Nick Hollighbaugh’s Quarter Horse, oil paint on ash.

Caitlin Sherlock

Two years ago, friends and fellow RISD grads Nick Hollibaugh and Ben Watkins were on the losing end of a bitter turf war between artists and developers. The owners of Box Elder Studio, a small design business based in Providence’s Valley district, Hollibaugh and Watkins (along with a third artist, Josh Enck) were forced to vacate their building to make way for the American Locomotive Works, a sprawling office and residential complex backed by real estate giant Struever Bros., Eccles and Rouse.

Sadly, the move spelled the end of Box Elder Studio. But in other respects, Hollibaugh and Watkins seem to be doing just fine. Indeed, their new two-man show at the AS220 Project Space brims with the kind of well-made, thought-provoking work that would be the envy of many New York galleries.

Wisely, neither artist seems interested in using the show to bash their one-time nemesis, Struever Bros. (If Hollibaugh and Watkins are still upset about losing their business — to say nothing of the money they invested in it — they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping it to themselves.) Still, themes of absence, loss and dislocation can be found in many of the show’s pieces, which range from a series of large painted-wood sculptures (Hollibaugh) to an a array of paintings and mixed media works (Watkins).

Hollibaugh’s work, in particular, explores related ideas of home, shelter and sense of place.

Using thin wooden slats, he constructs toy-size buildings that suggest Minimalist versions of Midwestern barns, farmhouses and grain silos. He then attaches these elegant structures to larger wooden panels that function both as structural supports and as stylized background landscapes. As a final touch, he adds color, thereby turning each work into a hybrid of painting, sculpture and architecture.

Despite their Shaker-like simplicity, these plainspoken pieces turn out to be surprisingly evocative. Anyone who’s ever driven through farm country will immediately recognize the telltale shapes of barns (wide and stout), silos (tall and round) and other farm buildings. And even the wooden slats serve a purpose, suggesting everything from clapboard siding to freshly plowed fields.

At the same time, the kind of small-scale family farm that seems to be inspiration for Hollibaugh’s work isn’t faring very well these days. Caught between soaring prices for feed and fuel and plunging market prices for many of their products, American farms and farmers are struggling.

No wonder, then, that Hollibaugh’s work often feels a bit wistful, even melancholy. Like the miniature buildings that cling to so many of his pieces, the future of that iconic American institution — the family farm — is increasingly precarious. Who knows how long it can hang on?

Watkins’ work is more varied, though no less polished.

Several paintings, for example, are done in a fractured, semi-abstract style that turns everything from fruit (Truncate) to fish (Prize) to a human skull (You Ain’t Gonna Get Me) into schematic, rock-crystal versions of themselves. The style, which suggests a blend of Cubism and pick-up sticks, works especially well on the skull, turning this traditional symbol of mortality into something at once visually precise and deeply spooky. (If there’s an artsy Goth band looking for an album cover out there, this is it.)

Still, the star of the show is another Watkins work — a haunting fiberglass wall-relief called Prime that looks something like a mold for casting tiny human beings. Like many of the other pieces in the show, Prime is beautifully made. Indeed, you won’t find a single seam or joint on its pristine all-white surface. But it’s the shape at the center of the work — a perfect concave outline of a human body — that really grabs your attention. How, you wonder, could something so familiar also look so strangely alien and otherworldly?

“New Work by Nick Hollibaugh and Ben Watkins” runs through June 27 at the AS220 Project Space, 93 Mathewson St., Providence. Hours: Wednesday to Friday 1-6 and Saturday noon-4. Contact: (401) 831-9327 or www.as220.org. (Note: Both artists will discuss their work Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the gallery.)

Wolf catches the wind

In a statement that accompanies her new exhibit at Gallery Z, artist C.C. Wolf describes her goal as “trying to express a sense of flow.” On paper, that might sound like a fool’s errand — the artistic equivalent of trying to catch the wind. But in practice, Wolf’s vibrant, lushly colored paintings really do manage to capture something of the flux and flow of human consciousness.

Granted, even the most determined daydreamers can’t always keep the real world out. A work called Traveling, for example, features a woman outlined against a shimmering background that may (or may not) be an airport terminal. Another work, The Opening, combines landscape features such as trees and hills with more abstract passages. Yet in the show’s best works, Wolf lets her imagination break free of worldly constraints, allowing her brush to skip and swirl as though propelled by the wind itself. The result: paintings that have some of the breezy, freewheeling warmth of a good samba.

In addition to Wolf, gallery owner Berge Zobian is also showing works by two other artists. Painter Stephanie Marzella contributes a series of lush landscapes and coastal scenes that look back to 19th-century artists such as Edward Bannister and Martin Johnson Heade. Meanwhile, Lara Baghdassarian, who exhibits under the name Lara B., is showing a group of paint-crusted nudes and figure studies that recall (and not always in the best way) figurative paintings from the 1950s and ’60s.

Though not part of the main exhibit, the gallery is also showing several photo-constructions by former Rhode Island College professor Lawrence Sykes. Like his hero, the great American Surrealist Joseph Cornell, Sykes is fascinated by exotic locales — among them, the Buddhist temple complex at Angkor Wat and the palm tree-lined banks of the Nile River. But Sykes, who is African American, adds something else to the mix — a sense of history (and particularly African American history) that lifts his work above mere travelogue.

A good example is a suite of works devoted to South African leader Nelson Mandela. Here, the background pictures, which include shots of the prison where Mandela spent much of his life and a ludicrous travel advertisement that tries to capitalize on Mandela’s post-release fame, have a far more ominous feel. Though most of Sykes’ images are taken from popular travel books and magazines, his finished works have a knack for delving deeply into contemporary history and culture.

Through June 27 at Gallery Z, 259 Atwells Ave., Providence. Hours: Wednesday to Saturday noon-8. Contact: (401) 454-8844 or www.galleryzprov.com.