Wolves, seagulls and Persian rugs run through the ambitious canvases of Jacob Fossum at Verge Gallery. Fossum, who holds degrees in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Utah State University, and now lives in Sacramento, makes a stunning debut with three large and complex oil paintings and two drawings in "Fig. 4," the second show at Verge.

Fossum's open-ended narratives draw on the realm of mythology and his Mormon background, giving us memorable if mysterious images of great pictorial vigor. In "Elder Fossum," he offers what is presumably a self-portrait as a heroic wanderer in an apocalyptic landscape populated by wolves, seagulls and hyenas. This dark-edged promised land turns surreal as the landscape gives way to an elaborate Persian rug and the agrarian fields are supplanted by a painting of a nude in a pool of water where fish and, improbably, a small elephant play.

Such a combination of disparate elements could turn into chaos in the hands of a lesser artist, but Fossum's technical skills are as impressive as his imaginative ones. "You Knew What I Was When You Picked Me Up," another fantasy played out on a Persian rug, posits Fossum's alter ego as a languid figure in a contemporary Pietà in front of a tapestry of a castle with a somnolent youth in the foreground amidst a bevy of fairies and elves. The references to classical religious painting and children's storybooks make for a fascinating if puzzling scene layered with irony.

A fairy-tale quality also imbues "The Flight of the Wendybird," a gloss on J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan with Wendy seated on a Persian rug, which gives way to a cloudy sky where the lost children soar among birds both domestic and wild – geese, seagulls, parrots, a vulture and a phoenix. Again it's a mix of improbable elements that beguile the viewer with Fossum's masterful handling of space, light and color.

Storytelling is also at the heart of Bay Area artist Patricia Gillespie's mixed-media works at Verge. Satirizing female roles, she makes piquant images that hover between sculpture, fiber art and painting. In creating her pieces, she starts with a rectangle covered with decorative fabric quilted to give it dimension. Using the kinds of decorator colors – avocado and turquoise blue, for example – that you would find in the 1950s or early 1960s, the cloth-covered grounds are often strewn with flowers or quilted with lines that suggest foliage or cloud forms.

To these she adds three-dimensional cutouts in the form of female figures doing mundane tasks: vacuuming, grocery shopping, plucking eyebrows, for example. The construction of these domestic tableaux is thorough, witty, and reminiscent of early pop art in its deadpan critique of banality.

The emptiness of the figures, rendered like ad art of the 1950s, allows the viewer to focus on the screeching, off-key color relationships that Gillespie uses so well.

Similarly, Oakland artist Bethany Ayres, who holds a master of fine arts degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, gives us edgy narratives that deconstruct gender roles and play with spiraling compositions that sometimes threaten to spin out of control.

"Gee Your Hair Sounds Terrific" is a humorous piece in which a woman's elaborate hairdo turns into musical notes that whirl around her head.

"Announcement" strikes an ominous note as a woman plays Russian roulette while a trio of cupids floats around her and a telephone rings with a musical note.

Ayres has a wry sense of humor and a dark vision of romance as seen in the tacky colors and simplistic rendering of bikini-clad figures in "Love Me Like a Tan" and in the implied compliance of a woman who is being sawed in half by a magician in "Participant."

In order to critique clichéd gender roles, both Ayres and Gillespie turn female figures into signs rather than presenting them as flesh-and-blood human beings.

Rounding out the show is an ethereal installation by Bay Area artist Eiko Sugi, who earned her master of fine arts degree from UC Davis two years ago. Using herself as a model, Sugi has cut out small figures in a variety of attitudes – standing, kneeling, sitting on the ground – and arranged them into groupings. The figures are hung from pins stuck into a vast white wall so that they cast fascinating shadows with umbras and penumbras intersecting and moving apart in a kind of dance as you walk past. Some of the groupings suggest people taking their leisure while others hint at more disturbing events – the scene of an accident or a crime scene, for example.

It's a fascinating display that makes good use of the gallery's spacious setting. At 3,000 square feet, Verge is one of the largest galleries in town as well as the newest. A former warehouse at 19th and V streets, the building is also home to a dozen studio spaces for local artists. Well-known Sacramento artist and activist Gale Hart is the building manager and artists Liv Moe and Lisa Marasso are co-directors of the gallery.

Verge is the vision of Jesse Powell, a 28-year-old software and Internet entrepreneur whose goal is to bring high-caliber shows of contemporary art from around the world to Sacramento. If the first show is any example, Verge has a very bright future.

Open your heart

The Heart Gallery is an exhibit that features professional-quality photos of Sacramento County foster children who need permanent homes, specifically hard-to-place children such as sibling sets that need to be adopted together, children who have disabilities or children who are older. The opening celebration for the exhibit takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Library Gallery at California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J St. Information: www.sacheartgallery.org

Phantom Galleries are rising again

After being inactive for a year, Phantom Galleries/Uptown Arts are making a comeback, returning to celebrate their 15th year this Saturday night. Known in the past for provocative, experimental exhibits, 23 Phantom/Uptown venues along Del Paso Boulevard will present Second Saturday events and exhibits in North Sacramento. For more information and a map, go to www.phantomuptownarts.com.

For an interactive map of this month's galleries, click here.