How could you resist a show titled "Fresh Young Things"? The young things in question are not baby green beans but artists fresh out of graduate school. As for "young," the term seems to be a bit elastic, since most of the participants are in the 30-something range.

The artists' ages reflect the realities of trying to work and go to school at the same time. Some of these artists have taken time out from school to take part in residencies at Skowhegan and other art colonies. They are a highly educated and experienced group who have already shown a good deal while still in school.

Kristina Schlosser, herself a relatively young thing and a UC Davis graduate candidate in art history, curated the show, screening digital images from 45 entrants and then making studio visits to 15 artists who made the cut. In the end, she chose 11 for the show, which covers a lot of territory, from James Pakola's fairly traditional surrealistic watercolor of tree limbs and a foot with its inner workings exposed to David Yun's blurry videos of flowers and waves, and a more intelligible short of a girl running like Elvira Madigan to give an unidentified person a big hug.

Most of the artists in the show are from Bay Area institutions – the San Francisco Art Institute, Mills College, California College of the Arts and Stanford University – and two of the artists are local. Erin Billingsley is a recent master of arts graduate of California State University, Sacramento, and Julia Elsas has just gotten her master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Davis.

Billingsley offers two sculptures using found and constructed objects. "Dress Up Box" is a cascade of wax-covered tulle hanging from an elegant antique hook. The artist says the work relates to the recent death of her father and memories of childhood when she would play dress-up in tutus, long gowns and grown-up high heels. It plays with the dual roles of memory and loss, as does a feather chandelier she made of white feathers dipped in resin at the bottom and hung from an industrial-strength chain.

Elsas gives us a pair of untitled, intricately stitched images of women's mouths in black thread on linen that, she explains, relate to coquettish gestures associated with flirtatious females. One presents a series of mouths, with lips pursed to lips partially opened, while the other takes the form of two mouths stretched within the confines of embroidery hoops. They comment on gender identity and circumscribed and stereotyped female roles using an updated version of a traditional feminine craft.

Colby Claycomb, who received his master of fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute, offers one of the most impressive pieces in the show. "Schematic" is a large sculpture made of retrieved wood and flooring slats that translates found objects into an elegant abstract sculpture that is large enough to encompass the viewer. It beautifully addresses the notion of dynamic space as it relates to the viewer's body and its location in the gallery.

Klea McKenna, who comes from California College of the Arts, gives us a pair of unsettling photographs that explore her ambivalent attitude toward nature, which both fascinates and frightens her. Both photos focus on flies she has gathered from her home – in one case hung from strings and in the other placed directly on the lens of the camera. In the background are hints of landscapes, but it is the insects that somewhat ominously take center stage in her eerie evocations of nature.

Steuart Pitman, who graduated from Mills College, takes a cool approach in his geometric color abstractions on raw canvas, which remind one somewhat of Peter Stegall's work, though the use of the unprimed linen adds a warm note. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Art Institute grad Sara Wanie's collagelike, photo-derived drawing of "monstrous" figures, from Adolf Hitler to Richard Nixon, populating a scene of a beached boat in a marina.

Kazumi Shiho of Stanford takes a more conceptual approach with a rising sun from the Japanese flag stained like bright blood onto a silicone rubber throw crumpled on the floor. It seems to comment symbolically on Japanese history and society, and suggests a state of entropy.

From Art Institute grad Jhinryung Oh's photographic meditation on the figure in the landscape to John K. Melvin's cloudlike site-specific sculpture, Schlosser has put together an interesting show that gives us glimpses of what might lie ahead in the academic art world. A great deal of thought has gone into these works, and the only criticism I have is that they are scant on emotion. But graduate students are inclined to think too much and, in fact, are pushed these days to do so. The more successful ones usually get over it.