutters the central character of the elegantly spare "Impetigo." It's a question we may have all asked at one time.

	Detail of "Small Flowers," a 30- by 40-inch inkjet print of a character appearing in James Duesing's animation "Tender Bodies." Click photo for larger image.

Never mind that it's uttered by a huge, floppy-winged bird-like figure who dons a glowing hat and trench coat when he leaves the house, which he shares with his lover -- a fish. No matter that the sentence takes a few beats to sink in because the viewer's so mesmerized by the visual magic produced by such frugal use of line and color, albeit rife with movement and blazing hot orange, red and yellow.

Relationships and their complications -- no insignificant subject -- provide a framework for Duesing, and inevitably encompass the angst of the individual searching for love and reason on a vast planet. But they exist within a broad background of social and political concerns.

Duesing describes the world of "Impetigo" as "a barren tract amidst surveillance and entrapment." In other works, characters navigate environmental disaster or "The Big Ghost," a futuristic entertainment complex that seduces all comers to virtual addiction.

"Impetigo," a five-minute animation completed in 1983, is one of five screened in the exhibition. The longest, "Law of Averages" of 1996, is 15 minutes. The most recent, the eight-minute "Tender Bodies," of 2003, is the first without spoken words (though it has sound), a way to broaden accessibility for an increasingly global audience.

A DVD ($25) combines the five animations in the exhibition, totaling 46 minutes, with 45 minutes of commentary by Duesing on his work.

Duesing is acknowledged as the first person to make an animated film entirely on a desktop computer, the 1991 "Maxwell's Demon," which is in the show. Now a classic, the work received press and TV sales in "virtually every country," Duesing says. It's in the curriculum of major film schools like CalArts, University of Southern California, and Carnegie Mellon University, where he's a professor.

For more than I can do justice to in this space, visit his fun and informative Web site, artscool.cfa.cmu.edu/~duesing.

For this exhibition, Duesing produced 30- by 40-inch inkjet prints of five characters from "Tender Bodies" that loom poster-sized at the entry to each intimate screening room, adding a slightly naughty and dark carnival air to the show that's helped along by deep plum walls that complement the prints.

Those who think they may want to try this at home should visit the display of drawings, production cells and storyboards that testify to the right brain/left brain proficiency and painstaking devotion required to pull off such visually exciting and mentally compelling works.

While the animations are planned, narrative appears to be coincidental, which heightens the works' drop-in, voyeuristic quality. They're like strange dreams that you're glad to waken from; the scary part with these is that you never really do.

Adam Sipe exhibits concurrently as Emerging Artist of the Year, a more recently created award designed to recognize a younger artist's promise.

Sipe is a 1999 graduate of Penn State University whose offbeat paintings have been exhibited frequently in Pittsburgh, most notably in "Comic Release" which debuted at the Miller Gallery, CMU, and is traveling around the country.

Sipe is painterly with brush and color. He manipulates spatial relationships and perspective, frequently introducing elements -- including the works' titles -- that confound the viewer. For example, a face titled "40 million people" has bright green eyes and a pair of noses underscored by a blue horizontal strip of a mouth that seems to levitate.

Among images that have become staples in his paintings are a leafless branching tree and a round-faced, pink-cheeked man with a black handlebar mustache. These combine unexpectedly in "Who is my friend?"

The fellow surfaces again in "A bartender walks into a bar," a painting with visual bounce provided by patterns of polka dots inspired by hamburgers: Beige from bun, green from lettuce, brown from meat, etc. This effect carries over to an installation, "Burger," in an adjacent room, that stops short of its potential.

The latter, however, is an experiment outside of Sipe's usual format that the exhibition has afforded the artist a chance to explore. Sipe is pursuing graduate studies at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. We can look forward to seeing how that experience will affect the direction his work takes.