Photographs from Bonnie Briant’s “if my memory serves me” series are part of a two-person exhibit at AS220 on Empire Street in Providence. The show also features work by Providence photographer Jay Lee.

When the AS220 Project Space opened on Mathewson Street last year, there was talk that the new gallery — part of the AS220-owned Dreyfus Hotel — would eventually supplant the two gallery spaces at AS220’s Empire Street headquarters. The idea was the that the Project Space would become AS220’s primary visual arts showcase, thereby allowing the mother ship to focus more on musical and theatrical performances.

So far — and so much the better for local art lovers — that hasn’t happened. Instead, AS220 continues to mount exhibits at both the AS220 Project Space and its Empire Street headquarters.

This month, AS220 is showcasing the work of five artists — two at the Project Space and three on Empire Street. For no good reason — unless you count the Project Space’s proximity to The Providence Journal Co. offices on Fountain Street as a good reason — let’s start with the Project Space show.

Actually, make that two shows, since the two Providence-based contributors — Anna Shapiro and Richard Goulis — have each claimed a separate corner of the gallery. Shapiro calls her part of the exhibit “Piece Work,” and the name operates on a number of different levels. Crafters, for example, will be familiar with the term as it applies to sewing-related processes such as quilting and embroidery. In a grittier context, also refers to a type of industrial production in which workers are paid by the piece rather than by the hour.

Finally, “piece work” is a pretty good description of what artists do when they put together seemingly disparate ideas, materials and processes and come up with something new and different.

Shapiro, to her credit, manages to channel all three meanings of “piece work” into her body-centered paintings, drawings and mixed media pieces. A series of small torso-shaped works, for example, suggests everything from prim Victorian-era silhouettes to firing-range targets. (Yes, I know that’s a quite stretch, but it also happens to be true.) The list of materials is similarly eclectic, ranging from military-industrial products such as camouflage fabric and Astroturf to daintier fare such as glitter fabrics and floral-patterned wallpaper.

Shapiro returns to the silhouette theme in a series of smaller mixed media works, each featuring a single face seen in profile. Like the torso series, the faces feature a wide array of materials, including glitter fabrics, camouflage and even topographic maps, all stitched together with loosely sewn thread. (If Dr. Frankenstein had developed an interest in sewing and silhouettes, this is what his work might have looked like.)

Shapiro can also work on a larger scale, as evidenced by a trio of large figure drawings. The best of these features a roughly life-size human figure covered with a patchwork quilt of vintage Tarot cards. Called Chance Galaxy Overlay, it manages to be both playful and slightly spooky at the same time.

Goulis, meanwhile, has a created a small multimedia installation which he calls Infinitesimal Fortitude. About the size of a walk-in closet, it consists of a static-filled TV screen, which on closer inspection turns out to be made of plastic dentures (And, no, I’m not making this up!) Surrounding the screen are dozens of Frisbee-size plastic discs in a variety of colors, ranging from plain white to bright blues and greens.

It’s a striking combination. The gaggle of plastic discs, for example, suggests a kind of giant pointillist painting. Still, the precise meaning of Infinitesimal Fortitude — Is Goulis making a wry comment on American consumerism? — remains teasingly (and perhaps deliberately) obscure.

Needless to say, this isn’t a show (or shows) that everyone will like. For viewers who haven’t adjusted to today’s low-tech, do-it-yourself aesthetic, the work will almost certainly seem raw and unpolished. (Actually, it is raw and unpolished, but that’s the point.) Conceptually, it can be hard to follow — that is, when you can follow it at all. Still, artists like Shapiro and Goulis represent an important part of the underground art scene that has grown up in Providence’s Armory and Olneyville areas in recent years.

Bottom line: Even if you don’t like the stuff, your kids and their hipster friends probably will.

Over at AS220’s main headquarters on Empire Street, the focus is on photography. Providence photographer Jay Lee is showing a series of female nudes and figure studies, while Barrington-born photographer Bonnie Briant is exhibiting a parts of her “if my memory serves me” series, which chronicles her circle of bohemian friends as they work, go to school and hang out in present-day New York.

Of the two, I preferred Briant’s quietly observant views of twentysomethings at work and at play in the Big Apple. True, Briant’s cinÉma vÉritÉ approach isn’t exactly new. (The genre’s most celebrated practitioner, Nan Goldin, used it to much more dramatic effect in her now-iconic series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.)

Still, the scenes of Briant and her friends lounging around their tiny apartments, hanging out on building rooftops and smoking way too many cigarettes have an undeniable poignancy. “Enjoy those lumpy sofas and teensy studio apartments while you can,” you feel like saying. “That kind of fun can’t last.”

By contrast, Lee’s nude studies come across as fairly conventional, if technically proficient, examples of this well-worn genre.

Finally, don’t miss the work of Carrie Sandman, a young artist whose playful mixed media pieces adorn a corner of the first-floor space shared by Taqueria Pacifica and the AS220 bar.

A graduate of New York’s Pratt Institute, Sandman has a quirky sense of humor (a painting of a woman wearing a pair of photocopied antlers, for example, is titled Oh, Deer) as well as a keen eye for the bumps and bruises of everyday life. A good example is The Decision, which shows another woman standing on a diving board and peering down at tiny pool far, far below.

All exhibits run through Jan. 27 at the AS220 Project Space, corner of Washington Street and Mathewson Street, and the AS220 Main Gallery, 115 Empire St. Regular hours for both galleries: Wed.-Fri. 1-6 and Sat. noon-4. For more information, call (401) 831-9327 or visit www.as220.org.

bvansicl@projo.com